François de Chateaubriand
Mémoires d’outre-tombe
Book X
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Translated by A. S. Kline © 2005 All Rights Reserved.
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Contents
Book X: Chapter 1: The Ardennes
Book X: Chapter 10: Return to London
Book X: Chapter 11: An astonishing encounter
London, April to September 1822. (Revised February 1845)
Leaving Arlon, a farmer’s cart picked me up, and for the sum of four sous deposited me twelve miles off on a pile of stones. Having hopped a few feet with the aid of my crutch, I washed the bandages of my scratch, which had become a wound, in a spring which flowed beside the roadway, which served me very well. The smallpox fever had completely gone, and I felt relieved. I had not abandoned my knapsack though its straps cut my shoulders.
I spent the first night
in a barn, with nothing to eat. The wife of the farmer who owned the barn
refused payment for my bed; at daybreak she brought me a large bowl of white
coffee and a cob of black bread which I found excellent. I took to the road
again full of energy, though I often fell. I had been joined by four or five of
my comrades who carried my rucksack; they too were quite ill. We met villagers,
and riding on cart after cart, we covered enough of the road after five days to
reach Attert, Flamizoul and
After staggering six
miles, which took me six hours, I saw the camp of a gipsy family, with their
two goats and a donkey, on the far side of a ditch, around a fire made from
undergrowth. I had scarcely arrived before I slumped down and the singular
creatures hastened to my aid. A young woman dressed in rags, lively,
dark-haired, and mischievous, sang, skipped and span round and round, while
holding her child slantwise to her breast, like the hurdy-gurdy which might
have enlivened her dancing, then she sat on her heels, opposite me, gazing at me
with curiosity in the firelight, and took my feeble hand to read my fortune, while
demanding a little sou; it was too
expensive. It would be difficult to possess more wisdom, kindness, or be poorer
than my sibyl of the
I plunged into the forest: I was not overly saddened; solitude had brought me back to my true nature. I chanted a ballad by the unfortunate Cazotte:
‘Deep in the midst of the
A castle stands on a rocky height’ etc. etc.
Was it not in the keep
of this castle full of phantoms, that the King of Spain, Philip II, imprisoned my compatriot, the
captain, La Noue, who had a
Chateaubriand for a grandmother? Philip consented to the release of his
illustrious prisoner, if he would consent to being blinded; La Noue was on the
point of accepting this offer, such was his hunger to regain his beloved
I was stationed a mile or more higher, in deer-pasture: hunters traversed its boundary. A fountain welled up at my feet; in the depths of this fountain, in this same forest, Orlando, innamorato, not furioso, saw a palace of crystal full of knights and ladies. If the paladin, who met with the shining naiads, had at least left Golden-Bridle beside the spring; if Shakespeare had sent me Rosalind and the exiled Duke, it would have been a great help to me.
Having regained my
breath, I continued my journey. My weakened thoughts drifted on a sea which was
not without charm; my old phantoms, scarcely possessing the consistency of
shadows, three-quarters effaced, surrounded me to wish me farewell. I no longer
had the power of memory; I saw in the indefinite distance, mingled with unknown
images, the airy forms of my relatives and friends. When I sat down against a
milestone, I thought I could see faces smiling at me from the thresholds of
far-off huts, in the blue smoke escaping from the roofs of thatched cottages,
in the tops of the trees, in the transparent clouds, in the luminous sheaves of
the sun drawing its rays over the heather like a golden rake. The apparitions
were those of the Muses arriving to assist at
the death of a poet: my grave, dug with the lintel of their lyres beneath an
oak-tree in the
Towards the end of that day, I was lying on my back on the ground, in a ditch, my head supported by the knapsack containing Atala, my crutch beside me, my eyes fixed on the sun, whose gaze was fading with mine. I saluted with utter mildness of thought the star which had lighted my early youth in my native land: we were setting together, he to rise more gloriously, I, in all likelihood, never to wake again. I lapsed into unconsciousness with a religious feeling: the last sound I heard was the fall of a leaf and the whistling of a bullfinch.
London, April to September 1822.
It seems that I was unconscious for two hours more or less. The Prince de Ligne’s wagons happened to pass by; one of the drivers had stopped to cut a branch of silver birch, and without noticing me, stumbled over me: he thought me dead and grasped me by the leg; I gave a sign of life. The driver called to his friends, and, with merciful instinct, threw me into a cart. The jolting revived me: I was able to speak to my saviours; I told them I was a soldier in the Army of Princes, and that if they would take me to Brussels, where I was going, I would repay them for their effort. ‘Well, friend,’ one of them replied, ‘you will have to get off at Namur, since we are forbidden to carry anyone for hire. We will pick you up again on the other side of the town.’ I asked for a drink; I swallowed several gulps of brandy which brought the symptoms of my illness to the surface and relieved my chest for a while: nature had endowed me with extraordinary powers of resistance.
About ten in the morning
we arrived in the suburbs of
My traverse of
The women of
In
‘When he was in that town
Of
was more welcome there than I was, since he had five sous in his pocket. I knocked, someone
opened; seeing me they shouted: ‘Pass on! Pass on!’ and shut the door in my
face. They drove me from the cafes. My hair hung over my face, masked by my
beard and moustache; my thigh was encased in a plaster, made of clay and straw;
over my ragged uniform, I wore the woollen blanket from
At first I presented
myself in vain at the hotel where I had stayed with my brother; I made a second
attempt: as I was approaching the entrance, I saw the Comte de Chateaubriand descend from
a carriage with the Baron de Montboissier.
He was frightened by my spectre. They looked for a room for me outside the
hotel, since the owner refused utterly to admit me. A wigmaker offered a hovel
suited to my wretchedness. My brother brought a doctor and a surgeon to me. He
had received letters from
Death touches us more before than after the passing of a friend: it is a part of ourselves that is detaching itself, a world of childhood memories, family intimacies, common affections and interest which dissolves. My brother preceded me from my mother’s loins; he was first to inhabit that same sacred womb from which I emerged after him; he sat before me at the paternal hearth; he waited several years to welcome me, gave me my baptismal name, and was part of my whole youth. My blood, mixed with his blood in the revolutionary tub, would have had the same flavour, like milk produced from the pastures of a single mountain. But if men have caused my elder brother’s head, my godfather’s, to fall before its time, the years have not spared mine: already my forehead is bald; I feel, these days, as if an Ugolino leant over me, who gnaws at my skull:
…come’l pan per fame si manduca (as bread is chewed, out of hunger)
London, April to September 1822.
The doctor could net get over his astonishment: he considered this fluctuating smallpox that failed to kill me, and did not develop to a natural crisis, as a phenomenon for which medicine offered no precedent. As for my wound, gangrene had set in: the wound was dressed with cinchona. Having obtained this first aid, I insisted in leaving for Ostend. Brussels was odious to me; I was keen to get away; it was filling once more with those heroes of domesticity, returning from Verdun in their carriages, whom I did not see, in that same Brussels, when I accompanied the King during the Hundred Days.
I reached
Apparently I was fated to arouse pity. The wife of an English pilot happened to be passing; she was moved, and called her husband who, aided by two or three sailors, carried me, a friend of the waves, into a fisherman’s cottage; they laid me on a comfortable bed, between the whitest sheets. The young woman took every possible care of the stranger: I owe her my life. The next day I was taken back on board. My hostess almost wept on parting from her patient; women have a heaven-sent instinct regarding misfortune. My lovely, fair-haired guardian, who resembled a figure from some old English print, pressed my swollen, burning hands between her long, cool ones: I was ashamed to bring such ugliness close to such beauty.
We set sail, and reached the westernmost point of Jersey. Monsieur de Tilleul, one of my companions, went to St Helier, to my uncle. Next day, Monsieur de Bedée came in a carriage to fetch me. We crossed the whole island: though I felt quite deathly, I was still charmed by its hedged fields: but babbled nothing but nonsense about them, having fallen into a delirium.
I lay for four months
between life and death. My uncle, his wife, his son, and three daughters, took
turns beside my bed. I occupied an apartment in one of the houses they had
begun to build along the foreshore: my bedroom windows reached the floor, and
beyond the end of my bed I could see the sea. The doctor, Monsieur Delattre, had forbidden any talk of serious
matters, especially politics, with me. Towards the end of January 1793, seeing
my uncle enter my room in full mourning, I trembled, thinking we had lost a
member of the family: he informed me of the death of Louis XVI. I was not surprised; I had
foreseen it. I asked for news of my relatives; my sisters and my wife had returned to
I began to leave my bed; the smallpox had vanished; but I felt pain in my chest, and a weakness remained which stayed with me for a long time.
Jersey, the
The island is fertile;
it has two towns and twelve parishes; it is covered with country houses and
herds. The ocean breeze, which seems to forego its harshness, allows
I took great pleasure in going about during the first few days of May. Spring retains all its freshness on Jersey; one might still call it primavera as long ago, a name which while growing old, has left behind a daughter, the primrose, the first flower with which it garlands itself.
Here I will transcribe two pages for you from my life of the Duc de Berry, which is no less to tell you of mine:
‘After twenty-two years
of struggle, the barrier of bronze which enclosed
‘Far then from the Court, in this obscure place,
I come to bewail the injury to my faith.’ (Henriade)
Monseigneur le Duc de
8th of February 1814.
‘Here I am then, like Tantalus, in sight of that unhappy
It is three years since I wrote these pages in Paris; My presence in Jersey, that island of exile, had preceded Monsieur le Duc de Berry’s by twenty-two years; I was obliged to leave my name there, since Armand de Chateaubriand married there and his son Frédérick was born there.
Gaiety had not abandoned
my uncle Bedée’s family; my aunt kept a large and cherished dog
descended from those whose virtues I have recounted; as he bit everyone and was
mangy, my cousins secretly had him put down, despite his nobility. Madame de Bedée
was persuaded that the English officers, charmed by the beauty of Azor, had stolen him, and that he lived full of
honours and dinners, in the richest castle of the three kingdoms. Alas! Our
present hilarity was only composed of our past gaiety. In retracing scenes from
Monchoix, we found the means to generate
laughter in
One more thing, the émigrés excited general sympathy at that time; our cause seemed the cause of the European orders: honourable adversity is something, and ours was such.
Monsieur de Bouillon was the protector of the
French refugees in Jersey: he dissuaded me from my plan to cross to Brittany, unfit
as I was to endure an existence in caves and forests; he advised me to head for
England and look for an opportunity there of entering the regular service. My
uncle, ill provided with money, began to feel uneasy given his large family; he
found himself obliged to send his son to
Thirty louis brought to me by a Saint-Malo smuggler, enabled me to execute my plan and I booked a berth on the Southampton packet. On saying farewell to my uncle, I was deeply moved; he had cared for me with a father’s affection; the few happy moments of my childhood were associated with him; he knew all that was dear to me; I saw a certain resemblance to my mother in his features. I had left that excellent mother behind, and I would not see her again; I had left my sister Julie and my brother, and was doomed to meet them no more; I was leaving my uncle, and his beaming countenance would never again gladden my eyes. A few months had sufficed to bring about all these losses, for the death of our friends is not to be reckoned from the moment when they die, but from that when we cease to live with them.
If one could say to Time: ‘All is fair!’ one could arrest it at the moment of delight; but since one cannot, let us not linger down here; let us depart, before we have seen our friends vanish, and those years which the poet found alone worthy of life: Vita dignior aetas. What enchants us at the age for liaisons becomes a matter of pain and regret at the age of detachment. One no longer wishes for the return of the smiling seasons; rather one fears it: the birds, the flowers, a lovely evening at the end of April, a lovely night beginning at dusk with the first nightingale, completed at dawn by the first swallow, those things which stir the need and desire for happiness, you extinguish. Other charms, you still feel them, but they are not for you: youth which tastes them at your side and which you gaze at disdainfully, renders you jealous and makes you understand the depth of your loss. The freshness and grace of Nature, in reminding you of past joys, increases the ugliness of your woes. You are no more than a blemish on Nature: you spoil the harmony and sweetness by your presence, by your words, and even by the sentiments which you dare to express. You could love, but you can no longer be an object of love. The fountain of spring has renewed its waters without giving you back your youth, and the sight of everything that is reborn, everything joyful, limits you to the painful memory of your pleasures.
The packet I embarked on
was crowded with émigré families. There I made the acquaintance of Monsieur Hingant, a former colleague of my brother’s at
the High Court of Brittany, a man of taste and intelligence of whom I shall
have much to say. A naval officer was playing chess in the captain’s cabin; he
did not recognise my face, I was so changed; but I remembered Gesril. We had not seen each other
since Brest; we were destined to part at
I have already given, at
the beginning of the sixth book of these Memoirs, the certificate of my disembarkation
from
London, April to September 1822.
A society exists in
It is many years since Mr Canning, man of letters, learnt his politics in London under Mr Pitt; almost the same number of years since I began writing, in obscurity, in this same English capital. Both of us, reaching high station, are members now of a society dedicated to helping unfortunate writers. Is it the affinity of grandeur, or the compatibility of suffering, that has united us? What are a Governor-General of India and a French Ambassador doing at a banquet of the distressed Muses? It was George Canning and François de Chateaubriand who sat there, in remembrance of their past adversity and perhaps felicity; they have drunk to the memory of Homer, reciting his verse for a morsel of bread.
If the Literary Fund had been available to me
when I arrived in
The certainty I so gained of my imminent end, by increasing the natural mournfulness of my imagination, induced in me an incredible mental calm. That inner disposition explains a passage in the foreword at the head of my Essai Historique, and this other passage of the same Essai: ‘Attacked by an illness which leaves me with little hope, I regard all objects with a tranquil eye; the calm air of the tomb makes itself apparent to the traveller who is only a few days journey from it.’ The bitterness of the reflections expanded on in the Essai will not then astonish anyone: it was after suffering the mortal blow of a death sentence, between the judgement and the execution, that I composed that work. A writer who thinks he has reached his end, in poverty and exile, can hardly display a smiling face to the world.
But how to pass the
period of grace allotted me? I could either live or die swiftly on my sword:
physical effort was forbidden me; what was left? My pen? It was unknown and
unproven and I did not know its power. Could my innate taste for literature, my
childhood attempts at poetry, my travel sketches, suffice to attract the
attention of the public? The idea of writing a work comparing the various
Revolutions came to me; it occupied my mind as a subject appropriate to the
concerns of the day; but who would undertake to print a manuscript without
patrons, and during the composition of the manuscript, who would support me?
Though I had only a few months left on earth, nevertheless it was necessary to
have some means of living out those few months. My thirty louis, already much reduced, would not last long enough, and in
addition to my specific needs, I ought to be alleviating the general distress
of the émigrés. My companions in
London, April to September 1822.
Peltier, author of Domine salvum fac Regem (God
Save the King) and editor-in-chief of the Actes des Apôtres, continued his Parisian enterprises in
I was on the brink of a golden future; but as for the present, over what plank could I cross it? Peltier found work for me translating from Latin and English: during the day I laboured at these translations, at night on the Essai historique in sections of which I included my travels and my daydreams. Baylis provided me with books, and I employed a few shillings badly in buying others from the bookstalls.
Hingant whom I had met on the
I would make my way, in
those days, towards Kensington or Westminster. Kensington pleased me;
I would walk in the secluded part, while the part adjacent to
At
The singing of the choir and the conversation of visitors interrupted my reflections. I could not visit frequently, since it obliged me to give the wardens of those no longer living the shilling which I needed in order to stay alive. But instead I would circle the Abbey with the rooks, or stop to gaze at the towers, twins that appeared of unequal size, which the setting sun lit with its blood-red fires against the black backcloth of City smoke.
One day, however, it so happened that wishing to contemplate the interior of the basilica, I was lost, at evening, in admiration of that bold, capricious architecture. Overcome by the feeling of the sombre immensity of Christian churches (Montaigne), I wandered about with slow steps, and was benighted: the doors were closed. I tried to find an exit; I called for the usher, and rattled the gates: all this noise, spreading and fading in the silence, was lost; I had to resign myself to sleeping among the dead.
After hesitating in my choice of bed, I stopped by the mausoleum of Lord Chatham, at the foot of the rood screen, and the double flight of steps to the Chapel of the Knights and of Henry VII. At the entrance to these stairs, these aisles closed by grills, a tomb built into the wall, facing a marble statue of Death armed with a spear, offered me shelter. The folds of a shroud, equally of marble, provided a niche: following Charles Quint’s example, I accustomed myself to my interment. I was lodged perfectly for seeing the world as it truly is. What heaps of grandeur are enclosed by those vaults! What remains of us? Our sorrows are no less vain than our joys; the unfortunate Jane Grey is no different from the happy Alys of Salisbury; only her skeleton is less dreadful, since it lacks a head; her carcass improved by her fate and the absence of that which gave her beauty. The tournaments of the victor of Crécy, the entertainments of Henry VIII’s Field of the Cloth of Gold, will not continue in this chamber of funereal sights. Bacon, Newton, Milton are as deeply buried, as eternally past, as their more obscure contemporaries. I, a poor, wandering, exile, would I consent to be no longer the little, sad neglected thing I was, in order to have been one of these famous dead, powerful and sated with pleasure? Oh, life is not about all that! If from the shores of this world we fail to see divine things clearly, let us not be surprised: time is a veil interposed between God and ourselves, as our eyelid is between our eye and the light.
Concealed beneath my marble cloak, I lapsed from these lofty thoughts into my naïve impressions of place and time. My anxiety mixed with pleasure, was similar to that which I experienced in winter in my tower at Combourg, when I listened to the wind: a sigh and a shade are of like nature.
Gradually, I accustomed myself to the darkness, and made out the statues placed on the tombs. I gazed at the corbelled vaulting of the English Saint-Denis, from which one would have said past events and vanished years hung in a Gothic light: the whole edifice was like a monolithic temple of petrified centuries.
I counted ten hours,
eleven by the clock; the hammer which rose and fell, on the bronze, was the
only ‘living’ thing beside me in the place. Outside, a vehicle passing by, the
cry of a watchman, that was all: those distant sounds of earth reached me in a
world within a world. The
At last, a pre-dawn glow blossomed in a corner of dullest gloom: I gazed fixedly at the progressive growth of the light; did it emanate from the two sons of Edward IV, murdered by their uncle? ‘O, thus lay the gentle babes’, says the great tragedian, ‘…girdling one another within their alabaster innocent arms. Their lips were four red roses on a stalk, and in their summer beauty kiss’d each other.’ God did not send me those sad and tender souls; but the slender phantom of a barely adolescent girl carrying a light sheltered by a leaf of paper twisted like a shell: it was the little bell-ringer. I heard the sound of a kiss, and the bell rang for daybreak. The bell-ringer was utterly terrified when I exited with her through the cloister door. I told her my tale; she explained that she was there to carry out her father’s task because he was ill; we did not speak of the kiss.
London, April to September 1822.
I amused Hingant with the tale of my adventure, and we decided to make a retreat at Westminster; but our poverty summoned us among the dead in a less poetic way.
My funds were running out: Baylis and Deboffe, in return for a written promise of reimbursement in case of poor sales, ventured to begin printing the Essai; it was the end of their generosity, and that was only natural; I was more surprised at their daring. No more translation work arrived: Peltier, being a man dedicated to pleasure, grew weary of his prolonged kindness to me. He would willingly have given me what he had, if he had not preferred spending it; but hunting for work here and there, and doing a good deed patiently, were impossibilities, to him. Hingant too saw his resources diminishing; between the two of us, we possessed only sixty francs. We cut down on our rations, as if on a prolonged voyage aboard ship. Instead of a shilling a head, we only spent sixpence on dinner. With our morning tea, we halved the amount of bread, and gave up butter. This abstinence frayed my friend’s nerves. It crazed him; he would prick up his ears as if he were listening for someone; then, as if in response, start laughing, or burst into tears. Hingant believed in magnetism, and confused his brain with Swedenborg’s gibberish. In the morning he would tell me of being disturbed by noises during the night; he grew angry if I ridiculed his imaginings. The anxiety he caused me prevented me from feeling my own sufferings.
They were significant, nevertheless: the rigorous diet, and my work, inflamed my diseased chest; I began to find difficulty in walking, yet I spent my days and part of my nights out of doors, so no one would be aware of my poverty. Down to our last shilling, my friend and I agreed to employ it to provide a semblance of breakfasting. We decided to buy a penny roll; and would allow the hot water and teapot to be brought as usual; we would not put the tea in, we would eat no bread, but we would drink the hot water, with a few of the small grains of sugar left at the bottom of the sugar-bowl.
Five days passed like this. Hunger consumed me; I was feverish; sleep deserted me; I sucked pieces of linen soaked in water; I chewed grass and paper. When I passed the bakers’ shops, the torment was terrible. One bitter wintry night, I stood for two hours outside a shop which sold dried fruit and smoked meat, devouring everything I saw with my eyes: I could have eaten not merely the food, but the boxes, baskets and trays.
On the morning of the fifth day, fainting from inanition, I dragged myself to Hingant’s room; I knocked at the door, it was locked; I called out, Hingant did not reply for a while; at last he got up and opened the door. He was laughing in an odd manner; his frock coat was buttoned up: he sat down at the tea table: ‘Our breakfast is on its way,’ he said, in a strange voice. I though I could see spots of blood on his shirt; I unbuttoned his coat swiftly: he had given himself a stab-wound, two inches deep, low on his left breast. I shouted for help. The maidservant ran for a surgeon. The wound was dangerous.
This new misfortune
forced me to take action. Hingant, a counsellor at the High Court of Brittany,
had refused to accept the payment that the British Government granted to French
magistrates, just as I had declined the alms of a shilling a day for émigrés: I
wrote to Monsieur de Barentin and
explained my friend’s situation to him. Hingant’s relatives rushed to his side
and took him off to the country. At that very moment, my uncle Bedée sent me forty crowns, a
touching gift from my persecuted family; it seemed like all the gold of
My poverty had become an
obstacle to working. Since I no longer provided copy, printing had been
suspended. Deprived of Hingant’s company, I relinquished my guinea-a-month
lodging with Baylis; I paid the outstanding
rent and left. Lower still than the needy émigrés who had proved my first
patrons in
Friends visited my
attic. Given our freedom and our poverty, we might have been taken for painters
among the ruins of
My cousin La Bouëtardais, hounded from an Irish
hovel for failing to pay his rent, though he had left his violin as a pledge,
came to me seeking shelter from the bailiff; a curate from southern
London, April to September 1822.
Those reading this part
of my Memoirs are not aware that I have twice interrupted my writing of them:
once, to offer a banquet for the Duke of York,
brother of the King of
I was the man with forty crowns; but equality of
wealth had not yet been established, and food was no cheaper, so there was
nothing to offset my rapidly emptying purse. I could not count on further help
from my family, exposed in
The resourceful Peltier, dug me up, or rather unearthed me in
my eyrie. He had read in a newspaper, in Yarmouth,
that a group of antiquaries was preparing a history of the country of
I tried to stammer out my objections: ‘Ah! What the devil,’ he cried, ‘do you reckon on staying here, in this palace, where I’m already half-frozen? If Rivarol, Champcenetz, Mirabeau-Tonneau and I had been lily-livered, we’d have made a fine mess of the Actes des Apôtres! Do you know that this tale of Hingant made a hell of a row! You’d prefer both of you died of hunger, then? Ha! Ha! Ha! Pouf!...Ha! Ha!’ Peltier, bent in two, grasped his knees he was laughing so much. He had happened to sell a hundred copies of his newspaper to the Colonies; he had received payment and made the guineas jingle in his pocket. He took me away by force, with the apoplectic La Bouëtardais, and two ragged émigrés who were at hand, to dine at the London Tavern. He made us drink Port, and eat roast beef and plum pudding till we were bursting. ‘Monsieur le Comte,’ he said to my cousin, ‘why is your mouth all twisted?’ La Bouëtardais, half offended, half pleased, explained as best he could; he told him how he had a sudden seizure while singing those few words: O bella Venere! My poor stricken friend had so dead, so numb, so worn an air, while mutilating his bella Venere, that Peltier, convulsed with mad laughter, contrived to upset the table, striking it from below with both feet.
On reflection, the advice of my compatriot, truly a character invented by my other compatriot Le Sage, did not seem so bad. After three days spent making enquiries and being fitted out by Peltier’s tailor, I left for Beccles with some cash that Deboffe lent me, on the basis that I would resume writing the Essai. I altered my name, since the English could not pronounce it, to that of Combourg, which my brother had borne, and which recalled the pain and pleasure of my first youth. Ensconced at the inn, I presented the local minister with a letter from Deboffe, well regarded by the English literary world, which recommended me as a scholar of the first order. Well received, I met all the gentlemen of the district, and encountered two officers of our own Royal Navy who gave lessons in French to the neighbourhood.
London, April to September 1822.
I regained my strength;
the excursions I made on horseback restored my health somewhat.
The misfortunes of my family, which I learnt of from the newspapers and which made my real name known, (since I could not conceal my grief) increased people’s interest in me. The public pages announced the death of Monsieur de Malesherbes; that of his daughter, Madame la Présidente de Rosanbo; that of his grand-daughter, Madame la Comtesse de Chateaubriand; and that of his grandson-in-law, the Comte de Chateaubriand, my brother, executed together, on the same day, at the same hour, on the same scaffold. Monsieur de Malesherbes was an object of admiration and veneration among the English; my family connection with the defender of Louis XVI added to my hosts’ kindness.
My uncle Bedée told me of the persecution
suffered by my other relatives. My aged, incomparable mother had been thrown into a
cart with other victims, and taken from the depths of
Two years ago it was,
that my sister-in-law’s
wedding ring was found in the gutter of the Rue Casette; someone brought it to
me; it was broken; its two entwined strands had come apart, and hung together
like links of a chain; the names engraved there were perfectly legible. How had
the ring been found? Where and when had it been lost? Had the victim, a
prisoner in the
Dear orphan, image of your mother,
From heaven, for you, below, I ask,
The sweet days taken from your father,
The children that your uncle lacks.
This poor verse and two or three others are the only wedding gifts that I was able to fashion for my nephew when he married.
I have another relic of those misfortunes: here is what Monsieur de Contencin wrote to me, who, while searching the City archives, found the order of the Revolutionary Tribunal which sent my brother and his relatives to the scaffold:
‘Monsieur le Vicomte,
There is a kind of cruelty in awakening in the soul of someone who has suffered greatly the memory of those ills which have affected him the most grievously. This thought made me hesitate for a while before offering you an extremely sad document which came into my hands during my historical research. It is a death warrant signed before execution by a man who always showed himself as implacable as death, every time he found lustre and virtue showered on the same head.
I hope Monsieur le Vicomte that you will not be too dissatisfied with me for adding a paper to your family archives which revives such cruel memories. I assumed it would interest you, since I found it of value, and in consequence thought to offer it to you. If I am not being indiscreet, I can congratulate myself doubly, since I find the occasion, today, in taking this step, of expressing to you the feelings of profound respect and admiration which you have inspired in me, for many years, and with which I am, Monsieur le Vicomte,
Your very humble and obedient servant,
A. de Contencin.
Hôtel de la préfrecture de la
Here is my reply to this letter:
‘I made a search, Monsieur, in Sainte-Chapelle, for the documents concerning my unfortunate brother’s trial, but no one could find the warrant which you have been so good as to send me. This warrant and so many others, with their erasures, their misspelled names, will have been presented to Fouquier before God’s Tribunal: there he would certainly have had to admit to his signature. Those were the times that some regret, and about which they write volumes in admiration! Nevertheless, I envy my brother: for many years he has been beyond this sad world. I thank you infinitely, Monsieur, for the esteem that you are pleased to show me in your fine and noble letter, and beg you to accept my assurance of the very great consideration with which I have the honour to be, etc.’
That death warrant is
especially remarkable as evidence of the carelessness with which murder was
committed: some names are wrongly spelled, others are erased. These formal
errors, which would have been enough to invalidate the lightest sentence, did
not halt the executioners; they were only exact in the matter of the hour of
death: at
THE ENFORCER OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE
REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNAL
The enforcer of criminal justice will not fail to attend the house of justice of the Conciergerie, in order to execute there the sentence which condemns Mousset d’Esprémenil, Chapelier, Thouret, Hell, Lamoignon Malsherbes, the wife of Lepelletier Rosambo, Chateau Brian and his wife (the correct name erased, unreadable), the widow Duchatelet, the wife of Grammont, former Duke, the wife of Rochechuart (Rochechouart), and Parmentier:
- 14, on pain of death. The execution will take place today, at
The Public Prosecutor,
H. Q. Fouquier
Given
at the Tribunal, the third Floréal, Year Two, of the
Two carts.
The 9th Thermidor saved my mother’s life; but she was left, forgotten, in the Conciergerie. The commissary for the Convention discovered her: ‘What are you doing here, citizeness?’ he asked; ‘Who are you? Why are you still here?’ My mother answered that having lost her son, she had no further interest in what was happening, and was indifferent as to whether she died in prison or elsewhere. ‘But perhaps you have other children?’ the commissary replied. My mother mentioned my wife and sisters, imprisoned at Rennes. An order to set them at liberty was swiftly sent, and my mother was compelled to leave.
In histories of the
Revolution, they omit to paint the external picture of
Outside
Inside France, everything operated en masse; Barère proclaimed murders and victories, civil wars and foreign wars; the titanic conflicts of the Vendée and the banks of the Rhine; thrones disintegrating at the sound of our marching armies; our fleets engulfed by the waves; the mob disinterring the monarchs at Saint-Denis, and throwing the dust of dead Kings in the faces of living ones to blind them; the new France, glorying in its new-found freedoms, proud even of its crimes, stable on its own soil, extending all its frontiers, doubly armed with the executioner’s blade and the soldier’s sword.
In the midst of my family grief, several letters arrived from Hingant reassuring me as to his fate, letters moreover of a remarkable nature: he wrote to me in September 1795: ‘Your letter of the 23rd of August is full of the most moving sentiments. I have shown them to several people who had tears in their eyes while reading them. I am almost tempted to say of them as Diderot said on the day when Rousseau shed tears over him in his prison, at Vincennes: “See how my friends love me.” My illness has only proved, in truth, a nervous fever which caused a great deal of suffering, and for which time and patience are the best remedies. I have been reading extracts from Phaedo and Timaeus. Those books give one an appetite for death, and I have said like Cato:
“It must be so, Plato; thou reason’st well!”
I conceived an idea of
my voyage, as one conceives the idea of a voyage to the
London, April to September 1822.
Six miles from Beccles, in a little town called Bungay, lived an English clergyman, The Reverend Mr. Ives, a great Hellenist and mathematician. He had a wife, still young, and of charming appearance, mind, and manners, and an only daughter, aged fifteen. Introduced to this household, I was better received there than anywhere else. We drank in the old English fashion, and stayed at table for two hours after the ladies had withdrawn. Mr Ives, who had been to America, liked to recount his travels, hear the story of mine, and talk about Newton and Homer. His daughter, who had studied in order to please him, was an excellent musician and sang as Madame Pasta does today. She re-appeared at tea and charmed away the old minister’s infectious drowsiness. Leaning on the end of the piano, I listened to Miss Ives in silence.
The music being over, the young lady questioned me on France, and literature; she asked me to draw up a plan of study for her; she particularly wanted to know the Italian authors, and begged me to give her some notes on the Divine Comedy and the Gerusalemme Liberata. Little by little, I began to experience the shy charm of an affection born in the soul: I had decked out the Floridians, but I would not have dared to pick up Miss Ives’ glove; I felt embarrassed when I tried to translate a passage from Tasso. I was more comfortable with that more masculine and chaste genius Dante.
After a fall from my horse, I stayed for some time at Mr Ives’ house. It was winter; my life’s dreams began to flee in the face of reality. Miss Ives became more reserved; she ceased to bring me flowers; she preferred not to sing.
If I had been told that
I would spend the rest of my life, unknown, at the heart of this secluded
family, I would have died of joy: love only needs continuance to become at once
I looked forward with
dismay to the time when I would be obliged to leave. On the eve of the day set
for my departure, dinner was a gloomy affair. To my great astonishment, Mr Ives withdrew after dessert taking
his daughter with him, and I was left alone with Mrs Ives: she was in a state of extreme
embarrassment. I thought she intended to reproach me for an inclination she
might have discovered but which I had never spoken of. She looked at me,
lowered her eyes, and blushed; charming, as she was, in her confusion, there
was no point of feeling that she might not have claimed for herself. At last,
with an effort, overcoming the obstacle which prevented her speaking, she said
to me, in English; ‘Sir, you have seen my confusion: I do not know if Charlotte pleases you, but it is
impossible to deceive a mother; my daughter has certainly conceived an
attachment for you. Mr Ives and I have discussed the matter; you suit us in
every respect; we think you will make our daughter happy. You no longer possess
a country; you have just lost your relatives; your property has been auctioned;
who then could call you back to
Of all the painful things I have endured, this was the greatest and most deeply felt. I threw myself at Mrs Ives’ feet; I covered her hands with my kisses and tears. She thought I was weeping with happiness, and began to sob with joy. She stretched out her arm to pull the bell-rope; she called to her husband and daughter: ‘Stop!’ I cried; ‘I am married!’ She fell back in a swoon.
I went out, and without
returning to my room, I left on foot. I reached Beccles,
and took the mail-coach for
The sweetest, the most tender, and most grateful memory, of this event remain with me. Before I became known, Mr Ives’ family was the only one which took an interest in me, and welcomed me with real affection. Poor, obscure, proscribed, without looks or charm, I was offered a secure future, a country, a delightful wife to draw me out of my solitude, a mother almost her equal in beauty, to take the place of my aged mother, and a father, well-educated, loving and cultivating literature, to replace the father of whom Heaven had deprived me; what did I possess to compensate for all that? They could have had no illusions in choosing me: I could only consider myself loved. Since that time, I have only met with one attachment noble enough to inspire me with the same confidence. As for the interest of which I seemed to be the object later, I have never known whether or not external causes, the noise of fame, the prestige of party, the glamour of high literary or political status, were the cloak which attracted such eager attention to me.
For the rest, in
marrying Charlotte Ives, my role in the world would have altered: buried in a
county of England, I would have become a hunting gentleman: not a single line would have issued from my pen; I would
even have forgotten my own language, since I could write English, and the thoughts
in my head were starting to shape themselves in English. Would my country have
lost much by my disappearance? If I were to set aside what has been my
consolation, I would say I might have already reckoned on many peaceful days,
instead of the troubled days that have been my lot. The Empire, the
Restoration, divisions, the disputes within
London, April to September 1822.
Returning to London, I found no peace: I had fled from my fate like a malefactor from his crime. How painful it must have been to a family so worthy of homage, respect and gratitude, to experience a species of rejection by the unknown they had welcomed, to whom they had offered a new home with a naturalness, an absence of suspicion, or precaution, patriarchal in character! I imagined Charlotte’s grief, the deserved reproaches that they could and would heap upon me: since I had after all been ready to abandon myself to an inclination which I knew was unquestionably wrong. Had I made a confused attempt at seduction, without taking account of the blame that would accrue to my conduct? But whether by halting, as I did, in order to remain a man of integrity, or by ignoring all obstacles in order to satisfy a desire already condemned by my conduct, I could only succeed in plunging the object of that seduction into regret or sorrow.
I allowed my mind to turn from these bitter reflections to other thoughts no less filled with bitterness: I cursed my marriage, which, contracted according to the false perceptions of my then disturbed mind, had thrown me off course, and robbed me of happiness. I did not realise that because of the innate malaise from which I suffered and the romantic notions of liberty I nourished, marriage with Miss Ives would have been just as painful to me as a freer union.
One thing pure and delightful,
though profoundly sad, remained with me: the image of
‘O, God, be pleased to join together the spirits of these two married people, and fill their hearts with true friendship. Look favourably upon your servant. Make their yoke one of love and peace, so that they may enjoy a happy fecundity; Lord, let these married people see before them their children and their children’s children to the third and fourth generation, and let them reach a happy old age.’
Drifting from resolution
to resolution, I wrote
The places where I had
been, the hours and words I had shared with Charlotte, were engraved in my
memory: I saw the smile of the spouse who had been destined for me; I touched
her black tresses, respectfully; I pressed her beautiful arms to my breast like
a chain of lilies which I might have worn about my neck. I was no sooner in some
secluded spot, than
Deprived of Hingant’s company, my walks, more solitary
than ever, left me free to take with me
In
London, April to September 1822.
What had happened at Bungay after I left? What became of that family to which I brought joy and grief?
You will bear in mind
that I am now Ambassador to George IV,
and write in
Official business obliged me, a week ago, to interrupt the narrative I am resuming today. One afternoon between twelve and one, during this interval, my valet came to tell me that a carriage was at the door, and that an English lady asked to speak to me. As I had made it a rule, in my public role, never to refuse to see anyone, I asked that the lady be shown upstairs.
I was in my study; Lady Sutton was announced; I saw a
lady dressed in mourning enter, accompanied by two fine boys, also in mourning;
one might have been sixteen years old, the other fourteen. I went to meet the
stranger; she was so moved she could barely walk. She said to me in a faltering
voice: ‘My lord, do you remember me?’ Yes, I recognised Miss Ives! The years
which had passed over her head had left only their springtime behind. I took
her by the hand: I made her sit, and sat down by her side. I could not speak;
my eyes were filled with tears; I gazed at her in silence through those tears;
I felt, from what I was experiencing, how deeply I had loved her. At last, I was
able to say in turn: ‘And you Madame, do you recognise me?’ She raised her
eyes, which she had kept lowered, and for sole response, gave me a smiling but
melancholy glance like a long remembrance. Her hand was still between mine.
Shortly she continued:
‘My lord, I am now speaking to you in the language which I practised with you
at Bungay. I feel ashamed: forgive me. My children are the sons of Admiral Sutton, whom I married three
years after you left
I called on Lady Sutton
the following day, I found her alone. Then there commenced between us a series
of those questions begun with ‘Do you
remember?’ that bring back a whole lifetime. At each ‘Do you remember?’ we looked at one another; looking to find in each
other’s faces those traces of time which measure so cruelly the distance from
the moment of parting and the extent of the road travelled. I said to
‘Ah, Madame,’ I replied,
‘what memories you recall? What a reversal of destinies! You who received a
poor exile at your father’s hospitable table; you who did not scorn his
sufferings; you who thought, perhaps, of raising him to a glorious and
unhoped-for rank, it is you who now ask for his support in your own country! I
will see Mr Canning; your son, however much it pains me to call him by that
name, your son, shall go to
I hurried to see Mr
Canning and Lord Londonderry;
they created as many difficulties about a minor appointment as would have been
made in
On returning to the
Embassy, I closed my door, and opened the packet. It only contained some
trifling notes of mine and a plan of study, with comments on the English and
Italian poets. I had hoped to find a letter from
That is the story of
Miss Ives and I. As I bring it to an end, it seems to me I am losing
I should have regard for
the love I have just recalled, as the first of its kind to enter my heart; yet
it was not in tune with my stormy nature, which would have corrupted it, and
would have rendered me incapable of savouring those holy joys for long. It was then
that embittered by misfortune, already a pilgrim overseas, having begun my
solitary voyage, it was then that the wild ideas evoked in that mysterious tale
of René, obsessed me and made of me the most
tormented of beings on this earth. Be that as it may, the chaste image of
End of Book X