The Age of Elegance (15 page)

They left behind the bones of their companions and the memory of their victories, of their invincible endurance in adversity and their magnanimity and good conduct in triumph. When the time came for them to sail, the host of one subaltern—a worthy Bordeaux merchant—took his bronzed, youthful lodger aside and, with tears in his eyes, offered to lend him any money he might need, adding that he had every confidence in the word of an Englishman, and expressing a desire that their two countries might henceforward live together in peace. Then he accompanied him to the ship, kissed him on both cheeks and parted from him for ever.
¹

¹
Bell, I, 185-7.

CHAPTER
FIVE

Triumphant Island

"
For States, as for individuals, true prosperity consists, not in acquiring or invading the domains of others, but in making the best of one's own."

Talleyrand

Part
I

The Court of Prince Florizel

"
The papers have told you, no doubt, of the fusses, The fetes and the gapings to get at those Russes, Of his Majesty's suite up from coachman to Hetman And what dignity decks the fat face of the great man."

Byron

O

N
June 6th,
1814,
six weeks after the last shot was fired, the Czar Alexander and his ally, the King of Prussia, arrived at Boulogne. They were accompanied by the ruling princes, statesmen and generals of the greater part of Europe. Among them were the Chancellor of the Austrian Empire, Prince Metternich, the hero of the hour, Field Marshal von
Blücher
, the snowy-haired Chancellor of Prussia, Prince Hardenberg, and his colleague, the famous scholar, von Humboldt, the still more famous Hetman Platoff of the Don Cossacks, the young royal princes of Prussia—boys in years but veterans in battle
¹
—and the rulers or heirs of half a dozen German kingdoms and principalities. They were bound for England—the heart of the coalition which had overthrown the revolutionary dictatorship of Europe. It was a spontaneous act of homage to the nation which, in De Quincey's words, had for twenty years "put a soul into the resistance to Napoleon, wherever and in whatever corner manifested,
^,,
to "the moral grandeur which had yielded nothing to fear, no tiling to despondency," and the resources which had enabled her to support the united exertions of Christendom.
²

¹
One of whom, more than half a century later, was to be proclaimed German Emperor at Versailles.

2
De Quincey, III, 62-3.

Before the travellers lay the sea and the harbour where ten years earlier Napoleon had tried to embark his army for the expedition which was to have completed his conquest of the world. Now the barges he had built were mouldering at their moorings, the harbour-works silted up with sand, and he himself, caged in the little Mediterranean island of Elba, a poor pensioner of those he had once controlled. Close to the harbour lay one of the floating castles with which England's sailors, from their remote haunts of waves and clouds, had halted his armies. Even in that far, dark hour her admirals had predicted that one day the power they wielded would free the world from slavery.

At midday the sovereigns were received on board H.M.S.
Impregnable
by the King of England's sailor son, the Duke of Clarence. Around him were the symbols of his country's strength: the masts and yards with their forest of ropes, the scrubbed decks and spotless brass work, the triple lines of guns, the smart, self-assured officers and gaunt, taut-buttocked tars in blue jackets, checked shirts and bell-bottomed trousers, moving so resiliently that they seemed, like the escorting frigates, part of the sea itself. The piping of whistles, the trampling of feet, the clanking and creaking of pulleys, the hammering of the waves and the smell of tar and brine were new to the lords of the Continent. So was the ship's uneasy motion.

At six o'clock on the same evening, after waiting for two hours for the tide under the white cliffs, the kings and captains went ashore among the bathing boxes, piers and marine terraces of Dover. Crowds thronged the beaches, and the Scots Greys and three of the most famous regiments in the British Army—the 43rd, 52nd and 95th —were waiting on the quayside. The little tough light-infantrymen, who had fought the French out of every stony acre from the Tagus to the Garonne, saw walking swiftly down their ranks a tall, moonfaced potentate in a short-skirted, bottle-green uniform, a high gold collar, and a tunic so padded and laced that his arms hung down like a doll's beneath his gilded epaulettes. Behind, at a respectful distance, came the King of Prussia—a gaunt, melancholy, wall-eyed man, with high cheekbones and closely-cropped hair, wearing top-boots and white pantaloons. He, too, had a surprisingly short waist and showed, in an uncompromising, soldier-like way, a good deal of bottom. After them came the Prussian princes—fine erect lads with blond hair and rosy faces—and a clinking cavalcade of generals with whiskers, epaulettes, spurs and feathered hats.

Next morning they set out for the capital. As their carriages bowled along the fine metalled highways, they were able to see something of England's wealth with their own eyes: the emerald downs with their immense flocks of sheep, the fat meadows and cattle, the yeoman farms and orchards; the weather-boarded cottages smothered in flowers; the painted hay-wains with straked wheels and tilted bows; the country houses with classical facades and cool, creeper-framed windows set among lawns and trees. In this thriving countryside, with its corn-mills and hop-yards, ancient barns and churches, neat hedgerows and chestnut coppices merging into blue horizons, everything seemed cared for down to the minutest blade of grass. To the Czar, fresh from scenes of destruction, it all looked like a garden.
¹

Five hours after leaving Dover the travellers reached the outskirts of London. They saw from the top of Shooter's Hill a canopy of vapour on the eastern horizon, and then, as the low-slung landaus, with their varnished, panelled sides, sped across Blackheath, the stately hospital of Greenwich rising among woods, the windmills and straggling hedgerows of the Isle of Dogs, and, winding in and out of trees, a river of masts. And beyond, under the green hills of Highgate and Hampstead,

"a mighty mass of brick and smoke . . . A wilderness of steeples peeping On tiptoe through their sea-green canopy; A huge, dun cupola, like a foolscap crown On a fool's head—and there is London Town!"

The people of the capital were wildly excited. They had been waiting for this for twenty years. There was nothing narrow or ungenerous in their rejoicing. For having fought so long to save their own liberties, they had been thrilled when the princes and peoples of the Continent had taken up arms by their side. They had forgotten all that had gone before: the defeats, the betrayals, the abuse, the collaboration with the foe. "The Emperor of Russia," wrote an

¹
Colchester, II, 502. For some contemporary accounts of the dazzling appearance of rural

g

rosperity which England presented to foreign visitors, see Bury, I, 242; Lord Coleridge, 223-4;
S
imond, I, 3.10, 14,16,146-7, 201-2, 206; II, 86, 100, 224,228, 235, 246, 254, 283; Leigh Hunt,
Autobiography,
II, 154: Bamford, I, 94; Lady Shelley, I, 1-3; Washington Irving,
Sketch Book; Don Juan,
Canto X; W
ansey, 115
.

English lady, "is my hero, and everybody's hero!" Since the retreat from Moscow she and her compatriots had lost all sense of proportion about the northern heroes who had chased their enemies across Europe. The first Cossack to appear in London had been followed by cheering thousands and given three-times-three by the Lord Mayor on the steps of the Royal Exchange. The almost hysterical enthusiasm with which everything that had happened was now attributed to Russia caused the Czar's sister, who was not given to understating Russian achievements, to reply impetuously: "Oh, no! the emancipation of Europe is owing to the steady and persevering conduct of this great and happy country! To this country Europe owes its deliverance!"
¹

And now the greatest Russian of all, the noble magnanimous Czar, was coming to London. Since dawn the streets had been filled with a great multitude, pouring into the south-eastern suburbs. The Prince Regent's gold and scarlet postilions, sent to meet the sovereigns, were submerged in the tumult. No one wanted them, anyway, for the word had gone round that the carriages were to be unhorsed and dragged in triumph over London Bridge. The route to St. James's Palace was lined with coaches and carts, wooden stands had been erected at the street corners, and the windows were black with heads. Every vehicle approaching from Kent was set upon by a joyous, perspiring mob. The noise, the sweat, the honest stink were earnest of a free-born people's welcome.

Having been warned of the unpoliced state of the British capital and of the populace's excitement, the sovereigns scattered. The Czar, sitting back in his ambassador's carriage, left the highway for the Surrey lanes to the south, travelling through a landscape of buttercup meadows, dingly heaths and wooded hills from whose slopes, dotted with gentlemen's villas, the dome and steeples of the city could be occasionally glimpsed. Shortly after one o'clock, after passing the villages of Camberwell and Clapham, he crossed the pastoral Thames by Battersea's wooden toll-bridge. He saw the trees of Chelsea Hospital, the high-sailed barges skimming the rushes, the winding, well-wooded shores. The market-gardeners were at work

¹
Farington, VII, 253. See also Ashton, I, 155-9;
Lieven Letters,
2; Havelock, 230, 233, 267; Lockhart, III, 428.

in the fields as he drove through rustic Sloane Street and the little elm-shaded, white-brick suburb of Hans Town. Skirting the grounds of Hans Place, he reached the western highway into London at the Cannon Brewery, Knightsbridge. So, having outflanked the British capital, the Emperor entered it by the turnpike at Hyde Park Corner and, unannounced and unexpected, arrived in front of the stone pillars and bow windows of the Pulteney Hotel which the Grand Duchess, his sister, had rented for her stay. A young man named De Quincey, who happened to be walking down Piccadilly at the time, saw a plain carriage dash up to the hotel steps, and a file of waiters rush out to form a line across the pavement, before a smiling foreigner ran into the hotel, kissing his hand to a lady at a first-floor window.

A moment later the Czar was in his sister's arms. Between this fair-haired, vivacious widow of twenty-six and her impulsive, lonely and secretly unstable brother there was a deep bond. Having lost her husband, Prince George of Oldenburg, during the Moscow campaign, the Grand Duchess had come to England to cement the Anglo-Russian alliance by a second marriage. But though impressed by Britain's material achievements—particularly the steam-engine— she had not taken to its reigning house. The Dukes of Clarence and Sussex had struck her as uncultivated boors, while for their brother, reputed to be the first gentleman in Europe, she had conceived an almost passionate dislike. "Handsome as he is," she had told the Czar, "he is a man visibly used up by dissipation. His much-boasted affability is the most licentious, I may even say obscene, strain I ever listened to."
¹
Finding her impervious to his charms, he had not even troubled to flatter her.

The Grand Duchess found that many shared her dislike of the Regent. The English Whigs had never forgiven him for keeping his father's Ministers in office. Discredited during the war by their defeatism, they were now seeking an opportunity for revenge. Nineteen years before, in order to get his debts paid, the object of their hatred, then their ally, had espoused the daughter of the Duke of Brunswick who had failed at Valmy and fallen at Jena. It had been the most unhappy act in his life and deservedly so, for he had long been secretly and morganatically married to a woman who loved

¹
"With him and his brothers, I have often had not only to get stiffly on my stiffs, but not to know what to do with my eyes and ears. A brazen way of looking where eyes should not gol" Havelock, 22.

him and to whom he afterwards returned. His Princess had retaliated by allowing herself freedoms which, though less heinous than his, had brought her under suspicion of high treason. Her habit of sitting up all night in the company of embarrassed sea-captains, her flippant, rattling and indelicate conversation,
¹
and her ostentatious parade of an adopted docker's child whom she called Willikin, had caused a public scandal. Among those suspected, though probably wrongly, of being her lovers were the defender of Acre, Sir Sidney Smith, the painter Lawrence, one of her own footmen, and the Tory statesman, Canning. In the year after Trafalgar the Whig Government of Fox and Grenville had been compelled by an alarmed royal family to institute an investigation into her conduct. Its findings, opposed by the Tories more out of party feeling than conviction, had exonerated her from the graver charges but stressed her persistent indecorum. Thereafter she had been banished from royal society.

The political wheel had now come full circle. King George III was mad and under restraint, the Princess's husband was Regent, and his erstwhile friends, the Whigs, had been jilted in favour of the Tories. It had now fallen to the latter as his Ministers to disapprove the Princess of Wales' doings and to support, as best they could, her husband's. It had become the function of the Whigs to champion the Princess. The Allied sovereigns' visit gave them their opportunity. For when this stout, grievously-wronged and outrageous lady announced in her comical English her intention of attending the next Drawing-Room to meet the Prussian King in whose service her father had died, she was informed by the prim, tyrannical old Queen, her mother-in-law, that she could not be received. Thereupon jubilant Whig gentlemen rose in the House to ask Ministers by whose advice the Princess of Wales was denied her constitutional right of attending the royal Drawing-Room. For the first time for years they had the public on their side. Though the Princess's indiscretions were notorious, everyone knew they had been caused by her husband's: that he had sent his mistress to receive her on her first landing, that he had spent his wedding night drunk in the fender, that he had left her as soon as her child was born. Her guilt had never been proved, his own was flagrant, and it seemed outrageous

¹
"And when I did look round at them I said to myself,
*A
quoi ban
this dull assemblage of tiresome persons.'...
Mein Gott!
dat is de dullest person Gott Almighty ever did born!" Bury, II, 298; I, 158.

that he should insult her. For weeks he had been unable to pass through the streets without being hooted and pelted.

All this the Czar learnt from his sister as he looked out across Piccadilly on the Green Park's browsing deer and cattle, the white-stuccoed Ranger's Lodge among the trees, and the red-brick facade of Buckingham House framed by the Abbey towers and Surrey hills. Sooner than share his host's unpopularity he resolved, on the impulse of the moment, not to proceed to the State apartments prepared for him in St. James's Palace but to stay at his sister's hotel. The fact that the Lord Chamberlain, two bands, and half the great Officers of State had been waiting since dawn to receive him did not cause him a moment's concern; he was an eastern autocrat, and in Russia things were done that way. Nor did it worry him or his sister that the Regent would be placed in a position of acute embarrassment; it was what the Grand Duchess wanted. The Pulteney being outside the private reserve of his parks and palaces, he would now have to face the howls of the populace in the streets. Already a vast cheering crowd had gathered outside the hotel and was growing larger every minute. At the end of three hours the ruler of England was forced to admit his inability to wait on his guest.

Thus it came about that at the moment to which the Prince Regent had been so eagerly looking forward, he was confronted with the hideous contrast between his own unpopularity and the people's adulation of another. Instead of receiving Alexander as a fellow-conqueror, he appeared as one afraid to show himself in his own streets. This was the more galling because, never having been allowed to lead his country's armies, he was particularly sensitive on the subject of military glory. He greeted the Czar, not with his wonted ease and affability, but in his stiffest, haughtiest vein. The latter could scarcely conceal his contempt. "A poor prince," he remarked to his ambassador as he left the Palace.
¹

Having recovered from their morning's disappointment, which they attributed to the Regent's dislike of being hissed, the crowds were by now mobbing the other potentates as they straggled into the capital. The greatest reception of all was for
Blücher
. As the old

¹
On which Count Lieven, who had been contending for some weeks with a similar attitude in the Grand Duchess, murmured "who has helped your Imperial Majesty to wage a glorious war and a peace to match." Havelock, 277.