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PORTO FERRAJO, December 25, 181422
At eight o'clock in the evening yesterday I went to the Palace according to appointment to see Napoleon. After waiting some minutes in the ante-room I was introduced by Count Drouet and found him standing alone in a small room. He was drest in a green coat with a hat in his hand very much as he is painted, but excepting this resemblance of dress, I had a very mistaken idea of him from his portrait. He appears very short, which is partly owing to his being very fat, his hands and legs being quite swollen and unwieldy; this makes him appear awkward and not unlike the whole length figures of Gibbon, the historian. Besides this, instead of the bold marked countenance that I expected, he has fat cheeks and rather a turn-up nose, which, to bring in another historian, made the shape of his face resemble the portraits of Hume. He has a dusky grey eye, which would be called a vicious eye in a horse, and the shape of his mouth expresses contempt and derision--his manner is very good-natured, and seems studied to put one at one's ease by its familiarity; his smile and laugh are very agreeable--he asks a number of questions without object, and often repeats them, a habit he has no doubt acquired during fifteen years of supreme command--to this I should also attribute the ignorance he seems to show at times of the most common facts. When anything that he likes is said, he puts his head forward and listens with great pleasure, repeating what is said, but when he does not like what he hears, he looks away as if unconcerned and changes the Subject. From this one might conclude that he was open to flattery and violent in his temper.
He began asking me about my family, the allowance my father gave me, if I ran into debt, drank, played, etc.
He asked me if I had been in Spain, and if I was not imprisoned by the Inquisition. I told him that I had seen the abolition of the Inquisition voted, and of the injudicious manner in which it was done.
He mentioned Infantado, and said, "II n'a point de caractere." Ferdinand he said was in the hands of the priests--afterwards he said, "Italy is a fine country; Spain too is a fine country--Andalusia and Seville particularly."
F. R. Yes, but uncultivated.
N. Agriculture is neglected because the land is in the hands of the Church.
F. R. And of the Grandees.
N. Yes, who have privileges contrary to the public prosperity.
F. R. Yet it would be difficult to remedy the evil.
N. It might be remedied by dividing property and abolishing hurtful privileges, as was done in France.
F. R. Yes, but the people must be industrious--even if the land was given to the people in Spain, they would not make use of it.
N. Ils succomberaient.
F. R. Yes, Sire.
He asked many questions about the Cortes, and when I told him that many of them made good speeches on abstract questions, but that they failed when any practical debate on finance or war took place, he said, "Oui, faute de l'habitude de gouverner." He asked if I had been at Cadiz at the time of the siege, and said the French failed there.
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F. R. Cadiz must be very strong.
N. It is not Cadiz that is strong, it is the Isle of Leon--if we could have taken the Isle of Leon, we should have bombarded Cadiz, and we did partly, as it was.
F. R. Yet the Isle of Leon had been fortified with great care by General Graham.
N. Ha--it was he who fought a very brilliant action at Barrosa.
He wondered our officers should go into the Spanish and Portuguese service. I said our Government had sent them with a view of instructing their armies; he said that did well with the Portuguese, but the Spaniards would not submit to it. He was anxious to know if we supported South America, "for," he said, "you already are not well with the King of Spain."
Speaking of Lord Wellington, he said he had heard he was a large, strong man, grand chasseur, and asked if he liked Paris. I said I should think not, and mentioned Lord Wellington having said that he should find himself much at a loss what to do in peace time, and I thought scarcely liked anything but war.
N. La guerre est un grand jeu, une belle occupation.
He wondered the English should have sent him to Paris--"On n'aime pas l'homme par qui on a été battu. Je n'ai jamais envoyé a Vienne un homme qui a assisté à la prise de Vienne." He asked who was our Minister (Lord Burghersh) at Florence, and whether he was honnête homme, "for," he said, "you have two kinds of men in England, one of intrigans, the other of hommes très honnêtes."
Some time afterwards he said, "Dites moi franchement, votre Ministre à Florence est il un homme à se fier?"
He had seen something in the papers about sending him (Napoleon) to St. Helena, and he probably expected Lord Burghersh to kidnap him--he inquired also about his family and if it was one of consequence.
His great anxiety at present seems to be on the subject of France. He inquired if I had seen at Florence many Englishmen who came from there, and when I mentioned Lord Holland, he asked if he thought things went well with the Bourbons, and when I answered in the negative he seemed delighted, and asked if Lord Holland thought they would be able to stay there. I said I really could not give an answer. He said he had heard that the King of France had taken no notice of those Englishmen who had treated him well in England--particularly Lord Buckingham; he said that was very wrong, for it showed a want of gratitude. I told him I supposed the Bourbons were afraid to be thought to depend upon the English. "No," he said, "the English in general are very well received." He asked sneeringly if the Army was much attached to the Bourbons.
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Talking of the Congress, he said, "There will be no war; the Powers will disagree, but they will not go to war"--he said the Austrians, he heard, were already much disliked in Italy and even at Florence.
F. R. It is very odd, the Austrian government is hated wherever it has been established.
N. It is because they do everything with the baton--the Italians all hate to be given over to them.
F. R. But the Italians will never do anything for themselves--they are not united.
N. True.
Besides this he talked about the robbers between Rome and Florence, and when I said they had increased, he said, "Oh! to be sure; I always had them taken by the gendarmerie."
F. R. It is very odd that in England, where we execute so many, we do not prevent crimes.
N. It is because you have not a gendarmerie.
He inquired very particularly about the forms of the Viceregal Court in Ireland, the Dames d'honneur, pages, etc.; in some things he was strangely ignorant, as, for instance, asking if my father was a peer of Parliament.
He asked many questions three times over.
He spoke of the Regent's conduct to the Princess as very impolitic, as it shocked the bienséances, by which his father had become so popular.
He said our war with America was a guerre de vengeance, for that the frontier could not possibly be of any importance.
He said, "You English ought to be very well satisfied with the end of the war."
F. R. Yes, but we were nearly ruined in the course of it.
N. Ha! le système continental, ha--and then he laughed very much.
He asked who was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland at present, but made no remark on my answer.
I asked him if he understood English; he said that at Paris he had had plenty of interpreters, but that he now began to read it a little.
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Many English went to Elba about this time; the substance of their conversations is still in my recollection--April 2, 1815. He said that he considered the great superiority of England to France lay in her aristocracy, that the people were not better, but that the Parliament was composed of all the men of property and all the men of family in the country; this enabled the Government to resist the shock which the failure of the Duke of York's expedition was liable to cause--in France it would have destroyed the Government. (This is an opinion rather tinged by the Revolution, but it is true that our House of Commons looks to final results.) They were strong, he said, by "les souvenirs attachants à l'histoire"; that on the contrary he could make eighty senates in France as good as the present; that he had intended to create a nobility by marrying his generals, whom he accounted as quite insignificant, notwithstanding the titles he had given them, to the offspring of the old nobility of France. He had reserved a fund from the contribution which he levied when he made treaties with Austria, Prussia, etc., in order to found these new families. "Did you get anything from Russia?"
N. No, I never asked anything from her but to shut her ports against England.
He wished, he said, to favour the re-establishment of the old families, but every time he touched that chord an alarm was raised, and the people trembled as a horse does when he is checked.
He told the story of the poisoning, and said there was some truth in it--he had wished to give opium to two soldiers who had got the plague and could not be carried away, rather than leave them to be murdered by the Turks, but the physician would not consent. He said that after talking the subject over very often he had changed his mind on the morality of the measure. He owned to shooting the Turks, and said they had broken their capitulation. He found great fault with the French Admiral who fought the battle of the Nile, and pointed out what he ought to have done, but he found most fault with the Admiral who fought--R. Calder--for not disabling his fleet, and said that if he could have got the Channel clear then, or at any other time, he would have invaded England.
He said the Emperor of Russia was clever and had "idées libérales," but was a veritable Grec. At Tilsit, the Emperor of Russia, King of Prussia, and N. used to dine together. They separated early--the King of Prussia went to bed, and the two Emperors met at each other's quarters and talked, often on abstract subjects, till late in the night. The King of Prussia a mere corporal, and the Emperor of Austria very prejudiced--"d'ailleurs honnête homme."
Berthier quite a pen-and-ink man--but "bon diable qui servit le premier, à me témoigner ses regrets, les larmes aux yeux."
Metternich a man of the world, "courtisan des femmes," but too false to be a good statesman-"car en politique il ne faut pas étre trop menteur."
It was his maxim not to displace his Marshals, which he had carried to a fault in the case of Marmont, who lost his cannon by treachery, he believed--I forget where. The Army liked him, he had rewarded them well.
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Talleyrand had been guilty of such extortion in the peace with Austria and with Bavaria that he was complained against by those Powers and therefore removed--it was he who advised the war with Spain, and prevented N. from seeing the Duke d'Enghien, whom he thought a "brave jeune homme," and wished to see.
He said he had been fairly tried by a military tribunal, and the sentence put up in every town in France, according to law.
Spain ought to have been conquered, and he should have gone there himself had not the war with Russia occurred.
Lord Lauderdale was an English peer, but not of "la plus belle race." England will repent of bringing the Russians so far: they will deprive her of India.
If Mr. Fox had lived, he thought he should have made peace--praised the noble way in which the negotiation was begun by him.
The Archduke Charles he did not think a man of great abilities. "Tout ce que j'ai publié sur les finances est de l'Evangile," he said--he allowed no gaspillage and had an excellent treasurer; owing to this he saved large sums out of his civil list.
The conscription produced 300,000 men yearly.
He thought us wrong in taking Belgium from France--he said it was now considered as so intimately united that the loss was very mortifying. Perhaps it would have been better, he said, to divide France--he considered one great advantage to consist as I--(End of Journal.)
В течение сессии 1813 года лорд Джон был избран от фамильного боро Тависток. Однако он был вынужден, главным образом по причине слабого здоровья, отойти от активной деятельности по прошествии трех лет, в течение которых он произнес выдающуюся речь против приостановления действия Закона о неприкосновенности личности (Habeas Corpus Act). Должно быть, примерно в это время он подумывал о том, чтобы оставить политику и посвятить себя литературе, что вызвало следующую «Ремонстрацию» от его друга Томаса Мура:
РЕМОНСТРАЦИЯ
(After a conversation with Lord John Russell in which he had intimated some idea of giving up all political pursuits.)
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What! thou, with thy genius, thy youth, and thy name--
Thou, born of a Russell--whose instinct to run
The accustomed career of thy sires, is the same
As the eaglet's to soar with his eyes on the sun.
Whose nobility comes to thee, stamped with a seal,
Far, far more ennobling than monarch e'er set,
With the blood of thy race, offered up for the weal
Of a nation that swears by that martyrdom yet I
Shalt thou be faint-hearted and turn from the strife,
From the mighty arena, where all that is grand,
And devoted and pure, and adorning in life,
'Tis for high-thoughted spirits like thine to command?
Oh no, never dream it--while good men despair
Between tyrants and traitors, and timid men bow,
Never think, for an instant, thy country can spare
Such a light from her darkening horizon as thou.
With a spirit as meek as the gentlest of those
Who in life's sunny valley lie sheltered and warm;
Yet bold and heroic as ever yet rose
To the top cliffs of Fortune and breasted her storm;
With an ardour for liberty, fresh as in youth
It first kindles the bard and gives life to his lyre,
Yet mellowed even now by that mildness of truth
Which tempers, but chills not, the patriot fire;
With an eloquence--not like those rills from a height,
Which sparkle and foam, and in vapour are o'er;
But a current that works out its way into light
Through the filtering recesses of thought and of lore.
Thus gifted, thou never canst sleep in the shade;
If the stirrings of Genius, the music of fame,
And the charms of thy cause have not power to persuade,
Yet think how to Freedom thou'rt pledged by thy Name.
Like the boughs of that laurel, by Delphi's decree,
Set apart for the Fane and its service divine,
So the branches that spring from the old Russell tree,
Are by Liberty claimed for the use of her shrine.
THOMAS MOORE.
Несмотря на сильные литературные склонности, расставание с бурными сценами парламентской жизни стало бы для лорда Джона тяжелым потрясением, и его чувства по этому поводу можно понять из письма, написанного брату в 1841 году:
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Lord John Russell to the Duke of Bedford
ENDSLEIGH, October 13, 1841
Whatever may be said about other families, I do not think ours ought to retire from active exertion. In all times of popular movement the Russells have been on the "forward" side. At the Reformation the first Earl of Bedford, in Charles the First's days Francis the great Earl, in Charles the Second's William, Lord Russell, in later times Francis Duke of Bedford--my father--you--and lastly myself in the Reform Bill.
На всеобщих выборах 1818 года лорд Джон снова был избран от Тавистока и начал делать продвижение парламентской реформы своей главной целью. В 1820 году он стал членом парламента от Хантингдоншира. С тех пор, всякий раз, когда вопрос о реформе поднимался в Палате, лорд Джон признавался ее самым видным сторонником. Еще в 1822 году он внес предложение о том, что «нынешнее состояние народного представительства в парламенте требует самого серьезного рассмотрения Палаты». В 1828 году ему удалось добиться отмены Актов о присяге и корпорациях. Он также был страстным сторонником Билля об эмансипации католиков. Таким образом, в религиозных, образовательных и парламентских вопросах он твердо отстаивал свободу. Когда лорд Грей сменил герцога Веллингтона, лорд Джон принял самое активное участие в составлении знаменитого законопроекта о реформе, и билль 1831 года был внесен им; после этой речи он стал самым популярным человеком в Англии. Потерпев поражение в комитете, партия реформ обратилась к стране и вернулась с большим большинством. 24 июня 1831 года он внес законопроект во второй раз.
Этот законопроект, будучи принят в Палате общин, был отвергнут Палатой лордов, и лишь в июне 1832 года великий Билль о реформе (третий, внесенный за двенадцать месяцев) стал законом страны. Лорд Джон, который вошел в кабинет министров в 1831 году во время правительства лорда Грея, стал министром внутренних дел в правительстве лорда Мельбурна в 1835 году, а в 1839 году был назначен министром колоний, каковую должность он занимал во время своего второго брака. До сих пор мы следовали за его карьерой издалека, но отныне благодаря письмам и дневникам его жены мы сможем проследить ее гораздо ближе до самого конца.
ГЛАВА IV
1841-45
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Лорд и леди Джон Расселл оставались в Боухилле до 31 июля. По пути обратно в Минто их жчал грандиозный прием в Селкирке — процессия во главе со всеми магистратами, музыкальным оркестром и развевающимися знаменами. Лорду Джону было присвоено звание почетного гражданина бурга, и жители встретили его с энтузиазмом. После короткого визита в Минто они отправились в Лондон, в его дом на Уилтон-Кресент.
BOWHILL, July 29, 1841
I hardly know how to begin my journal again. I wrote the last page as Fanny Elliot; I am now Fanny Russell.... Forgive me, Almighty Father, for the manifold sins, errors, and omissions of my past life, [a life] to which I look back with deep gratitude for its countless blessings, especially for the affection of those with whom I spent it, so far beyond what I deserved. Enable me to think calmly of the Mother whom I have left.... I was, and still am, in a dream; but one from which I hope never to wake, which I trust will only grow sweeter as the bitter days of parting wear away, as I become more and more the companion and friend of him whose heart is mine as truly as mine is his, and in whom I see all the strength and goodness that my weak and erring nature so much requires.