Fitzherbert
had
previously lived there.
previously lived there.
Orr - Famous Affinities of History, Romacen of Devotion
There is no earthly reason for believing this, except that
Burr sometimes stopped overnight at the tavern in Kinderhook which was
kept by Van Buren's putative father, and that Van Buren in later life
showed an astuteness equal to that of Aaron Burr himself, so that he was
called by his opponents "the fox of Kinderhook. " But, as Van Buren was
born in December of the same year (1782) in which Burr was married to
Theodosia Prevost, the story is utterly improbable when we remember,
as we must, the ardent affection which Burr showed his wife, not only
before their marriage, but afterward until her death.
Putting aside these purely spurious instances, as well as others cited
by Mr. Parton, the fact remains that Aaron Burr, like Daniel Webster,
found a great attraction in the society of women; that he could please
them and fascinate them to an extraordinary degree; and that during
his later life he must be held quite culpable in this respect. His
love-making was ardent and rapid, as we shall afterward see in the case
of his second marriage.
Many other stories are told of him. For instance, it is said that he
once took a stage-coach from Jersey City to Philadelphia. The only other
occupant was a woman of high standing and one whose family deeply hated
Aaron Burr. Nevertheless, so the story goes, before they had reached
Newark she was absolutely swayed by his charm of manner; and when the
coach made its last stop before Philadelphia she voluntarily became his
mistress.
It must also be said that, unlike those of Webster and Hamilton, his
intrigues were never carried on with women of the lower sort. This may
be held by some to deepen the charge against him; but more truly does it
exonerate him, since it really means that in many cases these women
of the world threw themselves at him and sought him as a lover, when
otherwise he might never have thought of them.
That he was not heartless and indifferent to those who had loved him
may be shown by the great care which he took to protect their names and
reputations. Thus, on the day before his duel with Hamilton, he made a
will in which he constituted his son-in-law as his executor. At the same
time he wrote a sealed letter to Governor Allston in which he said:
If you can pardon and indulge a folly, I would suggest that Mme. ----,
too well known under the name of Leonora, has claims on my recollection.
She is now with her husband at Santiago, in Cuba.
Another fact has been turned to his discredit. From many women, in the
course of his long life, he had received a great quantity of letters
written by aristocratic hands on scented paper, and these letters he had
never burned. Here again, perhaps, was shown the vanity of the man
who loved love for its own sake. He kept all these papers in a huge
iron-clamped chest, and he instructed Theodosia in case he should die to
burn every letter which might injure any one.
After Theodosia's death Burr gave the same instructions to Matthew L.
Davis, who did, indeed, burn them, though he made their existence a
means of blackening the character of Burr. He should have destroyed them
unopened, and should never have mentioned them in his memoirs of the man
who trusted him as a friend.
Such was Aaron Burr throughout a life which lasted for eighty years. His
last romance, at the age of seventy-eight, is worth narrating because it
has often been misunderstood.
Mme. Jumel was a Rhode Island girl who at seventeen years of age eloped
with an English officer, Colonel Peter Croix. Her first husband
died while she was still quite young, and she then married a French
wine-merchant, Stephen Jumel, some twenty years her senior, but a man of
much vigor and intelligence. M. Jumel made a considerable fortune in New
York, owning a small merchant fleet; and after Napoleon's downfall he
and his wife went to Paris, where she made a great impression in the
salons by her vivacity and wit and by her lavish expenditures.
Losing, however, part of what she and her husband possessed, Mme. Jumel
returned to New York, bringing with her a great amount of furniture and
paintings, with which she decorated the historic house still standing
in the upper part of Manhattan Island--a mansion held by her in her own
right. She managed her estate with much ability; and in 1828 M. Jumel
returned to live with her in what was in those days a splendid villa.
Four years later, however, M. Jumel suffered an accident from which he
died in a few days, leaving his wife still an attractive woman and not
very much past her prime. Soon after she had occasion to seek for legal
advice, and for this purpose visited the law-office of Aaron Burr.
She had known him a good many years before; and, though he was now
seventy-eight years of age, there was no perceptible change in him. He
was still courtly in manner, tactful, and deferential, while physically
he was straight, active, and vigorous.
A little later she invited him to a formal banquet, where he displayed
all his charms and shone to great advantage. When he was about to lead
her in to dinner, he said:
"I give my hand, madam; my heart has long been yours. "
These attentions he followed up with several other visits, and
finally proposed that she should marry him. Much fluttered and no less
flattered, she uttered a sort of "No" which was not likely to discourage
a man like Aaron Burr.
"I shall come to you before very long," he said, "accompanied by a
clergyman; and then you will give me your hand because I want it. "
This rapid sort of wooing was pleasantly embarrassing. The lady rather
liked it; and so, on an afternoon when the sun was shining and the
leaves were rustling in the breeze, Burr drove up to Mme. Jumel's
mansion accompanied by Dr. Bogart--the very clergyman who had married
him to his first wife fifty years before.
Mme. Jumel was now seriously disturbed, but her refusal was not a strong
one. There were reasons why she should accept the offer. The great
house was lonely. The management of her estate required a man's advice.
Moreover, she was under the spell of Burr's fascination. Therefore she
arrayed herself in one of her most magnificent Paris gowns; the members
of her household and eight servants were called in and the ceremony
was duly performed by Dr. Bogart. A banquet followed. A dozen cobwebbed
bottles of wine were brought up from the cellar, and the marriage feast
went on merrily until after midnight.
This marriage was a singular one from many points of view. It was
strange that a man of seventy-eight should take by storm the affections
of a woman so much younger than he--a woman of wealth and knowledge of
the world. In the second place, it is odd that there was still another
woman--a mere girl--who was so infatuated with Burr that when she was
told of his marriage it nearly broke her heart. Finally, in the early
part of that same year he had been accused of being the father of a
new-born child, and in spite of his age every one believed the charge to
be true. Here is a case that it would be hard to parallel.
The happiness of the newly married pair did not, however, last very
long. They made a wedding journey into Connecticut, of which state
Burr's nephew was then Governor, and there Burr saw a monster bridge
over the Connecticut River, in which his wife had shares, though they
brought her little income. He suggested that she should transfer the
investment, which, after all, was not a very large one, and place it in
a venture in Texas which looked promising. The speculation turned out to
be a loss, however, and this made Mrs. Burr extremely angry, the more
so as she had reason to think that her ever-youthful husband had been
engaged in flirting with the country girls near the Jumel mansion.
She was a woman of high spirit and had at times a violent temper. One
day the post-master at what was then the village of Harlem was surprised
to see Mrs. Burr drive up before the post-office in an open carriage.
He came out to ask what she desired, and was surprised to find her in a
violent temper and with an enormous horse-pistol on each cushion at her
side.
"What do you wish, madam? " said he, rather mildly.
"What do I wish? " she cried. "Let me get at that villain Aaron Burr! "
Presently Burr seems to have succeeded in pacifying her; but in the end
they separated, though she afterward always spoke most kindly of him.
When he died, only about a year later, she is said to have burst into
a flood of tears--another tribute to the fascination which Aaron Burr
exercised through all his checkered life.
It is difficult to come to any fixed opinion regarding the moral
character of Aaron Burr. As a soldier he was brave to the point of
recklessness. As a political leader he was almost the equal of Jefferson
and quite superior to Hamilton. As a man of the world he was highly
accomplished, polished in manner, charming in conversation. He made
friends easily, and he forgave his enemies with a broadmindedness that
is unusual.
On the other hand, in his political career there was a touch of
insincerity, and it can scarcely be denied that he used his charm too
often to the injury of those women who could not resist his insinuating
ways and the caressing notes of his rich voice. But as a husband, in his
youth, he was devoted, affectionate, and loyal; while as a father he was
little less than worshiped by the daughter whom he reared so carefully.
One of his biographers very truly says that no such wretch as Burr has
been declared to be could have won and held the love of such a wife and
such a daughter as Burr had.
When all the other witnesses have been heard, let the two Theodosias
be summoned, and especially that daughter who showed toward him an
affectionate veneration unsurpassed by any recorded in history or
romance. Such an advocate as Theodosia the younger must avail in some
degree, even though the culprit were brought before the bar of Heaven
itself.
GEORGE IV. AND MRS. FITZHERBERT
In the last decade of the eighteenth century England was perhaps the
most brilliant nation of the world. Other countries had been humbled
by the splendid armies of France and were destined to be still further
humbled by the emperor who came from Corsica. France had begun to
seize the scepter of power; yet to this picture there was another
side--fearful want and grievous poverty and the horrors of the
Revolution. Russia was too far away, and was still considered too
barbarous, for a brilliant court to flourish there. Prussia had the
prestige that Frederick the Great won for her, but she was still a
comparatively small state. Italy was in a condition of political chaos;
the banks of the Rhine were running blood where the Austrian armies
faced the gallant Frenchmen under the leadership of Moreau. But England,
in spite of the loss of her American colonies, was rich and prosperous,
and her invincible fleets were extending her empire over the seven seas.
At no time in modern England has the court at London seen so much real
splendor or such fine manners. The royalist emigres who fled from France
brought with them names and pedigrees that were older than the Crusades,
and many of them were received with the frankest, freest English
hospitality. If here and there some marquis or baron of ancient blood
was perforce content to teach music to the daughters of tradesmen in
suburban schools, nevertheless they were better off than they had
been in France, harried by the savage gaze-hounds of the guillotine.
Afterward, in the days of the Restoration, when they came back to
their estates, they had probably learned more than one lesson from the
bouledogues of Merry England, who had little tact, perhaps, but who were
at any rate kindly and willing to share their goods with pinched and
poverty-stricken foreigners.
The court, then, as has been said, was brilliant with notables from
Continental countries, and with the historic wealth of the peerage of
England. Only one cloud overspread it; and that was the mental condition
of the king. We have become accustomed to think of George III as a dull
creature, almost always hovering on the verge of that insanity which
finally swept him into a dark obscurity; but Thackeray's picture of him
is absurdly untrue to the actual facts. George III. was by no means a
dullard, nor was he a sort of beefy country squire who roved about the
palace gardens with his unattractive spouse.
Obstinate enough he was, and ready for a combat with the rulers of the
Continent or with his self-willed sons; but he was a man of brains and
power, and Lord Rosebery has rightly described him as the most striking
constitutional figure of his time. Had he retained his reason, and
had his erratic and self-seeking son not succeeded him during his own
lifetime, Great Britain might very possibly have entered upon other ways
than those which opened to her after the downfall of Napoleon.
The real center of fashionable England, however, was not George III. ,
but rather his son, subsequently George IV. , who was made Prince of
Wales three days after his birth, and who became prince regent during
the insanity of the king. He was the leader of the social world, the
fit companion of Beau Brummel and of a choice circle of rakes and
fox-hunters who drank pottle-deep. Some called him "the first gentleman
of Europe. " Others, who knew him better, described him as one who
never kept his word to man or woman and who lacked the most elementary
virtues.
Yet it was his good luck during the first years of his regency to be
popular as few English kings have ever been. To his people he typified
old England against revolutionary France; and his youth and gaiety made
many like him. He drank and gambled; he kept packs of hounds and strings
of horses; he ran deeply into debt that he might patronize the sports
of that uproarious day. He was a gallant "Corinthian," a haunter of dens
where there were prize-fights and cock-fights, and there was hardly a
doubtful resort in London where his face was not familiar.
He was much given to gallantry--not so much, as it seemed, for
wantonness, but from sheer love of mirth and chivalry. For a time, with
his chosen friends, such as Fox and Sheridan, he ventured into reckless
intrigues that recalled the amours of his predecessor, Charles II. He
had by no means the wit and courage of Charles; and, indeed, the house
of Hanover lacked the outward show of chivalry which made the Stuarts
shine with external splendor. But he was good-looking and stalwart, and
when he had half a dozen robust comrades by his side he could assume
a very manly appearance. Such was George IV. in his regency and in
his prime. He made that period famous for its card-playing, its deep
drinking, and for the dissolute conduct of its courtiers and noblemen no
less than for the gallantry of its soldiers and its momentous victories
on sea and land. It came, however, to be seen that his true achievements
were in reality only escapades, that his wit was only folly, and his
so-called "sensibility" was but sham. He invented buckles, striped
waistcoats, and flamboyant collars, but he knew nothing of the
principles of kingship or the laws by which a state is governed.
The fact that he had promiscuous affairs with women appealed at first
to the popular sense of the romantic. It was not long, however, before
these episodes were trampled down into the mire of vulgar scandal.
One of the first of them began when he sent a letter, signed "Florizel,"
to a young actress, "Perdita" Robinson. Mrs. Robinson, whose maiden
name was Mary Darby, and who was the original of famous portraits
by Gainsborough and Reynolds, was a woman of beauty, talent, and
temperament. George, wishing in every way to be "romantic," insisted
upon clandestine meetings on the Thames at Kew, with all the stage
trappings of the popular novels--cloaks, veils, faces hidden, and armed
watchers to warn her of approaching danger. Poor Perdita took this
nonsense so seriously that she gave up her natural vocation for the
stage, and forsook her husband, believing that the prince would never
weary of her.
He did weary of her very soon, and, with the brutality of a man of such
a type, turned her away with the promise of some money; after which he
cut her in the Park and refused to speak to her again. As for the money,
he may have meant to pay it, but Perdita had a long struggle before she
succeeded in getting it. It may be assumed that the prince had to borrow
it and that this obligation formed part of the debts which Parliament
paid for him.
It is not necessary to number the other women whose heads he turned.
They are too many for remembrance here, and they have no special
significance, save one who, as is generally believed, became his wife so
far as the church could make her so. An act of 1772 had made it
illegal for any member of the English royal family to marry without the
permission of the king. A marriage contracted without the king's consent
might be lawful in the eyes of the church, but the children born of it
could not inherit any claim to the throne.
It may be remarked here that this withholding of permission was strictly
enforced. Thus William IV. , who succeeded George IV. , was married,
before his accession to the throne, to Mrs. Jordan (Dorothy Bland).
Afterward he lawfully married a woman of royal birth who was known as
Queen Adelaide.
There is an interesting story which tells how Queen Victoria came to
be born because her father, the Duke of Kent, was practically forced
to give up a morganatic union which he greatly preferred to a marriage
arranged for him by Parliament. Except the Duke of Cambridge, the Duke
of Kent was the only royal duke who was likely to have children in the
regular line. The only daughter of George IV. had died in childhood.
The Duke of Cumberland was for various reasons ineligible; the Duke of
Clarence, later King William IV. , was almost too old; and therefore, to
insure the succession, the Duke of Kent was begged to marry a young and
attractive woman, a princess of the house of Saxe-Coburg, who was ready
for the honor. It was greatly to the Duke's credit that he showed deep
and sincere feeling in this matter. As he said himself in effect:
"This French lady has stood by me in hard times and in good times,
too--why should I cast her off? She has been more than a wife to me. And
what do I care for your plans in Parliament? Send over for one of the
Stuarts--they are better men than the last lot of our fellows that you
have had! "
In the end, however, he was wearied out and was persuaded to marry, but
he insisted that a generous sum should be settled on the lady who had
been so long his true companion, and to whom, no doubt, he gave many a
wistful thought in his new but unfamiliar quarters in Kensington Palace,
which was assigned as his residence.
Again, the second Duke of Cambridge, who died only a few years ago,
greatly desired to marry a lady who was not of royal rank, though of
fine breeding and of good birth. He besought his young cousin, as
head of the family, to grant him this privilege of marriage; but Queen
Victoria stubbornly refused. The duke was married according to the rites
of the church, but he could not make his wife a duchess. The queen never
quite forgave him for his partial defiance of her wishes, though the
duke's wife--she was usually spoken of as Mrs. FitzGeorge--was received
almost everywhere, and two of her sons hold high rank in the British
army and navy, respectively.
The one real love story in the life of George IV. is that which tells of
his marriage with a lady who might well have been the wife of any king.
This was Maria Anne Smythe, better known as Mrs. Fitzherbert, who was
six years older than the young prince when she first met him in company
with a body of gentlemen and ladies in 1784.
Maria Fitzherbert's face was one which always displayed its best
advantages. Her eyes were peculiarly languishing, and, as she had
already been twice a widow, and was six years his senior, she had the
advantage over a less experienced lover. Likewise, she was a Catholic,
and so by another act of Parliament any marriage with her would be
illegal. Yet just because of all these different objections the prince
was doubly drawn to her, and was willing to sacrifice even the throne if
he could but win her.
His father, the king, called him into the royal presence and said:
"George, it is time that you should settle down and insure the
succession to the throne. "
"Sir," replied the prince, "I prefer to resign the succession and let my
brother have it, and that I should live as a private English gentleman. "
Mrs. Fitzherbert was not the sort of woman to give herself up readily to
a morganatic connection. Moreover, she soon came to love Prince George
too well to entangle him in a doubtful alliance with one of another
faith than his. Not long after he first met her the prince, who was
always given to private theatricals, sent messengers riding in hot haste
to her house to tell her that he had stabbed himself, that he begged
to see her, and that unless she came he would repeat the act. The lady
yielded, and hurried to Carlton House, the prince's residence; but she
was prudent enough to take with her the Duchess of Devonshire, who was a
reigning beauty of the court.
The scene which followed was theatrical rather than impressive. --The
prince was found in his sleeping-chamber, pale and with his ruffles
blood-stained. He played the part of a youthful and love-stricken wooer,
vowing that he would marry the woman of his heart or stab himself
again. In the presence of his messengers, who, with the duchess,
were witnesses, he formally took the lady as his wife, while Lady
Devonshire's wedding-ring sealed the troth. The prince also acknowledged
it in a document.
Mrs. Fitzherbert was, in fact, a woman of sound sense. Shortly after
this scene of melodramatic intensity her wits came back to her, and she
recognized that she had merely gone through a meaningless farce. So
she sent back the prince's document and the ring and hastened to
the Continent, where he could not reach her, although his detectives
followed her steps for a year.
At the last she yielded, however, and came home to marry the prince
in such fashion as she could--a marriage of love, and surely one of
morality, though not of parliamentary law. The ceremony was performed
"in her own drawing-room in her house in London, in the presence of the
officiating Protestant clergyman and two of her own nearest relatives. "
Such is the serious statement of Lord Stourton, who was Mrs.
Fitzherbert's cousin and confidant. The truth of it was never denied,
and Mrs. Fitzherbert was always treated with respect, and even regarded
as a person of great distinction. Nevertheless, on more than one
occasion the prince had his friends in Parliament deny the marriage in
order that his debts might be paid and new allowances issued to him by
the Treasury.
George certainly felt himself a husband. Like any other married prince,
he set himself to build a palace for his country home. While in search
of some suitable spot he chanced to visit the "pretty fishing-village"
of Brighton to see his uncle, the Duke of Cumberland. Doubtless he found
it an attractive place, yet this may have been not so much because
of its view of the sea as for the reason that Mrs.
Fitzherbert had
previously lived there.
However, in 1784 the prince sent down his chief cook to make
arrangements for the next royal visit. The cook engaged a house on the
spot where the Pavilion now stands, and from that time Brighton began to
be an extremely fashionable place. The court doctors, giving advice that
was agreeable, recommended their royal patient to take sea-bathing at
Brighton. At once the place sprang into popularity.
At first the gentry were crowded into lodging-houses and the
accommodations were primitive to a degree. But soon handsome villas
arose on every side; hotels appeared; places of amusement were opened.
The prince himself began to build a tasteless but showy structure,
partly Chinese and partly Indian in style, on the fashionable promenade
of the Steyne.
During his life with Mrs. Fitzherbert at Brighton the prince held what
was practically a court. Hundreds of the aristocracy came down from
London and made their temporary dwellings there; while thousands who
were by no means of the court made the place what is now popularly
called "London by the Sea. " There were the Duc de Chartres, of France;
statesmen and rakes, like Fox, Sheridan, and the Earl of Barrymore; a
very beautiful woman, named Mrs. Couch, a favorite singer at the opera,
to whom the prince gave at one time jewels worth ten thousand pounds;
and a sister of the Earl of Barrymore, who was as notorious as her
brother. She often took the president's chair at a club which George's
friends had organized and which she had christened the Hell Fire Club.
Such persons were not the only visitors at Brighton. Men of much more
serious demeanor came down to visit the prince and brought with them
quieter society. Nevertheless, for a considerable time the place was
most noted for its wild scenes of revelry, into which George frequently
entered, though his home life with Mrs. Fitzherbert at the Pavilion was
a decorous one.
No one felt any doubt as to the marriage of the two persons, who seemed
so much like a prince and a princess. Some of the people of the place
addressed Mrs. Fitzherbert as "Mrs. Prince. " The old king and his wife,
however, much deplored their son's relation with her. This was partly
due to the fact that Mrs. Fitzherbert was a Catholic and that she had
received a number of French nuns who had been driven out of France at
the time of the Revolution. But no less displeasure was caused by the
prince's racing and dicing, which swelled his debts to almost a million
pounds, so that Parliament and, indeed, the sober part of England were
set against him.
Of course, his marriage to Mrs. Fitzherbert had no legal status; nor is
there any reason for believing that she ever became a mother. She had
no children by her former two husbands, and Lord Stourton testified
positively that she never had either son or daughter by Prince George.
Nevertheless, more than one American claimant has risen to advance
some utterly visionary claim to the English throne by reason of alleged
descent from Prince George and Mrs. Fitzherbert.
Neither William IV. nor Queen Victoria ever spent much time at Brighton.
In King William's case it was explained that the dampness of the
Pavilion did not suit him; and as to Queen Victoria, it was said that
she disliked the fact that buildings had been erected so as to cut
off the view of the sea. It is quite likely, however, that the queen
objected to the associations of the place, and did not care to be
reminded of the time when her uncle had lived there so long in a
morganatic state of marriage.
At length the time came when the king, Parliament, and the people at
large insisted that the Prince of Wales should make a legal marriage,
and a wife was selected for him in the person of Caroline, daughter of
the Duke of Brunswick. This marriage took place exactly ten years after
his wedding with the beautiful and gentle-mannered Mrs. Fitzherbert.
With the latter he had known many days and hours of happiness. With
Princess Caroline he had no happiness at all.
Prince George met her at the pier to greet her. It is said that as he
took her hand he kissed her, and then, suddenly recoiling, he whispered
to one of his friends:
"For God's sake, George, give me a glass of brandy! "
Such an utterance was more brutal and barbaric than anything his bride
could have conceived of, though it is probable, fortunately, that she
did not understand him by reason of her ignorance of English.
We need not go through the unhappy story of this unsympathetic,
neglected, rebellious wife. Her life with the prince soon became one
of open warfare; but instead of leaving England she remained to set the
kingdom in an uproar. As soon as his father died and he became king,
George sued her for divorce. Half the people sided with the queen,
while the rest regarded her as a vulgar creature who made love to her
attendants and brought dishonor on the English throne. It was a sorry,
sordid contrast between the young Prince George who had posed as a sort
of cavalier and this now furious gray old man wrangling with his furious
German wife.
Well might he look back to the time when he met Perdita in the moonlight
on the Thames, or when he played the part of Florizel, or, better still,
when he enjoyed the sincere and disinterested love of the gentle woman
who was his wife in all but legal status. Caroline of Brunswick was
thrust away from the king's coronation. She took a house within sight of
Westminster Abbey, so that she might make hag-like screeches to the
mob and to the king as he passed by. Presently, in August, 1821, only
a month after the coronation, she died, and her body was taken back to
Brunswick for burial.
George himself reigned for nine years longer. When he died in 1830 his
executor was the Duke of Wellington. The duke, in examining the late
king's private papers, found that he had kept with the greatest care
every letter written to him by his morganatic wife. During his last
illness she had sent him an affectionate missive which it is said George
"read eagerly. " Mrs. Fitzherbert wished the duke to give up her letters;
but he would do so only in return for those which he had written to her.
It was finally decided that it would be best to burn both his and hers.
This work was carried out in Mrs. Fitzherbert's own house by the lady,
the duke, and the Earl of Albemarle.
Of George it may be said that he has left as memories behind him only
three things that will be remembered. The first is the Pavilion at
Brighton, with its absurdly oriental decorations, its minarets and
flimsy towers. The second is the buckle which he invented and which
Thackeray has immortalized with his biting satire. The last is the story
of his marriage to Maria Fitzherbert, and of the influence exercised
upon him by the affection of a good woman.
CHARLOTTE CORDAY AND ADAM LUX
Perhaps some readers will consider this story inconsistent with those
that have preceded it. Yet, as it is little known to most readers and as
it is perhaps unique in the history of romantic love, I cannot forbear
relating it; for I believe that it is full of curious interest and
pathetic power.
All those who have written of the French Revolution have paused in
their chronicle of blood and flame to tell the episode of the peasant
Royalist, Charlotte Corday; but in telling it they have often omitted
the one part of the story that is personal and not political. The
tragic record of this French girl and her self-sacrifice has been told a
thousand times by writers in many languages; yet almost all of them have
neglected the brief romance which followed her daring deed and which was
consummated after her death upon the guillotine. It is worth our while
to speak first of Charlotte herself and of the man she slew, and then
to tell that other tale which ought always to be entwined with her great
deed of daring.
Charlotte Corday--Marie Anne Charlotte Corday d'Armand--was a native of
Normandy, and was descended, as her name implies, from noble ancestors.
Her forefathers, indeed, had been statesmen, civil rulers, and soldiers,
and among them was numbered the famous poet Corneille, whom the French
rank with Shakespeare. But a century or more of vicissitudes had reduced
her branch of the family almost to the position of peasants--a fact
which partly justifies the name that some give her when they call her
"the Jeanne d'Arc of the Revolution. "
She did not, however, spend her girlish years amid the fields and woods
tending her sheep, as did the other Jeanne d'Arc; but she was placed
in charge of the sisters in a convent, and from them she received such
education as she had. She was a lonely child, and her thoughts turned
inward, brooding over many things.
After she had left the convent she was sent to live with an aunt. Here
she devoted herself to reading over and over the few books which
the house contained. These consisted largely of the deistic writers,
especially Voltaire, and to some extent they destroyed her convent
faith, though it is not likely that she understood them very fully.
More to her taste was a copy of Plutarch's Lives. These famous stories
fascinated her. They told her of battle and siege, of intrigue and
heroism, and of that romantic love of country which led men to throw
away their lives for the sake of a whole people. Brutus and Regulus were
her heroes. To die for the many seemed to her the most glorious end that
any one could seek. When she thought of it she thrilled with a sort
of ecstasy, and longed with all the passion of her nature that such a
glorious fate might be her own.
Charlotte had nearly come to womanhood at the time when the French
Revolution first broke out. Royalist though she had been in her
sympathies, she felt the justice of the people's cause. She had seen the
suffering of the peasantry, the brutality of the tax-gatherers, and all
the oppression of the old regime. But what she hoped for was a
democracy of order and equality and peace. Could the king reign as a
constitutional monarch rather than as a despot, this was all for which
she cared.
In Normandy, where she lived, were many of those moderate republicans
known as Girondists, who felt as she did and who hoped for the same
peaceful end to the great outbreak. On the other hand, in Paris, the
party of the Mountain, as it was called, ruled with a savage violence
that soon was to culminate in the Reign of Terror. Already the
guillotine ran red with noble blood. Already the king had bowed his head
to the fatal knife. Already the threat had gone forth that a mere breath
of suspicion or a pointed finger might be enough to lead men and women
to a gory death.
In her quiet home near Caen Charlotte Corday heard as from afar the
story of this dreadful saturnalia of assassination which was making
Paris a city of bloody mist. Men and women of the Girondist party came
to tell her of the hideous deeds that were perpetrated there. All these
horrors gradually wove themselves in the young girl's imagination around
the sinister and repulsive figure of Jean Paul Marat. She knew nothing
of his associates, Danton and Robespierre. It was in Marat alone that
she saw the monster who sent innocent thousands to their graves, and who
reveled like some arch-fiend in murder and gruesome death.
In his earlier years Marat had been a very different figure--an
accomplished physician, the friend of nobles, a man of science and
original thought, so that he was nearly elected to the Academy of
Sciences. His studies in electricity gained for him the admiration
of Benjamin Franklin and the praise of Goethe. But when he turned to
politics he left all this career behind him. He plunged into the very
mire of red republicanism, and even there he was for a time so much
hated that he sought refuge in London to save his life.
On his return he was hunted by his enemies, so that his only place
of refuge was in the sewers and drains of Paris. A woman, one Simonne
Evrard, helped him to escape his pursuers. In the sewers, however,
he contracted a dreadful skin-disease from which he never afterward
recovered, and which was extremely painful as well as shocking to
behold.
It is small wonder that the stories about Marat circulated through the
provinces made him seem more a devil than a man. His vindictiveness
against the Girondists brought all of this straight home to Charlotte
Corday and led her to dream of acting the part of Brutus, so that she
might free her country from this hideous tyrant.
In January, 1793, King Louis XVI. met his death upon the scaffold; and
the queen was thrust into a foul prison. This was a signal for activity
among the Girondists in Normandy, and especially at Caen, where
Charlotte was present at their meetings and heard their fervid oratory.
There was a plot to march on Paris, yet in some instinctive way she felt
that such a scheme must fail. It was then that she definitely formed
the plan of going herself, alone, to the French capital to seek out the
hideous Marat and to kill him with her own hands.
To this end she made application for a passport allowing her to
visit Paris. This passport still exists, and it gives us an official
description of the girl. It reads:
Allow citizen Marie Corday to pass. She is twenty-four years of age,
five feet and one inch in height, hair and eyebrows chestnut color, eyes
gray, forehead high, mouth medium size, chin dimpled, and an oval face.
Apart from this verbal description we have two portraits painted while
she was in prison. Both of them make the description of the passport
seem faint and pale. The real Charlotte had a wealth of chestnut hair
which fell about her face and neck in glorious abundance. Her great
gray eyes spoke eloquently of truth and courage. Her mouth was firm yet
winsome, and her form combined both strength and grace. Such is the girl
who, on reaching Paris, wrote to Marat in these words:
Citizen, I have just arrived from Caen. Your love for your native place
doubtless makes you wish to learn the events which have occurred in that
part of the republic. I shall call at your residence in about an hour.
Be so good as to receive me and give me a brief interview. I will put
you in such condition as to render great service to France.
This letter failed to gain her admission, and so did another which she
wrote soon after. The fact is that Marat was grievously ill. His disease
had reached a point where the pain could be assuaged only by hot water;
and he spent the greater part of his time wrapped in a blanket and lying
in a large tub.
A third time, however, the persistent girl called at his house and
insisted that she must see him, saying that she was herself in danger
from the enemies of the Republic. Through an open door Marat heard her
mellow voice and gave orders that she should be admitted.
As she entered she gazed for a moment upon the lank figure rolling in
the tub, the rat-like face, and the shifting eyes. Then she approached
him, concealing in the bosom of her dress a long carving-knife which she
had purchased for two francs. In answer to Marat's questioning look she
told him that there was much excitement at Caen and that the Girondists
were plotting there.
To this Marat answered, in his harsh voice:
"All these men you mention shall be guillotined in the next few days! "
As he spoke Charlotte flashed out the terrible knife and with all her
strength she plunged it into his left side, where it pierced a lung and
a portion of his heart.
Marat, with the blood gushing from his mouth, cried out:
"Help, darling! "
His cry was meant for one of the two women in the house. Both heard it,
for they were in the next room; and both of them rushed in and succeeded
in pinioning Charlotte Corday, who, indeed, made only a slight effort to
escape. Troops were summoned, she was taken to the Prison de l'Abbaye,
and soon after she was arraigned before the revolutionary tribunal.
Placed in the dock, she glanced about her with an air of pride, as
of one who gloried in the act which she had just performed. A written
charge was read. She was asked what she had to say. Lifting her head
with a look of infinite satisfaction, she answered in a ringing voice:
"Nothing--except that I succeeded! "
A lawyer was assigned for her defense. He pleaded for her earnestly,
declaring that she must he regarded as insane; but those clear, calm
eyes and that gentle face made her sanity a matter of little doubt.
She showed her quick wit in the answers which she gave to the rough
prosecutor, Fouquier-Tinville, who tried to make her confess that she
had accomplices.
"Who prompted you to do this deed? " roared Tinville.
"I needed no prompting. My own heart was sufficient. "
"In what, then, had Marat wronged you? "
"He was a savage beast who was going to destroy the remains of France in
the fires of civil war. "
"But whom did you expect to benefit? " insinuated the prosecutor.
"I have killed one man to save a hundred thousand. "
"What? Did you imagine that you had murdered all the Marats? "
"No, but, this one being dead, the rest will perhaps take warning. "
Thus her directness baffled all the efforts of the prosecution to trap
her into betraying any of her friends. The court, however, sentenced her
to death. She was then immured in the Conciergerie.
This dramatic court scene was the beginning of that strange, brief
romance to which one can scarcely find a parallel. At the time there
lived in Paris a young German named Adam Lux. The continual talk about
Charlotte Corday had filled him with curiosity regarding this young girl
who had been so daring and so patriotic. She was denounced on every hand
as a murderess with the face of a Medusa and the muscles of a Vulcan.
Street songs about her were dinned into the ears of Adam Lux.
As a student of human nature he was anxious to see this terrible
creature. He forced his way to the front of the crowded benches in the
court-room and took his stand behind a young artist who was finishing a
beautiful sketch. From that moment until the end of the trial the
eyes of Adam Lux were fastened on the prisoner. What a contrast to the
picture he had imagined!
A mass of regal chestnut hair crowned with the white cap of a Norman
peasant girl; gray eyes, very sad and serious, but looking serenely
forth from under long, dark lashes; lips slightly curved with an
expression of quiet humor; a face the color of the sun and wind, a
bust indicative of perfect health, the chin of a Caesar, and the whole
expression one of almost divine self-sacrifice. Such were the features
that the painter was swiftly putting upon his canvas; but behind them
Adam Lux discerned the soul for which he gladly sacrificed both his
liberty and his life.
He forgot his surroundings and seemed to see only that beautiful, pure
face and to hear only the exquisite cadences of the wonderful voice.
When Charlotte was led forth by a file of soldiers Adam staggered from
the scene and made his way as best he might to his lodgings. There he
lay prostrate, his whole soul filled with the love of her who had in an
instant won the adoration of his heart.
Once, and only once again, when the last scene opened on the tragedy,
did he behold the heroine of his dreams.
On the 17th of July Charlotte Corday was taken from her prison to the
gloomy guillotine. It was toward evening, and nature had given a setting
fit for such an end. Blue-black thunder-clouds rolled in huge masses
across the sky until their base appeared to rest on the very summit of
the guillotine. Distant thunder rolled and grumbled beyond the river.
Great drops of rain fell upon the soldiers' drums. Young, beautiful,
unconscious of any wrong, Charlotte Corday stood beneath the shadow of
the knife.
At the supreme moment a sudden ray from the setting sun broke through
the cloud-wrack and fell upon her slender figure until she glowed in the
eyes of the startled spectators like a statue cut in burnished bronze.
Thus illumined, as it were, by a light from heaven itself, she
bowed herself beneath the knife and paid the penalty of a noble, if
misdirected, impulse. As the blade fell her lips quivered with her last
and only plea:
"My duty is enough--the rest is nothing! "
Adam Lux rushed from the scene a man transformed. He bore graven upon
his heart neither the mob of tossing red caps nor the glare of the
sunset nor the blood-stained guillotine, but that last look from
those brilliant eyes. The sight almost deprived him of his reason. The
self-sacrifice of the only woman he had ever loved, even though she had
never so much as seen him, impelled him with a sort of fury to his own
destruction.
He wrote a bitter denunciation of the judges, of the officers, and
of all who had been followers of Marat. This document he printed,
and scattered copies of it through every quarter in Paris. The last
sentences are as follows:
The guillotine is no longer a disgrace. It has become a sacred altar,
from which every taint has been removed by the innocent blood shed
there on the 17th of July. Forgive me, my divine Charlotte, if I find
it impossible at the last moment to show the courage and the gentleness
that were yours! I glory because you are superior to me, for it is
right that she who is adored should be higher and more glorious than her
adorer!
This pamphlet, spread broadcast among the people, was soon reported to
the leaders of the rabble. Adam Lux was arrested for treason against
the Republic; but even these men had no desire to make a martyr of this
hot-headed youth. They would stop his mouth without taking his life.
Therefore he was tried and speedily found guilty, but an offer was
made him that he might have passports that would allow him to return to
Germany if only he would sign a retraction of his printed words.
Burr sometimes stopped overnight at the tavern in Kinderhook which was
kept by Van Buren's putative father, and that Van Buren in later life
showed an astuteness equal to that of Aaron Burr himself, so that he was
called by his opponents "the fox of Kinderhook. " But, as Van Buren was
born in December of the same year (1782) in which Burr was married to
Theodosia Prevost, the story is utterly improbable when we remember,
as we must, the ardent affection which Burr showed his wife, not only
before their marriage, but afterward until her death.
Putting aside these purely spurious instances, as well as others cited
by Mr. Parton, the fact remains that Aaron Burr, like Daniel Webster,
found a great attraction in the society of women; that he could please
them and fascinate them to an extraordinary degree; and that during
his later life he must be held quite culpable in this respect. His
love-making was ardent and rapid, as we shall afterward see in the case
of his second marriage.
Many other stories are told of him. For instance, it is said that he
once took a stage-coach from Jersey City to Philadelphia. The only other
occupant was a woman of high standing and one whose family deeply hated
Aaron Burr. Nevertheless, so the story goes, before they had reached
Newark she was absolutely swayed by his charm of manner; and when the
coach made its last stop before Philadelphia she voluntarily became his
mistress.
It must also be said that, unlike those of Webster and Hamilton, his
intrigues were never carried on with women of the lower sort. This may
be held by some to deepen the charge against him; but more truly does it
exonerate him, since it really means that in many cases these women
of the world threw themselves at him and sought him as a lover, when
otherwise he might never have thought of them.
That he was not heartless and indifferent to those who had loved him
may be shown by the great care which he took to protect their names and
reputations. Thus, on the day before his duel with Hamilton, he made a
will in which he constituted his son-in-law as his executor. At the same
time he wrote a sealed letter to Governor Allston in which he said:
If you can pardon and indulge a folly, I would suggest that Mme. ----,
too well known under the name of Leonora, has claims on my recollection.
She is now with her husband at Santiago, in Cuba.
Another fact has been turned to his discredit. From many women, in the
course of his long life, he had received a great quantity of letters
written by aristocratic hands on scented paper, and these letters he had
never burned. Here again, perhaps, was shown the vanity of the man
who loved love for its own sake. He kept all these papers in a huge
iron-clamped chest, and he instructed Theodosia in case he should die to
burn every letter which might injure any one.
After Theodosia's death Burr gave the same instructions to Matthew L.
Davis, who did, indeed, burn them, though he made their existence a
means of blackening the character of Burr. He should have destroyed them
unopened, and should never have mentioned them in his memoirs of the man
who trusted him as a friend.
Such was Aaron Burr throughout a life which lasted for eighty years. His
last romance, at the age of seventy-eight, is worth narrating because it
has often been misunderstood.
Mme. Jumel was a Rhode Island girl who at seventeen years of age eloped
with an English officer, Colonel Peter Croix. Her first husband
died while she was still quite young, and she then married a French
wine-merchant, Stephen Jumel, some twenty years her senior, but a man of
much vigor and intelligence. M. Jumel made a considerable fortune in New
York, owning a small merchant fleet; and after Napoleon's downfall he
and his wife went to Paris, where she made a great impression in the
salons by her vivacity and wit and by her lavish expenditures.
Losing, however, part of what she and her husband possessed, Mme. Jumel
returned to New York, bringing with her a great amount of furniture and
paintings, with which she decorated the historic house still standing
in the upper part of Manhattan Island--a mansion held by her in her own
right. She managed her estate with much ability; and in 1828 M. Jumel
returned to live with her in what was in those days a splendid villa.
Four years later, however, M. Jumel suffered an accident from which he
died in a few days, leaving his wife still an attractive woman and not
very much past her prime. Soon after she had occasion to seek for legal
advice, and for this purpose visited the law-office of Aaron Burr.
She had known him a good many years before; and, though he was now
seventy-eight years of age, there was no perceptible change in him. He
was still courtly in manner, tactful, and deferential, while physically
he was straight, active, and vigorous.
A little later she invited him to a formal banquet, where he displayed
all his charms and shone to great advantage. When he was about to lead
her in to dinner, he said:
"I give my hand, madam; my heart has long been yours. "
These attentions he followed up with several other visits, and
finally proposed that she should marry him. Much fluttered and no less
flattered, she uttered a sort of "No" which was not likely to discourage
a man like Aaron Burr.
"I shall come to you before very long," he said, "accompanied by a
clergyman; and then you will give me your hand because I want it. "
This rapid sort of wooing was pleasantly embarrassing. The lady rather
liked it; and so, on an afternoon when the sun was shining and the
leaves were rustling in the breeze, Burr drove up to Mme. Jumel's
mansion accompanied by Dr. Bogart--the very clergyman who had married
him to his first wife fifty years before.
Mme. Jumel was now seriously disturbed, but her refusal was not a strong
one. There were reasons why she should accept the offer. The great
house was lonely. The management of her estate required a man's advice.
Moreover, she was under the spell of Burr's fascination. Therefore she
arrayed herself in one of her most magnificent Paris gowns; the members
of her household and eight servants were called in and the ceremony
was duly performed by Dr. Bogart. A banquet followed. A dozen cobwebbed
bottles of wine were brought up from the cellar, and the marriage feast
went on merrily until after midnight.
This marriage was a singular one from many points of view. It was
strange that a man of seventy-eight should take by storm the affections
of a woman so much younger than he--a woman of wealth and knowledge of
the world. In the second place, it is odd that there was still another
woman--a mere girl--who was so infatuated with Burr that when she was
told of his marriage it nearly broke her heart. Finally, in the early
part of that same year he had been accused of being the father of a
new-born child, and in spite of his age every one believed the charge to
be true. Here is a case that it would be hard to parallel.
The happiness of the newly married pair did not, however, last very
long. They made a wedding journey into Connecticut, of which state
Burr's nephew was then Governor, and there Burr saw a monster bridge
over the Connecticut River, in which his wife had shares, though they
brought her little income. He suggested that she should transfer the
investment, which, after all, was not a very large one, and place it in
a venture in Texas which looked promising. The speculation turned out to
be a loss, however, and this made Mrs. Burr extremely angry, the more
so as she had reason to think that her ever-youthful husband had been
engaged in flirting with the country girls near the Jumel mansion.
She was a woman of high spirit and had at times a violent temper. One
day the post-master at what was then the village of Harlem was surprised
to see Mrs. Burr drive up before the post-office in an open carriage.
He came out to ask what she desired, and was surprised to find her in a
violent temper and with an enormous horse-pistol on each cushion at her
side.
"What do you wish, madam? " said he, rather mildly.
"What do I wish? " she cried. "Let me get at that villain Aaron Burr! "
Presently Burr seems to have succeeded in pacifying her; but in the end
they separated, though she afterward always spoke most kindly of him.
When he died, only about a year later, she is said to have burst into
a flood of tears--another tribute to the fascination which Aaron Burr
exercised through all his checkered life.
It is difficult to come to any fixed opinion regarding the moral
character of Aaron Burr. As a soldier he was brave to the point of
recklessness. As a political leader he was almost the equal of Jefferson
and quite superior to Hamilton. As a man of the world he was highly
accomplished, polished in manner, charming in conversation. He made
friends easily, and he forgave his enemies with a broadmindedness that
is unusual.
On the other hand, in his political career there was a touch of
insincerity, and it can scarcely be denied that he used his charm too
often to the injury of those women who could not resist his insinuating
ways and the caressing notes of his rich voice. But as a husband, in his
youth, he was devoted, affectionate, and loyal; while as a father he was
little less than worshiped by the daughter whom he reared so carefully.
One of his biographers very truly says that no such wretch as Burr has
been declared to be could have won and held the love of such a wife and
such a daughter as Burr had.
When all the other witnesses have been heard, let the two Theodosias
be summoned, and especially that daughter who showed toward him an
affectionate veneration unsurpassed by any recorded in history or
romance. Such an advocate as Theodosia the younger must avail in some
degree, even though the culprit were brought before the bar of Heaven
itself.
GEORGE IV. AND MRS. FITZHERBERT
In the last decade of the eighteenth century England was perhaps the
most brilliant nation of the world. Other countries had been humbled
by the splendid armies of France and were destined to be still further
humbled by the emperor who came from Corsica. France had begun to
seize the scepter of power; yet to this picture there was another
side--fearful want and grievous poverty and the horrors of the
Revolution. Russia was too far away, and was still considered too
barbarous, for a brilliant court to flourish there. Prussia had the
prestige that Frederick the Great won for her, but she was still a
comparatively small state. Italy was in a condition of political chaos;
the banks of the Rhine were running blood where the Austrian armies
faced the gallant Frenchmen under the leadership of Moreau. But England,
in spite of the loss of her American colonies, was rich and prosperous,
and her invincible fleets were extending her empire over the seven seas.
At no time in modern England has the court at London seen so much real
splendor or such fine manners. The royalist emigres who fled from France
brought with them names and pedigrees that were older than the Crusades,
and many of them were received with the frankest, freest English
hospitality. If here and there some marquis or baron of ancient blood
was perforce content to teach music to the daughters of tradesmen in
suburban schools, nevertheless they were better off than they had
been in France, harried by the savage gaze-hounds of the guillotine.
Afterward, in the days of the Restoration, when they came back to
their estates, they had probably learned more than one lesson from the
bouledogues of Merry England, who had little tact, perhaps, but who were
at any rate kindly and willing to share their goods with pinched and
poverty-stricken foreigners.
The court, then, as has been said, was brilliant with notables from
Continental countries, and with the historic wealth of the peerage of
England. Only one cloud overspread it; and that was the mental condition
of the king. We have become accustomed to think of George III as a dull
creature, almost always hovering on the verge of that insanity which
finally swept him into a dark obscurity; but Thackeray's picture of him
is absurdly untrue to the actual facts. George III. was by no means a
dullard, nor was he a sort of beefy country squire who roved about the
palace gardens with his unattractive spouse.
Obstinate enough he was, and ready for a combat with the rulers of the
Continent or with his self-willed sons; but he was a man of brains and
power, and Lord Rosebery has rightly described him as the most striking
constitutional figure of his time. Had he retained his reason, and
had his erratic and self-seeking son not succeeded him during his own
lifetime, Great Britain might very possibly have entered upon other ways
than those which opened to her after the downfall of Napoleon.
The real center of fashionable England, however, was not George III. ,
but rather his son, subsequently George IV. , who was made Prince of
Wales three days after his birth, and who became prince regent during
the insanity of the king. He was the leader of the social world, the
fit companion of Beau Brummel and of a choice circle of rakes and
fox-hunters who drank pottle-deep. Some called him "the first gentleman
of Europe. " Others, who knew him better, described him as one who
never kept his word to man or woman and who lacked the most elementary
virtues.
Yet it was his good luck during the first years of his regency to be
popular as few English kings have ever been. To his people he typified
old England against revolutionary France; and his youth and gaiety made
many like him. He drank and gambled; he kept packs of hounds and strings
of horses; he ran deeply into debt that he might patronize the sports
of that uproarious day. He was a gallant "Corinthian," a haunter of dens
where there were prize-fights and cock-fights, and there was hardly a
doubtful resort in London where his face was not familiar.
He was much given to gallantry--not so much, as it seemed, for
wantonness, but from sheer love of mirth and chivalry. For a time, with
his chosen friends, such as Fox and Sheridan, he ventured into reckless
intrigues that recalled the amours of his predecessor, Charles II. He
had by no means the wit and courage of Charles; and, indeed, the house
of Hanover lacked the outward show of chivalry which made the Stuarts
shine with external splendor. But he was good-looking and stalwart, and
when he had half a dozen robust comrades by his side he could assume
a very manly appearance. Such was George IV. in his regency and in
his prime. He made that period famous for its card-playing, its deep
drinking, and for the dissolute conduct of its courtiers and noblemen no
less than for the gallantry of its soldiers and its momentous victories
on sea and land. It came, however, to be seen that his true achievements
were in reality only escapades, that his wit was only folly, and his
so-called "sensibility" was but sham. He invented buckles, striped
waistcoats, and flamboyant collars, but he knew nothing of the
principles of kingship or the laws by which a state is governed.
The fact that he had promiscuous affairs with women appealed at first
to the popular sense of the romantic. It was not long, however, before
these episodes were trampled down into the mire of vulgar scandal.
One of the first of them began when he sent a letter, signed "Florizel,"
to a young actress, "Perdita" Robinson. Mrs. Robinson, whose maiden
name was Mary Darby, and who was the original of famous portraits
by Gainsborough and Reynolds, was a woman of beauty, talent, and
temperament. George, wishing in every way to be "romantic," insisted
upon clandestine meetings on the Thames at Kew, with all the stage
trappings of the popular novels--cloaks, veils, faces hidden, and armed
watchers to warn her of approaching danger. Poor Perdita took this
nonsense so seriously that she gave up her natural vocation for the
stage, and forsook her husband, believing that the prince would never
weary of her.
He did weary of her very soon, and, with the brutality of a man of such
a type, turned her away with the promise of some money; after which he
cut her in the Park and refused to speak to her again. As for the money,
he may have meant to pay it, but Perdita had a long struggle before she
succeeded in getting it. It may be assumed that the prince had to borrow
it and that this obligation formed part of the debts which Parliament
paid for him.
It is not necessary to number the other women whose heads he turned.
They are too many for remembrance here, and they have no special
significance, save one who, as is generally believed, became his wife so
far as the church could make her so. An act of 1772 had made it
illegal for any member of the English royal family to marry without the
permission of the king. A marriage contracted without the king's consent
might be lawful in the eyes of the church, but the children born of it
could not inherit any claim to the throne.
It may be remarked here that this withholding of permission was strictly
enforced. Thus William IV. , who succeeded George IV. , was married,
before his accession to the throne, to Mrs. Jordan (Dorothy Bland).
Afterward he lawfully married a woman of royal birth who was known as
Queen Adelaide.
There is an interesting story which tells how Queen Victoria came to
be born because her father, the Duke of Kent, was practically forced
to give up a morganatic union which he greatly preferred to a marriage
arranged for him by Parliament. Except the Duke of Cambridge, the Duke
of Kent was the only royal duke who was likely to have children in the
regular line. The only daughter of George IV. had died in childhood.
The Duke of Cumberland was for various reasons ineligible; the Duke of
Clarence, later King William IV. , was almost too old; and therefore, to
insure the succession, the Duke of Kent was begged to marry a young and
attractive woman, a princess of the house of Saxe-Coburg, who was ready
for the honor. It was greatly to the Duke's credit that he showed deep
and sincere feeling in this matter. As he said himself in effect:
"This French lady has stood by me in hard times and in good times,
too--why should I cast her off? She has been more than a wife to me. And
what do I care for your plans in Parliament? Send over for one of the
Stuarts--they are better men than the last lot of our fellows that you
have had! "
In the end, however, he was wearied out and was persuaded to marry, but
he insisted that a generous sum should be settled on the lady who had
been so long his true companion, and to whom, no doubt, he gave many a
wistful thought in his new but unfamiliar quarters in Kensington Palace,
which was assigned as his residence.
Again, the second Duke of Cambridge, who died only a few years ago,
greatly desired to marry a lady who was not of royal rank, though of
fine breeding and of good birth. He besought his young cousin, as
head of the family, to grant him this privilege of marriage; but Queen
Victoria stubbornly refused. The duke was married according to the rites
of the church, but he could not make his wife a duchess. The queen never
quite forgave him for his partial defiance of her wishes, though the
duke's wife--she was usually spoken of as Mrs. FitzGeorge--was received
almost everywhere, and two of her sons hold high rank in the British
army and navy, respectively.
The one real love story in the life of George IV. is that which tells of
his marriage with a lady who might well have been the wife of any king.
This was Maria Anne Smythe, better known as Mrs. Fitzherbert, who was
six years older than the young prince when she first met him in company
with a body of gentlemen and ladies in 1784.
Maria Fitzherbert's face was one which always displayed its best
advantages. Her eyes were peculiarly languishing, and, as she had
already been twice a widow, and was six years his senior, she had the
advantage over a less experienced lover. Likewise, she was a Catholic,
and so by another act of Parliament any marriage with her would be
illegal. Yet just because of all these different objections the prince
was doubly drawn to her, and was willing to sacrifice even the throne if
he could but win her.
His father, the king, called him into the royal presence and said:
"George, it is time that you should settle down and insure the
succession to the throne. "
"Sir," replied the prince, "I prefer to resign the succession and let my
brother have it, and that I should live as a private English gentleman. "
Mrs. Fitzherbert was not the sort of woman to give herself up readily to
a morganatic connection. Moreover, she soon came to love Prince George
too well to entangle him in a doubtful alliance with one of another
faith than his. Not long after he first met her the prince, who was
always given to private theatricals, sent messengers riding in hot haste
to her house to tell her that he had stabbed himself, that he begged
to see her, and that unless she came he would repeat the act. The lady
yielded, and hurried to Carlton House, the prince's residence; but she
was prudent enough to take with her the Duchess of Devonshire, who was a
reigning beauty of the court.
The scene which followed was theatrical rather than impressive. --The
prince was found in his sleeping-chamber, pale and with his ruffles
blood-stained. He played the part of a youthful and love-stricken wooer,
vowing that he would marry the woman of his heart or stab himself
again. In the presence of his messengers, who, with the duchess,
were witnesses, he formally took the lady as his wife, while Lady
Devonshire's wedding-ring sealed the troth. The prince also acknowledged
it in a document.
Mrs. Fitzherbert was, in fact, a woman of sound sense. Shortly after
this scene of melodramatic intensity her wits came back to her, and she
recognized that she had merely gone through a meaningless farce. So
she sent back the prince's document and the ring and hastened to
the Continent, where he could not reach her, although his detectives
followed her steps for a year.
At the last she yielded, however, and came home to marry the prince
in such fashion as she could--a marriage of love, and surely one of
morality, though not of parliamentary law. The ceremony was performed
"in her own drawing-room in her house in London, in the presence of the
officiating Protestant clergyman and two of her own nearest relatives. "
Such is the serious statement of Lord Stourton, who was Mrs.
Fitzherbert's cousin and confidant. The truth of it was never denied,
and Mrs. Fitzherbert was always treated with respect, and even regarded
as a person of great distinction. Nevertheless, on more than one
occasion the prince had his friends in Parliament deny the marriage in
order that his debts might be paid and new allowances issued to him by
the Treasury.
George certainly felt himself a husband. Like any other married prince,
he set himself to build a palace for his country home. While in search
of some suitable spot he chanced to visit the "pretty fishing-village"
of Brighton to see his uncle, the Duke of Cumberland. Doubtless he found
it an attractive place, yet this may have been not so much because
of its view of the sea as for the reason that Mrs.
Fitzherbert had
previously lived there.
However, in 1784 the prince sent down his chief cook to make
arrangements for the next royal visit. The cook engaged a house on the
spot where the Pavilion now stands, and from that time Brighton began to
be an extremely fashionable place. The court doctors, giving advice that
was agreeable, recommended their royal patient to take sea-bathing at
Brighton. At once the place sprang into popularity.
At first the gentry were crowded into lodging-houses and the
accommodations were primitive to a degree. But soon handsome villas
arose on every side; hotels appeared; places of amusement were opened.
The prince himself began to build a tasteless but showy structure,
partly Chinese and partly Indian in style, on the fashionable promenade
of the Steyne.
During his life with Mrs. Fitzherbert at Brighton the prince held what
was practically a court. Hundreds of the aristocracy came down from
London and made their temporary dwellings there; while thousands who
were by no means of the court made the place what is now popularly
called "London by the Sea. " There were the Duc de Chartres, of France;
statesmen and rakes, like Fox, Sheridan, and the Earl of Barrymore; a
very beautiful woman, named Mrs. Couch, a favorite singer at the opera,
to whom the prince gave at one time jewels worth ten thousand pounds;
and a sister of the Earl of Barrymore, who was as notorious as her
brother. She often took the president's chair at a club which George's
friends had organized and which she had christened the Hell Fire Club.
Such persons were not the only visitors at Brighton. Men of much more
serious demeanor came down to visit the prince and brought with them
quieter society. Nevertheless, for a considerable time the place was
most noted for its wild scenes of revelry, into which George frequently
entered, though his home life with Mrs. Fitzherbert at the Pavilion was
a decorous one.
No one felt any doubt as to the marriage of the two persons, who seemed
so much like a prince and a princess. Some of the people of the place
addressed Mrs. Fitzherbert as "Mrs. Prince. " The old king and his wife,
however, much deplored their son's relation with her. This was partly
due to the fact that Mrs. Fitzherbert was a Catholic and that she had
received a number of French nuns who had been driven out of France at
the time of the Revolution. But no less displeasure was caused by the
prince's racing and dicing, which swelled his debts to almost a million
pounds, so that Parliament and, indeed, the sober part of England were
set against him.
Of course, his marriage to Mrs. Fitzherbert had no legal status; nor is
there any reason for believing that she ever became a mother. She had
no children by her former two husbands, and Lord Stourton testified
positively that she never had either son or daughter by Prince George.
Nevertheless, more than one American claimant has risen to advance
some utterly visionary claim to the English throne by reason of alleged
descent from Prince George and Mrs. Fitzherbert.
Neither William IV. nor Queen Victoria ever spent much time at Brighton.
In King William's case it was explained that the dampness of the
Pavilion did not suit him; and as to Queen Victoria, it was said that
she disliked the fact that buildings had been erected so as to cut
off the view of the sea. It is quite likely, however, that the queen
objected to the associations of the place, and did not care to be
reminded of the time when her uncle had lived there so long in a
morganatic state of marriage.
At length the time came when the king, Parliament, and the people at
large insisted that the Prince of Wales should make a legal marriage,
and a wife was selected for him in the person of Caroline, daughter of
the Duke of Brunswick. This marriage took place exactly ten years after
his wedding with the beautiful and gentle-mannered Mrs. Fitzherbert.
With the latter he had known many days and hours of happiness. With
Princess Caroline he had no happiness at all.
Prince George met her at the pier to greet her. It is said that as he
took her hand he kissed her, and then, suddenly recoiling, he whispered
to one of his friends:
"For God's sake, George, give me a glass of brandy! "
Such an utterance was more brutal and barbaric than anything his bride
could have conceived of, though it is probable, fortunately, that she
did not understand him by reason of her ignorance of English.
We need not go through the unhappy story of this unsympathetic,
neglected, rebellious wife. Her life with the prince soon became one
of open warfare; but instead of leaving England she remained to set the
kingdom in an uproar. As soon as his father died and he became king,
George sued her for divorce. Half the people sided with the queen,
while the rest regarded her as a vulgar creature who made love to her
attendants and brought dishonor on the English throne. It was a sorry,
sordid contrast between the young Prince George who had posed as a sort
of cavalier and this now furious gray old man wrangling with his furious
German wife.
Well might he look back to the time when he met Perdita in the moonlight
on the Thames, or when he played the part of Florizel, or, better still,
when he enjoyed the sincere and disinterested love of the gentle woman
who was his wife in all but legal status. Caroline of Brunswick was
thrust away from the king's coronation. She took a house within sight of
Westminster Abbey, so that she might make hag-like screeches to the
mob and to the king as he passed by. Presently, in August, 1821, only
a month after the coronation, she died, and her body was taken back to
Brunswick for burial.
George himself reigned for nine years longer. When he died in 1830 his
executor was the Duke of Wellington. The duke, in examining the late
king's private papers, found that he had kept with the greatest care
every letter written to him by his morganatic wife. During his last
illness she had sent him an affectionate missive which it is said George
"read eagerly. " Mrs. Fitzherbert wished the duke to give up her letters;
but he would do so only in return for those which he had written to her.
It was finally decided that it would be best to burn both his and hers.
This work was carried out in Mrs. Fitzherbert's own house by the lady,
the duke, and the Earl of Albemarle.
Of George it may be said that he has left as memories behind him only
three things that will be remembered. The first is the Pavilion at
Brighton, with its absurdly oriental decorations, its minarets and
flimsy towers. The second is the buckle which he invented and which
Thackeray has immortalized with his biting satire. The last is the story
of his marriage to Maria Fitzherbert, and of the influence exercised
upon him by the affection of a good woman.
CHARLOTTE CORDAY AND ADAM LUX
Perhaps some readers will consider this story inconsistent with those
that have preceded it. Yet, as it is little known to most readers and as
it is perhaps unique in the history of romantic love, I cannot forbear
relating it; for I believe that it is full of curious interest and
pathetic power.
All those who have written of the French Revolution have paused in
their chronicle of blood and flame to tell the episode of the peasant
Royalist, Charlotte Corday; but in telling it they have often omitted
the one part of the story that is personal and not political. The
tragic record of this French girl and her self-sacrifice has been told a
thousand times by writers in many languages; yet almost all of them have
neglected the brief romance which followed her daring deed and which was
consummated after her death upon the guillotine. It is worth our while
to speak first of Charlotte herself and of the man she slew, and then
to tell that other tale which ought always to be entwined with her great
deed of daring.
Charlotte Corday--Marie Anne Charlotte Corday d'Armand--was a native of
Normandy, and was descended, as her name implies, from noble ancestors.
Her forefathers, indeed, had been statesmen, civil rulers, and soldiers,
and among them was numbered the famous poet Corneille, whom the French
rank with Shakespeare. But a century or more of vicissitudes had reduced
her branch of the family almost to the position of peasants--a fact
which partly justifies the name that some give her when they call her
"the Jeanne d'Arc of the Revolution. "
She did not, however, spend her girlish years amid the fields and woods
tending her sheep, as did the other Jeanne d'Arc; but she was placed
in charge of the sisters in a convent, and from them she received such
education as she had. She was a lonely child, and her thoughts turned
inward, brooding over many things.
After she had left the convent she was sent to live with an aunt. Here
she devoted herself to reading over and over the few books which
the house contained. These consisted largely of the deistic writers,
especially Voltaire, and to some extent they destroyed her convent
faith, though it is not likely that she understood them very fully.
More to her taste was a copy of Plutarch's Lives. These famous stories
fascinated her. They told her of battle and siege, of intrigue and
heroism, and of that romantic love of country which led men to throw
away their lives for the sake of a whole people. Brutus and Regulus were
her heroes. To die for the many seemed to her the most glorious end that
any one could seek. When she thought of it she thrilled with a sort
of ecstasy, and longed with all the passion of her nature that such a
glorious fate might be her own.
Charlotte had nearly come to womanhood at the time when the French
Revolution first broke out. Royalist though she had been in her
sympathies, she felt the justice of the people's cause. She had seen the
suffering of the peasantry, the brutality of the tax-gatherers, and all
the oppression of the old regime. But what she hoped for was a
democracy of order and equality and peace. Could the king reign as a
constitutional monarch rather than as a despot, this was all for which
she cared.
In Normandy, where she lived, were many of those moderate republicans
known as Girondists, who felt as she did and who hoped for the same
peaceful end to the great outbreak. On the other hand, in Paris, the
party of the Mountain, as it was called, ruled with a savage violence
that soon was to culminate in the Reign of Terror. Already the
guillotine ran red with noble blood. Already the king had bowed his head
to the fatal knife. Already the threat had gone forth that a mere breath
of suspicion or a pointed finger might be enough to lead men and women
to a gory death.
In her quiet home near Caen Charlotte Corday heard as from afar the
story of this dreadful saturnalia of assassination which was making
Paris a city of bloody mist. Men and women of the Girondist party came
to tell her of the hideous deeds that were perpetrated there. All these
horrors gradually wove themselves in the young girl's imagination around
the sinister and repulsive figure of Jean Paul Marat. She knew nothing
of his associates, Danton and Robespierre. It was in Marat alone that
she saw the monster who sent innocent thousands to their graves, and who
reveled like some arch-fiend in murder and gruesome death.
In his earlier years Marat had been a very different figure--an
accomplished physician, the friend of nobles, a man of science and
original thought, so that he was nearly elected to the Academy of
Sciences. His studies in electricity gained for him the admiration
of Benjamin Franklin and the praise of Goethe. But when he turned to
politics he left all this career behind him. He plunged into the very
mire of red republicanism, and even there he was for a time so much
hated that he sought refuge in London to save his life.
On his return he was hunted by his enemies, so that his only place
of refuge was in the sewers and drains of Paris. A woman, one Simonne
Evrard, helped him to escape his pursuers. In the sewers, however,
he contracted a dreadful skin-disease from which he never afterward
recovered, and which was extremely painful as well as shocking to
behold.
It is small wonder that the stories about Marat circulated through the
provinces made him seem more a devil than a man. His vindictiveness
against the Girondists brought all of this straight home to Charlotte
Corday and led her to dream of acting the part of Brutus, so that she
might free her country from this hideous tyrant.
In January, 1793, King Louis XVI. met his death upon the scaffold; and
the queen was thrust into a foul prison. This was a signal for activity
among the Girondists in Normandy, and especially at Caen, where
Charlotte was present at their meetings and heard their fervid oratory.
There was a plot to march on Paris, yet in some instinctive way she felt
that such a scheme must fail. It was then that she definitely formed
the plan of going herself, alone, to the French capital to seek out the
hideous Marat and to kill him with her own hands.
To this end she made application for a passport allowing her to
visit Paris. This passport still exists, and it gives us an official
description of the girl. It reads:
Allow citizen Marie Corday to pass. She is twenty-four years of age,
five feet and one inch in height, hair and eyebrows chestnut color, eyes
gray, forehead high, mouth medium size, chin dimpled, and an oval face.
Apart from this verbal description we have two portraits painted while
she was in prison. Both of them make the description of the passport
seem faint and pale. The real Charlotte had a wealth of chestnut hair
which fell about her face and neck in glorious abundance. Her great
gray eyes spoke eloquently of truth and courage. Her mouth was firm yet
winsome, and her form combined both strength and grace. Such is the girl
who, on reaching Paris, wrote to Marat in these words:
Citizen, I have just arrived from Caen. Your love for your native place
doubtless makes you wish to learn the events which have occurred in that
part of the republic. I shall call at your residence in about an hour.
Be so good as to receive me and give me a brief interview. I will put
you in such condition as to render great service to France.
This letter failed to gain her admission, and so did another which she
wrote soon after. The fact is that Marat was grievously ill. His disease
had reached a point where the pain could be assuaged only by hot water;
and he spent the greater part of his time wrapped in a blanket and lying
in a large tub.
A third time, however, the persistent girl called at his house and
insisted that she must see him, saying that she was herself in danger
from the enemies of the Republic. Through an open door Marat heard her
mellow voice and gave orders that she should be admitted.
As she entered she gazed for a moment upon the lank figure rolling in
the tub, the rat-like face, and the shifting eyes. Then she approached
him, concealing in the bosom of her dress a long carving-knife which she
had purchased for two francs. In answer to Marat's questioning look she
told him that there was much excitement at Caen and that the Girondists
were plotting there.
To this Marat answered, in his harsh voice:
"All these men you mention shall be guillotined in the next few days! "
As he spoke Charlotte flashed out the terrible knife and with all her
strength she plunged it into his left side, where it pierced a lung and
a portion of his heart.
Marat, with the blood gushing from his mouth, cried out:
"Help, darling! "
His cry was meant for one of the two women in the house. Both heard it,
for they were in the next room; and both of them rushed in and succeeded
in pinioning Charlotte Corday, who, indeed, made only a slight effort to
escape. Troops were summoned, she was taken to the Prison de l'Abbaye,
and soon after she was arraigned before the revolutionary tribunal.
Placed in the dock, she glanced about her with an air of pride, as
of one who gloried in the act which she had just performed. A written
charge was read. She was asked what she had to say. Lifting her head
with a look of infinite satisfaction, she answered in a ringing voice:
"Nothing--except that I succeeded! "
A lawyer was assigned for her defense. He pleaded for her earnestly,
declaring that she must he regarded as insane; but those clear, calm
eyes and that gentle face made her sanity a matter of little doubt.
She showed her quick wit in the answers which she gave to the rough
prosecutor, Fouquier-Tinville, who tried to make her confess that she
had accomplices.
"Who prompted you to do this deed? " roared Tinville.
"I needed no prompting. My own heart was sufficient. "
"In what, then, had Marat wronged you? "
"He was a savage beast who was going to destroy the remains of France in
the fires of civil war. "
"But whom did you expect to benefit? " insinuated the prosecutor.
"I have killed one man to save a hundred thousand. "
"What? Did you imagine that you had murdered all the Marats? "
"No, but, this one being dead, the rest will perhaps take warning. "
Thus her directness baffled all the efforts of the prosecution to trap
her into betraying any of her friends. The court, however, sentenced her
to death. She was then immured in the Conciergerie.
This dramatic court scene was the beginning of that strange, brief
romance to which one can scarcely find a parallel. At the time there
lived in Paris a young German named Adam Lux. The continual talk about
Charlotte Corday had filled him with curiosity regarding this young girl
who had been so daring and so patriotic. She was denounced on every hand
as a murderess with the face of a Medusa and the muscles of a Vulcan.
Street songs about her were dinned into the ears of Adam Lux.
As a student of human nature he was anxious to see this terrible
creature. He forced his way to the front of the crowded benches in the
court-room and took his stand behind a young artist who was finishing a
beautiful sketch. From that moment until the end of the trial the
eyes of Adam Lux were fastened on the prisoner. What a contrast to the
picture he had imagined!
A mass of regal chestnut hair crowned with the white cap of a Norman
peasant girl; gray eyes, very sad and serious, but looking serenely
forth from under long, dark lashes; lips slightly curved with an
expression of quiet humor; a face the color of the sun and wind, a
bust indicative of perfect health, the chin of a Caesar, and the whole
expression one of almost divine self-sacrifice. Such were the features
that the painter was swiftly putting upon his canvas; but behind them
Adam Lux discerned the soul for which he gladly sacrificed both his
liberty and his life.
He forgot his surroundings and seemed to see only that beautiful, pure
face and to hear only the exquisite cadences of the wonderful voice.
When Charlotte was led forth by a file of soldiers Adam staggered from
the scene and made his way as best he might to his lodgings. There he
lay prostrate, his whole soul filled with the love of her who had in an
instant won the adoration of his heart.
Once, and only once again, when the last scene opened on the tragedy,
did he behold the heroine of his dreams.
On the 17th of July Charlotte Corday was taken from her prison to the
gloomy guillotine. It was toward evening, and nature had given a setting
fit for such an end. Blue-black thunder-clouds rolled in huge masses
across the sky until their base appeared to rest on the very summit of
the guillotine. Distant thunder rolled and grumbled beyond the river.
Great drops of rain fell upon the soldiers' drums. Young, beautiful,
unconscious of any wrong, Charlotte Corday stood beneath the shadow of
the knife.
At the supreme moment a sudden ray from the setting sun broke through
the cloud-wrack and fell upon her slender figure until she glowed in the
eyes of the startled spectators like a statue cut in burnished bronze.
Thus illumined, as it were, by a light from heaven itself, she
bowed herself beneath the knife and paid the penalty of a noble, if
misdirected, impulse. As the blade fell her lips quivered with her last
and only plea:
"My duty is enough--the rest is nothing! "
Adam Lux rushed from the scene a man transformed. He bore graven upon
his heart neither the mob of tossing red caps nor the glare of the
sunset nor the blood-stained guillotine, but that last look from
those brilliant eyes. The sight almost deprived him of his reason. The
self-sacrifice of the only woman he had ever loved, even though she had
never so much as seen him, impelled him with a sort of fury to his own
destruction.
He wrote a bitter denunciation of the judges, of the officers, and
of all who had been followers of Marat. This document he printed,
and scattered copies of it through every quarter in Paris. The last
sentences are as follows:
The guillotine is no longer a disgrace. It has become a sacred altar,
from which every taint has been removed by the innocent blood shed
there on the 17th of July. Forgive me, my divine Charlotte, if I find
it impossible at the last moment to show the courage and the gentleness
that were yours! I glory because you are superior to me, for it is
right that she who is adored should be higher and more glorious than her
adorer!
This pamphlet, spread broadcast among the people, was soon reported to
the leaders of the rabble. Adam Lux was arrested for treason against
the Republic; but even these men had no desire to make a martyr of this
hot-headed youth. They would stop his mouth without taking his life.
Therefore he was tried and speedily found guilty, but an offer was
made him that he might have passports that would allow him to return to
Germany if only he would sign a retraction of his printed words.
