François de Chateaubriand
Mémoires d’outre-tombe
Book VI
Translated by A. S. Kline © 2005 All Rights Reserved.
This work may be freely reproduced, stored, and transmitted, electronically or otherwise, for any non-commercial purpose.
Contents
Book VI: Chapter 2: Ocean Passage
Book VI: Chapter 3: Francis Tulloch – Christopher Columbus - Camoëns
Book VI: Chapter 4: The Azores – The Island of Graciosa
Book VI: Chapter 3: Ocean customs – The Island of Saint-Pierre
Book VI: Chapter 7: Philadelphia – General Washington
Book VI: Chapter 8: Comparison of Washington and Bonaparte
London, April to September 1822. (Revised December 1846)
Thirty-one years after embarking, as a
mere second-lieutenant, for America, I embarked for London with a passport
conceived in these terms: ‘Allow passage,’ said this passport, ‘allow passage
to His Lordship the Vicomte de Chateaubriand, Peer of France, Ambassador of the
King to His Britannic Majesty, etc., etc.’ No description; my grandeur was apparently
such as to make my face known everywhere. A steamship, chartered for my sole
use, brought me from
Plunging into the gulf of dark vapour, as if into one of the mouths of Tartarus, and crossing the whole town, whose streets I recognised, I arrived at the Embassy in Portland Place. The chargé d’affaires, Monsieur le Comte Georges de Caraman, the Embassy secretaries, Monsieur le Vicomte de Marcellus, Monsieur le Baron Élisée Decazes, Monsieur de Bourqueney, and the attachés welcomed me with dignified politeness. All the ushers, porters, valets and footmen of the Embassy were assembled on the pavement. I was handed the cards of the English ministers and foreign ambassadors who had already been informed of my imminent arrival.
On the 17th of May in the
year of grace 1793, I had disembarked at
‘Ah! Monseigneur, how your life
Today, with every honour rife,
Differs from those happy times!’
However a different kind of obscurity has enveloped me
in
Since arriving in London as French
Ambassador, one of my greatest pleasures has been to leave my carriage at the
corner of the street, and wander on foot through the side streets that I once
frequented, those poor working-class suburbs, where misfortune takes refuge
under the protection of a like suffering, those obscure shelters which I
haunted with my companions in distress, not knowing if I would have bread to
eat next day, I whose table in 1822 groans under three or four courses. At all of
those narrow, humble doors which in the past were open to me, I see only
unfamiliar faces. I no longer meet my compatriots in the street, recognisable
by their gestures; their walk; the age and style of their clothes; no longer
notice those priestly martyrs, wearing their clerical collars; large
three-cornered hats; and long threadbare black coats, whom the English would
salute as they passed. Wide streets have been cut, lined with palaces, bridges
constructed, walkways planted: Regent’s
Park, near to
How I regret, in the midst of my
insipid grandeur, that world of tribulation and tears, those times when my
sorrows mingled with those of a colony of unfortunates! It is true then that
everything changes, that misfortune ends even as prosperity does! What has
become of my émigré brothers? Some are dead, others have suffered various
fates: they have seen their friends and families vanish; they are less happy in
their native country than they were in a foreign land. Had we not, in this
country, our reunions, our diversions, our celebrations, above all our youth? Mothers,
and young girls beginning their life in adversity, brought home the fruits of
their labours, and went to join in some dance of their homeland. Attachments
were formed after work, during the evening conversations, on the grass at
Hampstead or Primrose Hill. In chapels, decorated by our own hands in old
tumbledown buildings, we prayed together on the 21st of January and on the day of the Queen’s death, moved by a funeral
oration given by the emigrant priest from our village. We strolled beside the
When in 1822 I return home, instead of being met by a friend, shivering with cold, who opens the door of an attic to me familiarly, who beds down on a pallet next to mine, covering himself with a thin coat, with the moonlight for his lamp – I pass between two rows of lackeys, to the light of torches, to reach five or six respectful secretaries. I arrive, riddled with words along the way: Monseigneur, Milord, Your Excellency, Monsieur the Ambassador, at a drawing room draped with gold and silk.
– I beg you, Gentlemen, leave me! A truce to these Milords! What do you wish me to do? Go away, laugh in the Chancery, as if I were not here. Do you imagine you can make me take this masquerade seriously? Do you think me such a fool as to believe that I have changed my nature because I have changed my coat? The Marquis of Londonderry is coming to visit, you say; the Duke of Wellington has asked for me; Mr Canning is seeking me; Lady Jersey expects me to dinner with Lord Brougham; Lady Gwydir expects me at ten in her box at the Opera; Lady Mansfield at midnight at Almack’s –
Mercy! Where can I hide? Who will deliver me? Who will rescue me from this persecution? Return, you lovely days of misery and solitude! Live once more, companions of my exile! Come, old comrades of pallet and camp-bed, come to the countryside, to the little garden of some quiet tavern, drink a cup of bad tea on a wooden bench and talk of our foolish hopes, and our ungrateful land, speaking of our troubles, searching for ways to help one another, or to succour a relative of ours even more deserving than ourselves.
This is what I have felt, and what I
have said to myself in these first days of my
It was in Kensington Gardens that I planned the Essai Historique; it was there where, re-reading the journal of my travels overseas, I drew on it for the loves of Atala; it was there too, after wandering far and wide over the fields under a lowering sky, which turned yellow as if filled with polar light, that I pencilled out the first sketch of René’s passions. At night I deposited the fruit of my daydreams in the Essai Historique and Les Natchez. The two manuscripts advanced side by side, though I often lacked the money to buy writing paper, and for want of thread fastened the pages together with tacks pulled from the battens in my attic.
The site of my early inspirations
commands me to feel its power; it casts the gentle light of my memories over
the present: – I feel like taking up my pen once more. So many hours are wasted
in embassies! I have no less time than in
It was twenty-two years ago, as I have
said, that I sketched out Les Natchez
and Atala; I am at the precise point
in my Memoirs at which I sailed for
London, April to September 1822.
The previous book ended with my embarkation
at Saint-Malo. Soon we left the
Channel, and immense waves from the west proclaimed the
It is hard for those who have never voyaged to gain an idea of the feelings one experiences on board ship, seeing nothing on every side but the solemn face of the deep. In the perilous life of a sailor there is an independence which is absent on land; one leaves the passions of men behind on shore; between the world one leaves and that which one seeks, one has for friendship and country only the element that supports one: mo more duties to fulfil, mo more visits to make, no more newspapers, no more politics. Even the language of sailors is no ordinary language: it is a language that speaks of oceans and skies, calms and storms. You inhabit a universe of water among creatures whose clothes, tastes, manners, faces resemble no earth-dwelling people: they possess the hardness of sea wolves and the lightness of birds; there is no trace of the worries of society on their brows; the wrinkles that traverse them resemble the pleats in a furled sail, and are less hollowed out by age than by the wind, as the waves are. The skin of these creatures, impregnated with salt, is reddened, rough as the surface of a reef lashed by the tide.
The sailors have a passion for their vessel; they cry with regret on leaving her, with tenderness on re-embarking. They are unable to remain with their families; after having sworn a hundred times not to expose themselves to the sea, it is impossible for them to ignore it, as a young man cannot tear himself from the arms of a faithless and volatile mistress.
On the dockside in
The sail was split on the coast of
The anchor saved the vessel when it had dragged its other anchors, among the coral reefs of the Sandwich Isles.
The mast was broken in a squall off
the
The canon is the only one not dismounted at the battle of the Chesapeake.
The news on board is most interesting: the lead has been cast; the ship is making ten knots.
The sky is clear at
Our position has been established: so many leagues have been gained along our ideal route.
The needle’s declination is so many degrees: we are reaching northwards.
The sand in the hourglass flows poorly: we will have rain.
Procellaria, stormy petrels, have been seen behind the vessel’s wake: we can expect a sharp gust.
Flying fish have appeared to the south: the weather will be calmer.
A break in the clouds has formed towards the west: it is the source of the wind; tomorrow the wind will blow from that quarter.
The water has changed hue; wood and sea-wrack can be seen floating; sea-gulls and ducks are visible; a little bird came and perched on a yard: the headland must be left behind, since we are nearing shore, and it is a bad idea to berth at night.
In the chicken-coop, there is a favourite cockerel that is sacred, so to speak, and has survived all others; he is famous for having crowed during battle, as if in the farmyard amongst his hens. Below deck a cat lives: its fur streaked with green, with a mangy tail, hairy whiskers, firm on its feet, countering the pitch and roll with its balancing act; it has been round the world twice, and was saved from shipwreck riding on a barrel. The ships’-boys give the cockerel biscuits soaked in wine, and Tomcat has the privilege of sleeping, when it pleases him, on the second captain’s fur mantle.
Old sailors resemble old ploughmen. The fruits of their labour are different, it is true; the sailor has led a wandering life, the ploughman has never left his fields; but they both know the stars and predict the future while cutting their furrow. To the one belongs the skylark, the red-breast, the nightingale; to the other the petrel, the curlew, the halcyon – their prophets. They retire for the night, one to his cabin, the other to his cottage; frail habitations, where the hurricane that shakes them has no effect on tranquil consciences.
‘If the wind tempestuous is blowing,
Still no danger they descry;
The guileless heart its boon bestowing,
Soothes them with its Lullaby…’
The sailor knows not where death will surprise him, on which shore he will lose his life: perhaps, when he has given his last sigh to the breeze, he will be thrown into the heart of the waves, attached to two oars, to continue his voyage, perhaps he will be cast on some desert island that no one will never find again, just as he has slumbered alone in his hammock, in the midst of the ocean.
The lone vessel is a fine sight:
responding to the lightest touch of the tiller, a hippogriff or winged courser,
obedient to the pilot’s hand, like a horse under the hand of a rider. The
elegance of the masts and rigging, the agility of the sailors as they scramble
along the yards, the different aspects in which the ship presents itself,
leaning into a hostile southerly, or fleeing swiftly before a favourable
northerly, make this sentient structure one of the wonders of human ingenuity.
Now the foaming wave strikes and spurts against the hull; now the peaceful waters
divide, without resistance, before the prow. Flags, flames, sails complete the
beauty of this
On this pathway through the ocean,
along whose length one sees neither tree nor village, town nor turret, spire
nor tomb; on this road without signposts or milestones, which has only the
waves for markers, only the winds for intermediaries, only the stars for
lanterns, the finest of events, when one is not in search of unknown lands and
seas, is the meeting of two vessels. Each discovers the other far-off on the
horizon; they steer towards each other. The passengers and crew rush to the
bridge. The two boats draw near, hoist their flags, and furl their sails to lie
parallel. When all is quiet, the two captains, standing on the poop, hail each
other with a megaphone: ‘What name? Out of what Port? Your captain’s name?
Where from? How many days crossing? Latitude and longitude? Adieu, away!’ They
let go a reef; the sail unfurls. The sailors and passengers from the two
vessels watch each other depart, without saying a word: these go to seek the
sun of
And what if the vessel met with was that of Cook or La Pérouse?
The boatswain of our vessel was an old
supercargo named Pierre Villeneuve,
whose name itself pleased me because of my own kindly nurse Villeneuve. He had served in
The bell would interrupt our conversations; it struck the watches, and the hours for dressing, roll-call and meals. In the morning, at a signal, the crew lined up on deck, stripped off their blue shirts, and donned others drying in the shrouds. The discarded shirts were immediately washed in tubs, in which this school of seals also soaped their sunburnt faces and tarry paws.
At the
Wrapped in my cloak, I stretched out at night on deck. My eyes contemplated the stars above. The swollen sail conveyed the coolness of the breeze to me, which rocked me beneath the celestial dome: half-asleep and driven onwards by the wind, the sky changed with my changing dreams.
The passengers on board ship offer an alternative society to that of the crew: they belong to another element; their destinies are earthbound. Some hasten to seek their fortunes, others rest; those return to their homeland, these leave theirs behind; still others voyage to research the ways of other peoples, to study the sciences and the arts. One has the leisure to learn in this floating hotel that travels with the traveller, to hear of many things, to conceive antipathies, and contract friendships. When those young women come and go, born of English and Indian blood, who combine the beauty of Clarissa and the delicacy of Sakuntala, then those necklaces are formed which knot and un-knot the perfumed breezes of Ceylon, as light and gentle as they are themselves.
London, April to September 1822.
Among my fellow-passengers was a young
Englishman. Francis Tulloch had served in
the artillery; painter, musician and mathematician, he spoke several languages.
The Abbé Nagot, the
I befriended Tulloch: as I was a convinced free-thinker at that time, I urged him to return to his parents. The sight we had before our eyes aroused his admiration. We would rise at night, when the deck was given over to the officer of the watch and a few sailors silently smoking their pipes: Tuta aequora silent: the sea calm and silent. The ship rolled at the mercy of the slow and noiseless waves, while sparks of fire coursed with the white foam along her sides. Thousands of stars shining in the sombre azure of the celestial dome, a shore-less sea, infinity in the sky and on the waters! God never impressed me with his greatness more than in those nights when I had immensity over my head and immensity under my feet.
Westerly winds, interspersed with
calms, delayed our progress. By the 4th of May we had got no farther than the Azores. On the 6th, at about eight in the morning,
we caught sight of the
There is something magical in the
sight of land rising from the depths of the sea. Christopher Columbus, in the midst of his mutinous crew,
ready to return to
Vasco da Gama must have been no less amazed, when
in 1498 he touched the coast of
When Gonzalo Villo, Camoëns’ maternal grandfather, discovered part of the Azores archipelago, he should, if he had foreseen the future, have reserved a six foot plot of earth to cover the bones of his grandson.
We anchored in a poor roadstead with a
rocky bottom, in forty-five fathoms of water. The
It was decided that I should go ashore
with Tulloch and the mate; the longboat
was lowered into the water: it was rowed to the shore which was about two miles
away. We saw some movement on the beach; a flat-bottomed boat advanced towards
us. As soon as it was within earshot, we made out a number of monks on board.
They hailed us in Portuguese, Italian, English and French, and we replied in
all four languages. The alarm bell was ringing: our vessel was the first large
sailing ship that had ventured to anchor in the dangerous roadstead where we
were riding the tide. What is more, the islanders were seeing a tricolour flag
for the first time: they wondered if we were corsairs from Algiers or Tunis!
Neptune had not recognised the standard
carried so proudly by Cybele. When they saw
we had human forms, and understood what was said to us, their joy was extreme.
The monks helped us into their boat, and we rowed gaily towards
The whole island ran to meet us. Four or five alguazils (Portuguese warrant-officers), armed with rusty pikes, took charge of us. The uniform of His Majesty attracted the honours in my direction, and I was taken for the most important member of the delegation. We were escorted to the Governor’s residence, a hovel, where His Excellency wearing a shabby green uniform, which had once possessed gold lace, granted us solemn audience: he gave us permission to re-victual.
The monks took us to their monastery,
a roomy well-lit building with balconies. Tulloch had found a fellow
countryman: the principal brother, who did everything to accommodate us, was a
sailor from Jersey, whose ship had gone
down with all hands off Graciosa. Sole survivor of the wreck, and not lacking
in intellect, he had become a willing pupil of the catechists; he had learnt
Portuguese and a few words of Latin; his English origins had told in his
favour, they had converted him and made a monk of him. The sailor from
The houses in the villages, built of wood and stone, were adorned with outer galleries which gave a clean look to these huts because they let in a great deal of light. The peasants, nearly all of them vine-growers, were half-naked, and bronzed by the sun; the women, small and yellow-skinned like mulattoes, but lively, were naively coquettish with their bouquets of mock-orange, and their rosaries worn as coronets or necklaces.
The hillsides were covered with vine-stocks, the wine obtained from which resembled that of Fayal. Water was scarce, but wherever a spring welled a fig tree grew and there was an oratory with a portico painted in fresco. The arches of the portico framed views of the island and the sea. It was on one of these fig trees I saw a flock of blue teal settle, a species lacking webbed feet. The tree had no leaves, but it bore red fruit set like crystals. When it was adorned with the cerulean birds, with wings at rest, its fruits appeared bright crimson, while the tree seemed to have suddenly sent out azure foliage.
It is likely that the
I have it, in the manuscript of Les Natchez,
that Chactas returning from
A good supper was served to us by the
monks, after our excursion; we spent the night drinking with our hosts. Next
day, about
London, April to September 1822.
BkVI:Chap5:Sec1
‘Fac pelagus me scire probes, quo carbasa laxo: Muse, help me show how I know this sea where I deploy my sail.’
Those are the words of Guillaume le Breton, my compatriot, six hundred
years ago. At sea again, I began to contemplate its solitudes once more; but
across the ideal world of my reveries, like stern instructors,
Space laid out in dual azure had the look of a canvas ready to receive some great painter’s imminent creation. The colour of the waves was like liquid glass. Broad and deep undulations appeared in their ravines, escaping from sight in the deserts of the Ocean: those quivering landscapes made the comparison meaningful to me that Scripture draws between the Earth reeling before the Lord, and a drunken man. Sometimes, one would have said that space was narrow and bounded, without projecting points; but if a wave chanced to raise its head, the flood curved in imitation of a distant shore, until a school of dog-fish swam past on its horizon, so creating a scale of measurement. Its expanse revealed itself, especially when mist, creeping over the pelagian surface, seemed to increase its immensity even further.
Descending from the mast’s eyrie, as I once used to descend from my nest in the willow-tree, forever constrained to my solitary existence, I would eat a ship’s biscuit, and a little sugar and lemon; then, I would lie down to sleep, on deck wrapped in my cloak, or below deck in my bunk: I had only to stretch my arm to reach from my bed to my coffin.
The wind forced us northwards and we made the Banks of Newfoundland. Floating icebergs were drifting in the midst of a pale cold drizzle.
The men of the trident have customs handed down to them by their predecessors: when you cross the Line, you must resign yourself to receiving baptism; the same ceremony takes place in the Tropics as on the Banks of Newfoundland, and wherever the location, the leader of the masque is always the Old Man of the Tropics. Tropical and dropsical are synonymous terms to sailors: so the Old Man of the Tropics has an enormous paunch; he is dressed, even when he is in his native Tropics, in all the sheepskins and fur jackets the crew can muster. He squats in the maintop, giving a roar every now and then. Everybody gazes up at him: he starts to clamber down the shrouds, clumsy as a bear, stumbling like Silenus. As he sets foot on deck, he utters fresh roars, gives a bound, seizes a pail, fills it with sea-water, and empties it over the heads of those who have never crossed the Equator or never reached the latitude of icebergs. You may flee below deck, leap onto the hatches, or climb the masts: the Old Man pursues you; they end with a generous tip, these games of Amphitrite, that Homer would have celebrated, just as he sang of Proteus, if old Oceanus had been known in his entirety in Ulysses’ time; but at that time only his head was visible at the Pillars of Hercules; his body, hidden, covered the world.
We steered for the islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, seeking a new port of call. When
we approached the former, one morning between ten and
We anchored in front of the capital of the island: we could not see it but we could hear the noises onshore. The passengers hastened to disembark; the Superior of Saint-Sulpice, continuously plagued by sea-sickness, was so feeble he had to be carried to land. I took lodgings apart from the others; I waited for a squall to blow away the fog, and show me the place I inhabited, and the faces so to speak of my hosts in this country of shadows.
The port and roadstead of Saint-Pierre are set between the east coast of the island and an elongated islet called the Île aux Chiens, the Isle of Dogs. The port, known as the Barachois, stretches inland and ends in a brackish pool. Some barren rounded hills are crowded together in the centre of the island: one or two, standing apart, overhang the sea; the rest have a fringe of levelled peaty moor-land at their feet. The look-out hill can be seen from the town.
The Governor’s house faces the wharf. The church, the rectory, the chandler’s shop are all in the same area; next there are the houses of the naval commissioner and the harbour-master. Then the town’s only street begins, which runs across the pebbles along the beach.
I dined with the Governor two or three times, an extremely polite and obliging officer. He grew European vegetables on the hillside. After dinner he showed me what he called his garden.
A sweet and delicate scent of heliotrope rose from a small bed of flowering beans; it was not wafted to us by a breeze from home, but by a wild Newfoundland wind, unrelated to that exiled plant, and lacking the kindliness of reminiscence and delight. In this perfume, no longer breathed in by beauty, purified in its breast, nor diffused in its wake, in this perfume of another dawn, another world, another culture, was all the melancholy of regret, absence, youth.
From the garden, we ascended the
hills, and halted at the foot of the flagpole in front of the lookout. The new
French flag floated over our heads; like Virgil’s
women we gazed at the sea, flentes, in
tears. It separated us from our native land! The Governor was troubled; he belonged to the
defeated side; moreover he was bored in this retreat, which was fine for a
dreamer like me, but a harsh abode for a man interested in public affairs,
unaffected by that all-absorbing passion which can banish the rest of the world
from sight. My host enquired about the Revolution, while I asked him for news
of the North-West Passage. He was at the edge of the wilderness, but he knew
nothing of Eskimos and received nothing from
One morning, I went alone to the Cap-à-l’Aigle,
to see the sun rise in the direction of
We remained without speaking for a few minutes; at last, I showed myself the bolder, and said: ‘What are you gathering, there? The season for blueberries and cranberries is over.’ She raised two large dark eyes, shyly and proudly, and replied: ‘I was picking tea.’ She showed me her basket. ‘You are taking the tea home to your mother and father? – My father is away fishing with Guillaumy. – What do you do on this island in winter? – We make nets, we fish the lakes by breaking holes in the ice; on Sundays, we go to Mass and Vespers, where we sing hymns; and then we play in the snow and watch the boys hunting polar bears. – Will your father be back soon? –
Oh,
no! The captain is taking the boat to
She rose, took up her basket, and ran
down a steep path, beside a fir-grove. She was singing a
‘All burning with immortal ardour,
It is toward God my wishes tend.’
On her way she scattered some lovely birds called egrets because of the tufts on their heads; she looked as though she was one of their number. Reaching the sea, she leap into a boat, loosed the sail, and sat down at the rudder; one might have taken her for Fortune: she sailed away from me.
Oh, yes! Oh, no, Guillaumy! The image of the young sailor out on a yard, in the midst of the wind, changed the dreadful rock of Saint-Pierre into a land of delights:
‘L’isola di Fortuna ora vedete: Now you may see the Fortunate Isles.’
We spent fifteen days on the island.
From its desolate shores one can see the even more desolate coast of Newfoundland. The hills inland extend in
divergent chains, of which the most elevated stretches north towards
Small lakes are fed by the inflow of streams from La Vigie, Le Courval, Le Pain de Sucre, Le Kergariou, and La Tête Galante. These pools are known as Les Étangs du Savoyard, Le Cap Noir, Le Ravenel, Le Colombier, and Le Cap à l’Aigle. When gusts of wind stir these lakes they divide the shallows laying bare here and there stretches of drowned meadowland which are suddenly hidden again by the re-woven veil of water.
The flora of Saint-Pierre is like that
of
The slopes of the hillocks on Saint-Pierre are clothed with balsam fir, amelanchier, gaultheria, larch, and black fir, whose buds are used to produce anti-scorbutic ale. These ‘trees’ do not exceed the height of a man. The ocean winds pollard them, rock them, and bend them like ferns; then gliding beneath these forests of undergrowth, raise them again; but it finds no trunks, branches, arches, no echo of its moaning and makes no more noise there than it does over a moor.
These stunted woods contrast with the
tall woods of
The northern tip of
London, April to September 1822.
After taking on provisions and replacing the anchor lost at Graciosa, we left Saint-Pierre. Sailing south, we reached 38 degrees latitude. We were becalmed not far off the coasts of Maryland and Virginia. The misty skies of the northern regions had been succeeded by the clearest of skies; we could not see land, but the odour of the pine-forests reached us. Daybreak and dawn, sunrise and sunset, dusk and nightfall were all admirable. I was never weary of gazing at Venus, whose rays seemed to envelop me as my sylph’s tresses had long ago.
One evening, I was reading in the captain’s cabin; the bell sounded for prayers: I went to add my vows to those of my companions. The officers occupied the poop with the passengers; the chaplain, book in hand, was a little way from us near the tiller: we were standing, facing the prow of the vessel. All the sails were furled.
The sun’s disc, ready to plunge into the waves, appeared amongst the rigging in the midst of boundless space: one would have said, because of the motion of the ship, that the radiant star altered its relationship to the horizon each instant. When I drew this picture, which you can re-read in its entirety, in Le Génie du Christianisme, my religious sentiments were in harmony with the scene; but, alas, when I was there in person, the unconverted man was alive in me! It was not God alone whom I contemplated above the waves in the magnificence of his works. I saw an unknown woman and the miracle of her smile; the beauties of the heavens seemed born from her breath; I would have given eternity for one of her caresses. I imagined that she was throbbing behind that veil of the universe which hid her from my eyes. Oh! If it had only been in my power to tear away that curtain and press that ideal woman to my heart, and be consumed on her breast in that love, the source of my inspiration, my despair and my existence! While I was indulging in these impulses so fitting to my future career as a trapper, it nearly happened that an accident put an end to my dreams and plans.
The heat was overpowering; the vessel, in a dead calm, and weighed down by its masts, was rolling heavily: roasting on deck and wearied by the motion of the ship I decide to bathe, and though we had no boat out, I dived from the bowsprit into the sea. All went well to begin with, and several passengers followed my example. I swam about without glancing at the ship; but when I chanced to turn my head, I saw that the current had carried her some way off. The sailors, alarmed by this, had thrown a rope to the other swimmers. Sharks appeared in the ship’s wake, and shots were fired at them to scare them off. The swell was so heavy, that it prevented my return, while exhausting my strength. There was a whirlpool beneath me, and at any moment the sharks might have made off with an arm or a leg. On board, the boatswain tried to lower a boat into the sea, but the tackle had to be rigged first, and this took a considerable time.
By the greatest good luck, an almost imperceptible breeze sprang up; the ship, answering a little to the helm, approached me; I was able to catch the end of the rope; but my companions in foolhardiness were already clinging to it; when we were dragged to the ship’s side, I was at the end of the line, and they bore down on me with all their weight. They fished us up in this way one by one, which took a long time. The rolling continued; at every alternate roll, we plunged six or seven feet in the water, or were suspended as many feet in the air, like fish on the end of a line: at the last immersion I felt as I were about to faint; one more roll, and it would have been all over. I was hoisted on deck half-dead: if I had been drowned, what good riddance for me and everyone else!
Two days after this incident, we were
in sight of land. My heart beat wildly when the captain pointed it out to me:
Casting my gaze around me, I remained motionless for a few moments. This continent, possibly unknown to both ancient times and a series of modern centuries; the first savage destiny of that continent, and its second destiny since the arrival of Christopher Columbus; the supremacy of the European monarchies shaken by this new world; an old social order ending in this young America; a republic of a new kind announcing a change in the human spirit; the part my country had played in these events; the seas and shores owing their independence in part to French blood and the French flag; a great man issuing from the midst of wilderness and discord; Washington at home in a flourishing city, on the same spot where William Penn had bought a patch of forest; the United States passing to France that Revolution which France had supported with her arms; lastly my own plans, the virgin muse I had come here to deliver to the passion of a new Nature; the discoveries I hoped to make in the deserts that still extended their vast kingdom behind the limited rule of a foreign civilisation: such were the thoughts that revolved in my mind.
We walked towards a house. Woods of balsam and Virginian cedar, mocking-birds and cardinal tanagers proclaimed, by their shade and appearance, their song and colour, another clime. The house, which we reached after half-an-hour, was a mixture of English farm house and Creole hut. Herds of European cattle grazed in pasture land enclosed by fencing on which striped squirrels were playing. Black people were sawing timber, whites were tending tobacco plants. A Negress, thirteen of fourteen years old, almost naked and singularly beautiful, opened the gate of the enclosure for us like a young Night. We bought some maize cakes, chickens, eggs and milk, and returned to the ship with our baskets and demijohns. I gave my silk handkerchief to the little African girl: it was a slave who welcomed me to the land of liberty.
We weighed anchor to head for the
roads and
What became of Francis Tulloch? The following letter was delivered
to me in
‘Thirty years have passed, my dear Viscount, since the era of our voyage to Baltimore, and its quite possible you have even forgotten my name; but if I trust to the sentiments of my heart, which have always remained loyal and true to you, it is not so, and I flatter myself you would not be unhappy at seeing me once more. Though we live opposite one another (as you will see from the address of my letter), I am only too well aware how many things separate us. But witness the least desire to see me, and I will be happy to prove to you, as far as I can, that I am still as I have always been, your faithful and devoted,
Francis Tulloch’
P.S. The distinguished rank you have achieved and which has conferred on you so many titles is before my eyes; but the memory of the Chevalier de Chateaubriand is so dear to me, that I cannot write to you (at least on this occasion) as Ambassador etc.,etc. So, forgive the style for the sake of our old friendship.
Friday 12th April,
So Tulloch was in
London, April to September 1822.
Baltimore,
like all the other capitals of the
The route we followed, more marked out than made, crossed fairly flat country: there were hardly any trees, few farms, and scattered villages, the climate being French, with swallows flying over the water as they did over the pond at Combourg.
Near Philadelphia, we met farm-workers going
to market, and public and private carriages.
At the time of my journey in 1791,
First putting up at an inn, I later took a room in a boarding-house where San Domingo planters, and Frenchmen who had emigrated, possessing other ideas than mine, lodged. A land of liberty offered asylum to those fleeing from liberty: nothing proves the high worth of generous institutions more than this voluntary exile of the supporters of absolute power to a pure democracy.
Anyone, arriving like myself in the
United States, full of enthusiasm for the people of classical times, a Cato, seeking everywhere the severity of
early Roman life, was bound to be shocked by the luxurious carriages, the
frivolous conversation, the inequality of wealth, the immorality of the banks
and gaming houses, and the noisy ballrooms and theatres. In
At that stage of my life, I had a great admiration for Republics, though I did not consider them achievable in the era we had reached: I thought of liberty after the manner of the ancients, or liberty as the daughter of the methods of a new-born society; but I knew nothing of liberty as the child of enlightenment and an old civilisation, liberty which the representative republic has shown to be a reality: God grant it my prove durable! It is no longer necessary to plough one’s own small field, to curse the arts and sciences, or to have pointed nails and a dirty beard to be free.
When I arrived in
A small house, resembling the
neighbouring houses, was the palace of the President of the
I was not greatly moved: greatness of soul or fortune do not impress me; I admire the former without being overawed; the latter fills me more with pity than respect: no man’s face will ever disturb me.
After a few minutes, the General entered: tall in stature, with a calm, cool air rather than one of nobility, he looked like his portraits. I handed him my letter in silence; he opened it, going straight to the signature which he read aloud, exclaiming: ‘Colonel Armand!’ This was the name he knew him by, and with which the Marquis de la Rouërie had signed the letter.
We were seated. I explained to him as best I could the motive for my journey. He replied in monosyllables in English and French, and listened to me with a kind of astonishment; I noticed this, and said to him with a degree of vivacity: ‘But it is less difficult to discover the North-West passage than to create a nation as you have done.’ – ‘Well, well, young man!’ he exclaimed, giving me his hand. He invited me to dinner on the following day, and we parted.
I took good care to be there. We were
only five or six guests. The conversation turned to the French Revolution. The
General showed us a key from the Bastille.
These keys, as I have already remarked, were foolish toys which were widely
distributed. Three years later, the exporters of locksmiths’ wares could have sent
the President of the
I left my host at ten in the evening, and never met him again; he departed the next day, and I continued my travels.
Such was my meeting with the soldier-citizen, the liberator of the world. Washington descended into his grave before even a little fame attached itself to my footsteps; I came before him as the most insignificant of beings; he was in all his glory, I in all my obscurity; my name may not even have lingered a day in his memory: though I am happy that his gaze should have rested on me! I have felt warmed by it for the rest of my life: there is a virtue in the gaze of a great man.
Bonaparte
is not long dead. Since I have come knocking on Washington’s door, the parallel between
the founder of the
‘That they were long overdue, and that Attila was bored.’
A degree of silence envelops
Bonaparte shared no trait with that serious American: he fought amidst thunder in an old world; he thought about nothing but creating his own fame; he was inspired only by his own fate. He seemed to know that his project would be short, that the torrent which falls from such heights flows swiftly; he hastened to enjoy and abuse his glory, like fleeting youth. Following the example of Homer’s gods, in four paces he reached the ends of the world. He appeared on every shore; he wrote his name hurriedly in the annals of every people; he threw royal crowns to his family and his generals; he hurried through his monuments, his laws, his victories. Leaning over the world, with one hand he deposed kings, with the other he pulled down the giant, Revolution; but, in eliminating anarchy, he stifled liberty, and ended by losing his own on his last field of battle.
Each was rewarded according to his
efforts:
Bonaparte robs a nation of its independence: deposed as emperor, he is sent into exile, where the world’s anxiety still does not think him safely enough imprisoned, guarded by the Ocean. He dies: the news proclaimed on the door of the palace in front of which the conqueror had announced so many funerals, neither detains nor astonishes the passer-by: what have the citizens to mourn?
Bonaparte might have enriched public life equally; he acted on the most intelligent, bravest, most brilliant nation on earth. What a ranking he would have today if he had joined magnanimity to whatever he possessed of the heroic, if, at once Washington and Bonaparte, he had appointed liberty as the sole legatee of his glory!
But that giant never linked his own destiny to that of his contemporaries; his genius belonged to the modern age: his ambition was that of ancient times; he could not see that the miracles of his life were worth more than a coronet, and that such Gothic ornaments suited him ill. At one moment he launched himself at the future, at another he fell back into the past; and whether he stirred or followed the current of his time, with his prodigious force he drove on or held back the waves. Men were in his eyes only a means to power; no identification was established between their happiness and his own: he promised to deliver them, and he enchained them; he isolated himself from them, they distanced themselves from him. The Egyptian Pharaohs sited their funeral pyramids not among flowering meadows, but in the midst of sterile sands; those great tombs stand like eternity in the solitude: Bonaparte built the monument to his fame in their image.
End of Book VI