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LIFE OF ALBERT GALLATIN.

YOUTH. 1761-1790.

After the elevation of Geneva to the rank of a sovereign republic in 1535, the history of the Gallatins is the history of the city. The family, if not the first in the state, was second to none. Government was aristocratic in this small republic, and of the eleven families into whose hands it fell at the time of the Reformation, the Gallatins furnished syndics and counsellors, with that regularity and frequency which characterized the mode of selection, in a more liberal measure than any of the other ten. Five Gallatins held the position of first syndic, and as such were the chief magistrates of the republic. Many were in the Church; some were professors and rectors of the University. They counted at least one political martyr among their number,--a Gallatin who, charged with the crime of being head of a party which aimed at popular reforms in the constitution, was seized and imprisoned in 1698, and died in 1719, after twenty-one years of close confinement. They overflowed into foreign countries. Pierre, the elder son of Jean, was the source of four distinct branches of the family, which spread and multiplied in every direction, although of them all no male representative now exists except among the descendants of Albert Gallatin. One was in the last century a celebrated physician in Paris, chief of the hospital established by Mme. Necker; another was Minister of Foreign Affairs to the Duke of Brunswick, who, when mortally wounded at the battle of Jena, in 1806, commended his minister to the King of W?rtemberg as his best and dearest friend. The King respected this dying injunction, and Count Gallatin, in 1819, was, as will be seen, the W?rtemberg minister at Paris.

That the Gallatins did not restrict their activity to civil life is a matter of course. There were few great battle-fields in Europe where some of them had not fought, and not very many where some of them had not fallen. Voltaire testifies to this fact in the following letter to Count d'Argental, which contains a half-serious, half-satirical account of their military career:

VOLTAIRE TO THE COUNT D'ARGENTAL.

Voici la plus belle occasion, mon cher ange, d'exercer votre minist?re c?leste. Il s'agit du meilleur office que je puisse recevoir de vos bont?s.

Je vous conjure, mon cher et respectable ami, d'employer tout votre cr?dit aupr?s de M. le Duc de Choiseul; aupr?s de ses amis; s'il le faut, aupr?s de sa ma?tresse, &c., &c. Et pourquoi os?-je vous demander tant d'appui, tant de z?le, tant de vivacit?, et surtout un prompt succ?s? Pour le bien du service, mon cher ange; pour battre le Duc de Brunsvick. M. Galatin, officier aux gardes suisses, qui vous pr?sentera ma tr?s-humble requ?te, est de la plus ancienne famille de Gen?ve; ils se font tuer pour nous de p?re en fils depuis Henri Quatre. L'oncle de celui-ci a ?t? tu? devant Ostende; son fr?re l'a ?t? ? la malheureuse et abominable journ?e de Rosbach, ? ce que je crois; journ?e o? les r?giments suisses firent seuls leur devoir. Si ce n'est pas ? Rosbach, c'est ailleurs; le fait est qu'il a ?t? tu?; celui-ci a ?t? bless?. Il sert depuis dix ans; il a ?t? aide-major; il veut l'?tre. Il faut des aides-major qui parlent bien allemand, qui soient actifs, intelligens; il est tout cela. Enfin vous saurez de lui pr?cis?ment ce qu'il lui faut; c'est en g?n?ral la permission d'aller vite chercher la mort ? votre service. Faites-lui cette gr?ce, et qu'il ne soit point tu?, car il est fort aimable et il est neveu de cette Mme. Calendrin que vous avez vue ?tant enfant. Mme. sa m?re est bien aussi aimable que Mme. Calendrin.

One Gallatin fell in 1602 at the Escalade, famous in Genevan history; another at the siege of Ostend, in 1745; another at the battle of Marburg, in 1760; another, the ninth of his name who had served in the Swiss regiment of Aubonne, fell in 1788, acting as a volunteer at the siege of Octzakow; still another, in 1797, at the passage of the Rhine. One commanded a battalion under Rochambeau at the siege of Yorktown. But while these scattered members of the family were serving with credit and success half the princes of Christendom, the main stock was always Genevan to the core and pre-eminently distinguished in civil life.

One of the four branches of this extensive family was represented in the middle of the eighteenth century by Abraham Gallatin, who lived on his estate at Pregny, one of the most beautiful spots on the west shore of the lake, near Geneva, and who is therefore known as Abraham Gallatin of Pregny. His wife, whom he had married in 1732, was Susanne Vaudenet, commonly addressed as Mme. Gallatin-Vaudenet. They were, if not positively wealthy, at least sufficiently so to maintain their position among the best of Genevese society, and Mme. Gallatin appears to have been a woman of more than ordinary character, intelligence, and ambition. The world knows almost every detail about the society of Geneva at that time; for, apart from a very distinguished circle of native Genevans, it was the society in which Voltaire lived, and to which the attention of much that was most cultivated in Europe was for that reason, if for no other, directed. Voltaire was a near neighbor of the Gallatins at Pregny. Notes and messages were constantly passing between the two houses. Dozens of these little billets in Voltaire's hand are still preserved. Some are written on the back of ordinary playing-cards. The deuce of clubs says:

"Nous sommes aux ordres de Mme. Galatin. Nous t?cherons d'employer ferblantier. Parlement Paris refuse tout ?dit et veut que le roi demande pardon ? Parlement Bezan?on. Anglais ont voulu rebombarder H?vre. N'ont r?ussi. Carosse ? une heure 1/2. Respects."

There is no date; but this is not necessary, for the contents seem to fix the date for the year 1756. A note endorsed "Des D?lices" is in the same tone:

Another, of the year 1759, is on business:

Another of the same year introduces Mme. Gallatin's figs, of which she seems to have been proud:

Then follows a brief note dated "Ferney, 18e 7re," 1761:

"Nous comptions revenir tous souper ? Ferney apr?s la com?die. Mr. le Duc de Villars nous retint; notre carosse se rompit; nous essuy?mes tous les contretemps possibles; la vie en est sem?e; mais le plus grand de tous est de n'avoir pas eu l'honneur de souper avec vous."

One of the friends for whom Mme. Gallatin-Vaudenet seems to have felt the strongest attachment, and with whom she corresponded, was the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, a personage not favorably known in American history. The Landgrave, in 1776, sent Mme. Gallatin his portrait, and Mme. Gallatin persuaded Voltaire to write for her a copy of verses addressed to the Landgrave, in recognition of this honor. Here they are from the original draft:

"J'ai bais? ce portrait charmant, Je vous l'avourai sans myst?re. Mes filles en out fait autant, Mais c'est un secret qu'il faut taire. Vous trouverez bon qu'une m?re Vous parle un peu plus hardiment; Et vous verrez qu'?galement En tous les temps vous savez plaire."

The success of Mme. Gallatin in the matter of figs led Voltaire to beg of her some trees; but his fortune was not so good as hers.

One more letter by Voltaire is all that can find room here. The Landgrave seems to have sent by Mme. Gallatin some asparagus seed to Voltaire, which he acknowledged in these words:

VOLTAIRE TO THE LANDGRAVE OF HESSE.

Le 15e septembre, 1772, DE FERNEY.

MONSEIGNEUR,--Mme. Gallatin m'a fait voir la lettre o? votre Altesse S?r?nissime montre toute sa sagesse, sa bont? et son go?t en parlant d'un jeune homme dont la raison est un peu ?gar?e. Je vois que dans cette lettre elle m'accorde un bienfait tr?s-signal?, qu'on doit rarement attendre des princes et m?me des m?decins. Elle me donne un brevet de trois ans de vie, car il faut trois ans pour faire venir ces belles asperges dont vous me gratifiez. Agr?ez, monseigneur, mes tr?s-humbles remerciements. J'ose esp?rer de vous les renouveler dans trois ann?es; car enfin il faut bien que je me nourrisse d'esp?rance avant que de l'?tre de vos asperges. Que ne puis-je ?tre en ?tat de venir vous demander la permission de manger celles de vos jardins! La belle r?volution de Su?de op?r?e avec tant de fermet? et de prudence par le roi votre parent, donne envie de vivre. Ce prince est comme vous, il se fait aimer de ses sujets. C'est assur?ment de toutes les ambitions la plus belle. Tout le reste a je ne sais quoi de chim?rique et souvent de tr?s-funeste. Je souhaite ? Votre Altesse S?r?nissime de longues ann?es. C'est le seul souhait que je puisse faire; vous avez tout le reste. Je suis, avec le plus profond respect, monseigneur, de Votre Altesse S?r?nissime le tr?s-humble et tr?s-ob?issant serviteur,

"Le vieux malade de Ferney, "VOLTAIRE."

The correspondence of his Most Serene Highness, who made himself thus loved by his subjects, cannot be said to sparkle like that of Voltaire; yet, although the Landgrave's French was little better than his principles, one of his letters to Mme. Gallatin may find a place here. The single line in regard to his troops returning from America gives it a certain degree of point which only Americans or Hessians are likely to appreciate at its full value.

THE LANDGRAVE OF HESSE TO Me. GALLATIN-VAUDENET.

MADAME!--Je vous accuse avec un plaisir infini la lettre que vous avez bien voulu m'?crire le 27 mars dernier, et je vous fais bien mes parfaits remerc?mens de la part que vous continuez de prendre ? ma sant?, dont je suis, on ne peut pas plus, content. La v?tre m'int?resse trop pour ne pas souhaiter qu'elle soit ?galement telle que vous la d?sirez. Puisse la belle saison qui vient de succ?der enfin au tems rude qu'il a fait, la raffermir pour bien des ann?es, et puissiez-vous jouir de tout le contentement que mes voeux empress?s vous destinent.

Quoique la lettre dont vous avez charg? Mr. Cramer m'ait ?t? rendue, j'ai bien du regret d'avoir ?t? priv? du plaisir de faire sa connaissance personnelle, puisqu'il ne s'est pas arr?t? ? Cassel, et n'a fait que passer. Le t?moignage favorable que vous lui donnez ne peut que pr?venir en sa faveur.

Au reste je suis sur le point d'entreprendre un petit vo?age que j'ai m?dit? depuis longtems pour changer d'air. Je serais d?j? en route, sans mes Trouppes revenus de l'Am?rique, que je suis bien aise de revoir avant mon d?part, et dont les derniers r?gimens seront rendus ? Cassel vers la fin du mois.

Continuez-moi en attendant votre cher souvenir, et, en faisant bien mes complimens ? Mr. et ? Mlle. Gallatin, persuadez-vous que rien n'est au-dessus des sentimens vrais et invariables avec lesquels je ne finirai d'?tre, madame, votre tr?s-humble et tr?s-ob?issant serviteur.

FR?D?RIC L. D'HESSE.

CASSEL, le 25 mai, 1784.

Mme. Gallatin-Vaudenet had three children,--one son and two daughters. The son, who was named Jean Gallatin, was born in 1733, and in 1755 married Sophie Albertine Rolaz du Rosey of Rolle,--the Mme. Gallatin-Rolaz already mentioned in one of Voltaire's notes. They had two children,--a boy, born on the 29th of January, 1761, in the city of Geneva, and baptized on the following 7th of February by the name of Abraham Alfonse Albert Gallatin; and a girl about five years older.

Abraham Gallatin, the grandfather, was a merchant in partnership with his son Jean. Jean died, however, in the summer of 1765, and his wife, Mme. Gallatin-Rolaz, who had talent and great energy, undertook to carry on his share of the business in her own separate name. She died in March, 1770. The daughter had been sent to Montpellier for her health, which she never recovered, and died a few years after, in 1777. The boy, Albert, was left an orphan when nine years old, with a large circle of blood-relations; the nearest of whom were his grandfather Abraham and his grandmother the friend of Voltaire and of Frederic of Hesse. The child would naturally have been taken to Pregny and brought up by his grandparents, but a different arrangement had been made during the lifetime of his mother, and was continued after her death. Mme. Gallatin-Rolaz had a most intimate friend, a distant relation of her husband, Catherine Pictet by name, unmarried, and at this time about forty years old. When Jean Gallatin died, in 1765, Mlle. Pictet, seeing the widow overwhelmed with the care of her invalid daughter and with the charge of her husband's business, insisted on taking the boy Albert under her own care, and accordingly, on the 8th of January, 1766, Albert, then five years old, went to live with her, and from that time became in a manner her child.

Besides his grandfather Abraham Gallatin at Pregny, and his other paternal relations, Albert had a large family connection on the mother's side, and more especially an uncle, Alphonse Rolaz of Rolle, kind-hearted, generous, and popular. Both on the father's and the mother's side Albert had a right to expect a sufficient fortune. His interests during his minority were well cared for, and nothing can show better the characteristic economy and carefulness of Genevan society than the mode of the boy's education. For seven years, till January, 1773, he lived with Mlle. Pictet, and his expenses did not exceed eighty dollars a year. Then he went to boarding-school, and in August, 1775, to the college or academy, where he graduated in May, 1779. During all this period his expenses slightly exceeded two hundred dollars a year. The Bourse Gallatin advanced a comparatively large sum for his education and for the expenses of his sister's illness. "No necessary expense was spared for my education," is his memorandum on the back of some old accounts of his guardian; "but such was the frugality observed in other respects, and the good care taken of my property, that in 1786, when I came of age, all the debts had been paid excepting two thousand four hundred francs lent by an unknown person through Mr. Cramer, who died in 1778, and with him the secret name of that friend, who never made himself known or could be guessed." In such an atmosphere one might suppose that economists and financiers must grow without the need of education. Yet the fact seems to have been otherwise, and in Albert Gallatin's closest family connection, both his grandfather Abraham and his uncle Alphonse Rolaz ultimately died insolvent, and instead of inheriting a fortune from them he was left to pay their debts.

"There was in Geneva neither nobility nor any hereditary privilege but that of citizenship; and the body of citizens assembled in Council General had preserved the power of laying taxes, enacting laws, and ratifying treaties. But they could originate nothing, and a species of artificial aristocracy, composed of the old families which happened to be at the head of affairs when independence was declared, and skilfully strengthened by the successive adoption of the most distinguished citizens and emigrants, had succeeded in engrossing the public employments and concentrating the real power in two self-elected councils of twenty-five and two hundred members respectively. But that power rested on a most frail foundation, since in a state which consists of a single city the majority of the inhabitants may in twenty-four hours overset the government. In order to preserve it, a moral, intellectual superiority was absolutely necessary. This could not be otherwise attained than by superior knowledge and education, and the consequence was that it became disgraceful for any young man of decent parentage to be an idler. All were bound to exercise their faculties to the utmost; and although there are always some incapable, yet the number is small of those who, if they persevere, mayn the case of this one affront which cut him to the quick, that the child displayed such precocious self-control. More often he answered rage with rage and violence with violence. In one fit of fury he tore his new frock to shreds; in another he tried to stab himself, at table, with a dinner knife. Exactly why he did it, or what he resented, he probably did not know either at the time, or afterwards; but he vaguely felt, no doubt, that something was wrong with the world, and instinct impelled him to kick against the pricks and damn the whole nature of things.

Then, in 1798, came the sudden change of fortune. The wicked Lord Byron was dead at last; and the child of ten was a peer of the realm and the heir to great, though heavily mortgaged estates. He could not take possession of them yet--the embarrassed property needed to be delicately nursed--but still, subject to the charges, they were his. He was taken to look at them, and then, a tenant having been found for Newstead, Mrs. Byron settled, first at Nottingham, and then in London, and her son was sent to school--first to a preparatory school at Dulwich, and then to Harrow.

Even so, however, there remained something strange, abnormal, and uncomfortable about his position. On the one hand, Mrs. Byron, not understanding, or trying to understand, him, nagged and scolded until he lost almost all his natural affection for her. On the other hand, his father's relatives, whether because they felt that "Mad Jack" had disgraced the family, or because they objected to Mrs. Byron--who, in truth, in spite of her good birth, was extremely provincial in her style, and of loquacious, mischief-making propensities--were very far from cordial. They had not even troubled to communicate with her when the death of her son's cousin made him the direct heir, but had left her to learn the news accidentally from strangers. Lord Carlisle, the son of his grandfather's sister, Isabella Byron, consented to act as his guardian, but abstained from making friendly overtures.

The fault in that case, however, was almost entirely Mrs. Byron's. There was some dispute between her and Dr. Glennie, her son's Dulwich headmaster--a dispute which culminated in a fit of hysterics in Dr. Glennie's study. Lord Carlisle was appealed to, and the result of his attempt at mediation was that Mrs. Byron practically ordered him out of the house. Byron, of course, could not help that; but, equally of course, he suffered from it. He was neglected, and he was sensible of the neglect. He had come into a world in which he had every right to move, only to be made to feel that he was not wanted there. Born in exile, and having returned from exile, he was cold-shouldered by kinsmen who seemed to think that he would have done better to remain in exile.

Very likely he was, at that age, somewhat of a lout, shy, ill at ease, and unprepossessing. Genius does not necessarily reflect itself in polished behaviour. Aberdeen is not as good a school of manners as Eton, and Mrs. Byron was but an indifferent teacher of deportment. But his pride, it seems clear, was not the less but the greater because of his inability to express it in strict accordance with the rules of the best society. He was a Byron--a peer of the realm--the senior representative of an ancient house. He knew that respect, and even homage, were due to him; and he felt that he must assert himself--if not in one way, then in another. So, when the Earl of Portsmouth--a peer of comparatively recent creation--presumed to give his ear a friendly pinch, he asserted himself by picking up a sea-shell and throwing it at the Earl of Portsmouth's head. That would teach the Earl, he said, not to take liberties with other members of the aristocracy.

At this date, too, when writing to his mother, he addressed her as "the Honorable Mrs. Byron," a designation to which, of course, she had no shadow of a right; and he earned the nickname of "the old English Baron" by his habit of boasting to his schoolfellows of the amazing antiquity of his lineage. Lord Carlisle may well have thought that it was high time for his ward to go to Harrow to be licked or kicked into shape. He went there in 1803, at the age of thirteen and a half.

Dr. Drury, of Harrow, was the first man who saw in Byron the promise of future distinction. "He has talents, my lord," he soon assured his guardian, "which will add lustre to his rank." Whereat Lord Carlisle merely shrugged his shoulders and said, "Indeed!"--whether because his ward's talents were a matter of indifference to him, or because he considered that rank could dispense with the lustre which talents bestow.

According to his own recollections, Byron was quick but indolent. He could run level in the class-room with Sir Robert Peel, who afterwards took a sensational double-first at Oxford, when he chose; but, as a rule, he did not choose. He absorbed a good deal of scholarship, without ever becoming a good scholar in the technical sense, and his declamations on the speech-days were much applauded. There are records to the effect that he was bullied. A specially offensive insult directed at him in later life drew from him the retort that he had not passed through a public school without learning that he was deformed; and Leigh Hunt has related that sometimes "he would wake and find his leg in a tub of water." But he was not an easy boy to bully, for he was ready to fight on small provocation; and he won all his fights except one. He did credit to his religious training by punching Lord Calthorpe's head for calling him an atheist, though it is possible that his objections to the obnoxious epithet were as much social as theological, for an atheist, among schoolboys is, by implication, an "outsider."

There are the stories, too, of his connection with the first Eton and Harrow cricket match. Cordy Jeaffreson goes so far as to express doubt whether he took part in the match at all; but that is exaggerated scepticism, which research would have confuted. The score is printed in Lillywhite's "Cricket Scores and Biographies of celebrated Cricketers;" and it appears therefrom that Byron scored seven runs in the first innings and two in the second, and also bowled one wicket; but even on that subject the Dean of Ely, who went to Harrow in 1818, has something to say.

"It is clear," the Dean writes, "that he was never a leader.... On the contrary, awkward, sentimental, and addicted to dreaming and tombstones, he seems to have been held in little estimation among our spirited athletes. The remark was once made to me by Mr. John Arthur Lloyd , a well-known Harrovian, who had been captain of the school in the year of the first match with Eton : 'Yes,' he said, 'Byron played in the match, and very badly too. He should never have been in the eleven if my counsel had been taken.'"

And the Dean goes on, picturing Byron's awkwardness:

"Mrs. Drury was once heard to say of him: 'There goes Byron' 'straggling up the hill, like a ship in a storm without rudder or compass.'"

Byron's influence at Harrow, in short, was exercised over his juniors rather than his contemporaries. It pleased him, when he was big enough, to protect small boys from school tyrants. One catches his feudal spirit again in his appeal to a bully not to lick Lord Delawarr "because he is a fellow peer"; but he was also ready to intervene in other cases in which that plea could not be urged; and he had the reward that might be expected. He once offered to take a licking for one of the Peels; and he became a hero with hero-worshippers--titled hero-worshippers for the most part--sitting at his feet. Lord Delawarr, Lord Clare, the Duke of Dorset, the Honorable John Wingfield, were the most conspicuous among them. It was from their adulation that he got his first taste of the incense which was, in later years, to be burnt to him so lavishly.

He described his school friendships, when he looked back on them, as "passions"; and there is no denying that the language of the letters which he wrote to his friends was inordinately passionate for a schoolboy addressing schoolfellows. "Dearest" is a more frequent introduction to them than "dear," and the word "sweet" also occurs. It is not the happiest of signs to find a schoolboy writing such letters; and it is not altogether impossible that unfounded apprehensions caused by them account for the suggestion made by Drury--though the fact is not mentioned in the biographies--that Byron should be quietly removed from the school on the ground that his conduct was causing "much trouble and uneasiness."

That, however, is uncertain, and one must not insist. All that the so-called "passions"--occasionally detrimental though they may have been to school discipline--demonstrate is Byron's enjoyment of flattery, and his proneness to sentiment and gush. He liked, as he grew older, to accept flattery, while professing to be superior to it; to enjoy sentiment, and then to laugh at it; to gush with the most gushing, and then suddenly to turn round and "say 'damn' instead." But the cynicism which was afterwards to alternate with the sentimentalism had not developed yet. He did not yet say "damn"--at all events in that connection.

One must think of him as a boy with a great capacity for passionate affection, and a precocious tendency to gush, deprived of the most natural outlets for his emotions. He could not love his mother because she was a virago; he hardly ever saw his sister; his guardian kept him coldly at a distance. Consequently his feelings, dammed in one direction, broke out with almost ludicrous intensity in another; and his friendships were sentimental to a degree unusual, though not, of course, unknown or unprecedented, among schoolboys. He wrote sentimental verses to his friends.

But not to them alone. "Hours of Idleness," first published when he was a Cambridge undergraduate, is the idealised record of his school friendships; but it is also the idealised record of other, and very different, excursions into sentiment. It introduces us to Mary Duff, to Margaret Parker, to Mary Chaworth,--and also to some other Maries of less importance; and we will turn back and glance, in quick succession at their stories before following Byron to Cambridge.

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