A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1515, 10 August 1912, Page 11

A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

INTERESTING MEMOIRS. One of the" most piquant diaries lately given to the world is that kept by Trances Lady. Shelley, betwton the years 1787 and 1817'. As tho especial friend of Wellington, her narrative of, the great days, when the allies were in Paris, after Waterloo, is full of colour; and her picture of the Duke gives an impression of his brilliancy and magnetic charm, wanting in most portraits. AVo are shown Wellington on the crest of his glory—simple as a boy— a princely boy, who revels in naive splendour, and in treating his friends splendidly; witty, too, with a shrewd native wit; absorbed in dancing, laughing, revelling, till some chance question or the hour of business brought him back to affairs. On the instant the world would drop off him; he was concentrated, caught up, terso in word, cleaj: in brain, weighty, imperious. Paris at this moment (says "Tho Times"). presented a scene of unr paralleled brilliance; emperors and kings were common eights, riding past with their iridescent retinues; Wellington was the centre of nil things; a Sovereign amongst Sovereigns. But it was at home, in intimate intercourse, that Lady Shelley got her best impressions of him. In general conversation, he listened oftenor than ho talked, unless his own subjects were in question; but in private he spoke to her witli uncommon freedom. "I hope to God," ho said one day, "that I have. fought' !my last battle, "it is a Iwd thing to be always fighting. While in the thick of it I am too much occupied to feel anything; but it is wretched gust after. It is quite impossible to think of glory. Both mind and feelings are exhausted. I am .wretched even at the moment of victory, and I always toy that, next to a battle lost, the greatest misery is a battle gained." ._. . The expression of his face,.which'was lit up by an intensity of feeling, gave those simple words an eloquence, which went straight to the listener's heart. I was that listener.. "It is experience" (he said another time) "that gives me the advantage over every other officer. Nothing new can happen to me, and I always feel confident that I shall succeed. The troops feel the same confidence in me. For that reason I firmly believe that if anything had happened to mo at Waterloo the battle was lost. I told Lord Tjxbridge so Soon after a ball hit him. It must have passed over me, or my horse! But the finger of God was upon me." Celebrities of the Day, Lady Shelley was married to a tuck of

the Regency (Sir John Shelley), but her purify and frankness set her apart, even in the corrupt society of Vienna, where they called her "l'Enigme." She coquetted there with Metternich, but. only with her husband's full consent, because, in tlie Austrian capital of that time, she would have'been conspicuous if she had not done so.. Her. diary contains little flashlight portraits of the d'Agouleme, who, when she saw her in 18U, was etill suffering; from-inflammation of the eyes, the result of so much weeping; of Walter Scott, rfhom ' she met in Paris, and thought clumsy, till a flash of hi 3 eye, or of his speech, revealed, the man of genius; of Talleyrand, constantly her host, beguiling her by his good stories, and chilling her with the titter wind of his wit; of Metternich, the diplomatist to excess. "He lies too much, Napoleon said of him; "it is allowable to lie sometimes, •but always!—it is too much." She also records her first impression of Byron, on whoso bride she was asked to call. As she mounted the stairs, the drawingroom door suddenly opened, and Lord Byron came out. He looked as if "he resented her ' intrusion"—she faltered' out' somo words of congratulation—"the expression on his.face was almost demoniacal." Fruit of the French Revolution. Another curious passage in this book is that in which Lady Shelley (she was a Miss Winckley) tells how, after her mother's re-marriage, she was brought up at an ar'tistocratic school, kept by an aunt of Sydney Smith's, who charged ,£IOOO a year for her pupils.. As her nephew often dined -there, these terms seemed reasonable. Her education was a good one, for, as she remarks, the educational standard had risen as a consequence of the French Revolution. Rich people had become so frightened lest tho disturbance, should spread, and their daughters bo forced, like the emigrees, to earn their own living, that for the first time they tried to give them resources against the hour of need.,