example of any serious misdeed on my part; they could not even
deny that some of my actions appeared to stem from generosity or
loyalty. But they said I was a man ‘without morals’, a ‘thoroughly
unreliable’ individual, two descriptions which had the advantage of
allowing them to insinuate things which they in fact knew nothing
about, and to lead others to make assumptions based only on that
ignorance.^7Isolated, worried about his health and the way his father’s court case was
developing in Holland, sinking into ever deeper depression, Constant was
thrown an unexpected lifeline by fate in the person of Jakob Mauvillon
(1743–94), whom he probably met at the Große Klub zu Braunschweig of
which they were both members (Constant joined on 7 April 1788).
8
Mauvillon is one of those writers who have a tenuous existence on the
margins of literary history, and he is remembered if at all for having
collaborated with Count Mirabeau in the writing of a study of the Prussian
monarchy under Frederick the Great which appeared in seven volumes in
London in 1788. It was only one of a considerable number of works which
Mauvillon had published in the previous twenty years and more, works
ranging widely from literary criticism and the defence of German
language and culture to a study of the role of gunpowder in modern
warfare. Mauvillon’s father was French and he himself was bilingual in
French and German. His army background had made him an expert on
military strategy, which he taught at the Collegium Carolinum in
Brunswick, but he also translated into German works on political economy
by French writers, was a convinced Physiocrat—a believer in economic
laissez-faire, a démocrate with strongly anti-monarchist views and a
freemason, which in a German context at this period went with a staunchly
libertarian outlook. So Mauvillon had a similar catholicity of interests to
John Wilde or James Mackintosh in Edinburgh, men whom it is clear the
young Constant regarded as models to be emulated. But what was this
extraordinary polymath like as a man?
It is tragic that not one single letter has survived from the correspondence of men who
were in such close accord in their enthusiasms and political allegiances. What we have
are a number of testimonies from Constant to the importance of Mauvillon’s influence on
his development. When Mauvillon died in 1794 Constant wrote to his aunt Madame de
Nassau:
I have lost someone in Brunswick whose death changes absolutely
my feelings about living there. This man of letters possessed all theThe brunswick years 111