Narré served as a springboard when Constant later came to write Cécile,
which gives a fictionalized account of the same events in its first section
or époque.
Constant was reaching a watershed: his father was all but ruined and living in
relatively straitened circumstances under the thumb of the detested Marianne; his own
marital problems forced him to envisage living alone and away from Brunswick, where in
any case his position had become acutely uncomfortable, a would-be Jacobin in the
service of the military leader of the counter-revolutionary armies; in France the
Revolution had degenerated into the bloodbath of Robespierre’s Terror, which Constant
nevertheless felt compelled to defend in his letters to an Isabelle de Charrière whom he
now judged to be a reactionary. Only Jakob Mauvillon, stolid and steadfast, offered any
solace, and we gain a rare glimpse of Mauvillon’s feelings in an unpublished and undated
letter he sent to the librarian of the famous Herzog August Bibliothek in nearby
Wolfenbüttel, Ernst Theodor Langer (1743–1820), in the period December 1792–January
- Langer had made the mistake, it would seem, of expressing views about France
that were hostile to the Revolution, to which Mauvillon retorted:
I share your wishes for a cessation to the barbarity, as long as you
think like me that the real barbarians are those who put obstacles in
the way of press freedom, and hinder research in theology,
philosophy and politics; in short, those who issue decrees about
censorship, edicts about religion and who forbid people to read or
to think.^52In his typically forthright way Mauvillon expresses a radical libertarianism
that centres on freedom of the press and of expression, one of the linchpins
of Constant’s own later political doctrine: clearly Constant’s views were
being shaped through the stimulus of discussions with his friend.
To the consolations of philosophy with Mauvillon during these last months in
Brunswick was now added a new friendship, and one which would ultimately prove to be
the greatest consolation of his life. On 11 January 1793, according to Cécile, Constant
met Charlotte von Marenholtz, the wife of Baron Wilhelm Christian Albrecht von
Marenholtz (1752–1808)^53. The daughter of Hans Ernst von Hardenberg and Eleonore
née von Wangenheim, she had been christened Georgine Charlotte Auguste (in later life
she signed herself Charlotte Georgine Auguste, Countess von Hardenberg) and belonged
to a Hanoverian family with very strong links with the English royal house—indeed she
had been born in London on 29 March 1769. In 1788 Charlotte had married Baron von
Marenholtz, a man sixteen and a half years older than her, and had borne him a son,
Wilhelm Ernst August Christian, in January 1789. Like Constant she spoke French,
German and English, was well read in the corresponding literatures, and yet despite her
cosmopolitan background Charlotte was German to her fingertips.^54 Sir Harold Nicolson
speaks in his biography of Constant of ‘the general atmosphere of pink ribbons and
Schwärmerei’ that surrounded her.^55 Nevertheless Constant was charmed by their first
meeting to the extent of writing the same evening to declare his love to her.
The brunswick years 141