Constant was fortunate enough to find a good English translator for
Adolphe, the Edinburgh-educated Alexander Walker, whose translation
was entered at Stationers’ Hall on 3 September 1816.
10
The disclaimer in the Morning Chronicle was disingenuous, and among Constant’s
family and friends no one was taken in, though of course it was understandable that he
should issue such a denial in the circumstances. His cousin Rosalie wrote to her brother
Charles de Constant on 5 July 1816 saying that Ellénore was la dame de Coppet,
Madame de Staël; Charles replied on 8 July that Adolphe was Benjamin but that Ellénore
was really Anna Lindsay. Whereupon Rosalie told him on 12 July that the Anna Lindsay
story was a red herring deliberately trailed by the Coppet clique to protect Germaine.
Rosalie was on the whole sympathetic to the novel: Charles, who had always detested his
cousin, was hostile, telling Rosalie for good measure that to sell one’s life to the public
for money was the lowest form of degradation.^11 Others likewise reacted in accordance
with their feelings towards Constant. His friend Prosper de Barante was full of
admiration, and another approving reader, Simonde de Sismondi, wrote to the German
Comtesse d’Albany on 14 October 1816 giving information that was inaccurate in detail
but broadly true in spirit:
Benjamin’s father was exactly as he has described him. The older
woman with whom he lived in his youth, whom he very much
loved and whom he saw die is a certain Madame de Charrière, the
author of several delightful novels. The busybodying woman friend
who, while claiming to be trying to bring about a reconciliation
between the couple, drives them further apart is Madame Récamier.
The Comte de P*** is a complete invention and indeed, although
he at first appears to be an important character, the novelist didn’t
bother to give him distinctive features, and doesn’t let him play any
real role in the story.^12While in London Constant found time to devote to other projects apart
from Adolphe: he discussed letters which were destined eventually to
become his Mémoires sur les Cent-Jours (Memoirs concerning the
Hundred Days) with Lord Byron’s friend, John Cam Hobhouse (1786–
1869), who had recently published The Substance of Some Letters written
by an Englishman resident at Paris during the Last Reign of the Emperor
Napoleon. Constant briefly considered entitling them Lettres à Hobhouse
(Letters to Hobhouse), then abandoned the idea. The letters were
subsequently to undergo many transformations in manuscript before being
published in 1819–20.
13
And then there was something he considered far
more lasting as a monument than his ‘anecdote’ Adolphe: his book on
polytheism. So many years of work had now gone into it that before
leaving England he took the extraordinary step of entrusting the
Adolphe 233