having spent but a few minutes at Lyghe & begs to be remembered to Miss May &
the other ladies whom she had the pleasure to meet this evening. If my plan of
spending the winter at Edinburgh comes to execution, I shall be much tempted to
bring her next summer to Tunbridge-Wells, in order that she may enjoy the climate
& I the neighbourhood, Till then I shall keep up our renewed acquaintance by
correspondence. The sight of my manuscripts will likewise prevent I hope your
forgetting me, & I shall be happy to remain for life
your faithful friend
B. de CONSTANT
Constant never did return to England, and the manuscript on polytheism was sent on
to him in Paris by Nathaniel May in 1818 (Courtney, art. cit., pp. 176–7.
- Constant, Œuvres, p. 819.
- Constant, Œuvres, p. 823.
- Harold Nicolson, op. cit., p. 245.
- Both the extensive Fonds Monamy-Valin (Bibliothèque nationale, Paris) and, to a
lesser extent, the Von Marenholtz papers (Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv,
Wolfenbüttel) contain fragments of plays and verse, some by Constant, others copied
out by him from other authors, in which there seems to be a tendency towards the
Germanic and the Gothic, and to dwelling on the idea of death. In particular a poem
composed by Constant on the back of a speech of 1825, ‘De l’heure propice sachez
vous saisir’, concerns the cold and darkness of the Underworld.
- Benjamin et Rosalie de Constant, Correspondance 1786–1830, ed. Alfred et
Suzanne Roulin, Paris: Gallimard, 1955, pp. 211–12.
- Ibid., p. 214.
- Ibid., p. 215.
- De la doctrine politique, qui peut réunir les partis en France,published by Delaunay
in Paris during December 1816 (C.P.Courtney, A Guide to the Published Works of
Benjamin Constant, Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation, 1985, pp. 49–50, item A19).
- On the complex history of Constant’s property purchases and general finances from
1814 onwards, see Kurt Kloocke, ‘Les Livres de dépenses de Benjamin Constant.
Premier article’, ABC, no. 4 (1984), pp. 115–63, and Kurt Kloocke et Christian
Viredaz, ‘Les Livres de dépenses de Benjamin Constant. Second article’, ABC, no. 5
(1985), pp. 105–61.
- Benjamin et Rosalie de Constant, op. cit., p. 219.
- See Benjamin Constant, Recueil d’articles: Le Mercure, La Minerve et La
Renommée, ed. Ephraïm Harpaz, Geneva: Droz, 1972, 2 vols.
- Ghislain de Diesbach, Madame de Staël, Paris: Librairie Académique Perrin, 1983,
p. 535.
- Mercure de France, 19 and 26 July 1817.
- Benjamin Constant, Lettres à Madame Récamier (1807–1830), ed. Ephraïm Harpaz,
Paris: Librairie C.Klincksieck, 1977, p. 261.
- See Kurt Kloocke et Christian Viredaz, op. cit., p. 126, note 1.
List of abbreviations 309
