Benjamin Constant

(sharon) #1
1833, op. cit., pp. 132–3, item 58a (4–5).


  1. Dorette Berthoud, La Seconde Madame Benjamin Constant, Lausanne: Librairie
    Payot, 1943, p. 239.

  2. Dennis Wood, op. cit., p. 8. Beaune was well informed on Constant’s thinking, and
    was sought out possibly by Loève-Veimars and certainly by Sainte-Beuve in 1834,
    according to Bengt Hasselrot (Benjamin Constant, Lettres à Bernadotte. Sources et
    origine de l’‘Esprit de conquête et de l’usurpation’, ed. Bengt Hasselrot, Geneva-
    Lille: Droz-Giard, 1952, p. lxi). The material in the Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv,
    Wolfenbüttel, appears to be the only extant collection of documents concerning
    Constant and Charlotte by Beaune.

  3. J.-J.Coulmann, op. cit., vol. III, p. 219.

  4. Coulmann’s Réminiscences are a rich source of vivid anecdotes about his much
    admired friend’s life—about Constant’s love of cats, for example, animals which
    symbolized freedom and independence for him, and about his unfailing good
    humour and patience with the increasingly vague and forgetful Charlotte who would
    even arrive late at her own dinner parties. Coulmann gives one piece of information
    about Constant that is not, I believe, to be found elsewhere: Constant was not only
    obsessed with death but also feared being buried alive while in a cataleptic state.
    Charlotte saw to it that his coffin was made larger than was customary, that five days
    elapsed between his death and burial, and that his head rested on a pillow (vol. III, p.
    231). A death mask was made of Constant by the sculptor Gois. Subsequently lost
    for many years, the mask was rediscovered by Kurt Kloocke in the anthropological
    collection of the Musée de l’Homme in Paris.


EPILOGUE


  1. Quoted by Edouard Laboulaye writing in the Revue nationale et étrangère politique,
    scientifique et littéraire, Paris, 1861, Tome V, p. 346.

  2. Ibid., p. 327.

  3. Ibid., p. 332.

  4. Ibid., p. 343.

  5. Han Verhoeff, ‘Adolphe’ et Constant: une étude psychocritique, Paris: Editions
    Klincksieck, 1976.

  6. See above, Chapter 10, note 18.

  7. Alfred Fabre-Luce, Benjamin Constant, Paris: Librairie Académique Perrin, 1978, p.
    327.

  8. Constant’s hopes were undoubtedly disappointed and he was disillusioned with the
    July Monarchy by November 1830, as he himself hinted in a speech to the Chamber
    on 19 November 1830 and as several of his obituarists emphasized. On this subject,
    see Jean-Pierre Aguet, ‘Benjamin Constant sous la monarchie de Juillet (juillet-
    décembre 1830)’, ABC, no. 2 (1982), pp. 5–6.

  9. C.P.Courtney, A Bibliography of Editions of the Writings of Benjamin Constant to
    1833, London: Modern Humanities Research Association, 1981, pp. 132–3 and 147–
    50, items 58a(4–5) and 63a(1–2). Among the Von Marenholtz papers in the
    Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv, Wolfenbüttel, there are numerous contracts and


List of abbreviations 316
Free download pdf