kind enough actually to propose that I should write—I would have
taken more care to tackle the problem you set. But because of what
you said in your letter, I limited myself to a number of
extraordinary punishments. I had no intention of writing a book or
a lengthy essay. All I intended to do was to show you my zeal, at
the risk of revealing at the same time my inability to answer your
questions. Rather than sending my collection of gossipy anecdotes
to the newspapers or keeping it on the shelf of your library, burn it,
dear Uncle, and keep me in your affection—which is much better
than simply reading what I’ve written. I send my love to my aunt,
to cousins Rosalie and Lisette, and to my dear cousin Charles. I still
hope to see you soon, and I hope my enthusiasm will make up for
my lack of learning. There is no need, dear Uncle, to remind me to
show affection: I would, it is true, have had some difficulty in
slipping it into my scribblings about the Romans, but I am happy to
show it you when I think of all your kindness towards me.^27Samuel de Constant had no difficulty in seeing through the assurances of
loyal affection to the disingenuousness and Voltairean sarcasm
underneath, and he was very hurt. It was a characteristic
misunderstanding. Constant found it hard to resist irony in all its forms—
not least, of course, irony at his own expense. As this irony was so
frequently mixed in with quite genuine expressions of emotion, it was
often difficult to judge which was the real Benjamin Constant. In many
cases the answer was, of course, that both were the real Constant, each
being a result of his alert intelligence standing, as it were, outside and
apart from himself and representing to his correspondent or interlocutor
the many-sidedness of his response to a situation.^28 Such was no doubt the
case in the letter quoted above, but what so angered Samuel de Constant
and caused a rift between him and his nephew which was to last some
twelve years was the breezy flippancy of the recommendation to burn the
essay, and most of all the fatuous remark about his inability to exhibit his
feelings for his uncle in an essay on the Roman army. A man as
permanently insecure in his relationships with others as Samuel could not
fail to take this amiss: he was precisely the wrong man to joke with about
affection. Besides which Benjamin’s casual and supercilious treatment of
Samuel’s suggestion that he put his scholarship to good use was insulting
to a man of 57, coming as it did from a youth of 19. Gustave Rudler
summarizes the results of Benjamin’s tactlessness:
Isabelle de charriere 73