- Memoirs, vol. I, p. 26.
- Memoirs, vol. I, p. 27.
- Macknight, f. 156 verso. Thomas Macknight (1762–1836) was, according to Lord
Cockburn, ‘a man of great simplicity of manners, of greater science, and of the
greatest possible worth’ (HSSE, p. 146). Although Macknight does not appear to
have been particularly close to Constant, his general account of the Speculative
Society’s activities can, I believe, be relied on.
- Macknight, f. 156 verso, and Memoirs, vol. I, p. 27.
- See Leon ó Broin, The Unfortunate Mr. Robert Emmet, Dublin: Clonmore &
Reynolds, 1958.
- Macknight, ff. 156 verso and 157.
- For details of Dr Emmet’s career, see Richard R.Madden, The United Irishmen,
London: Catholic Publishing and Bookselling Co., 1860, p. 32.
- Memoirs, vol. I, p. 27.
- Ma Vie, ed. C.P.Courtney, pp. 9–10.
- Edinburgh, Speculative Society archives, Biographical Letters III A-Z, Drafts of
History 1845, f. 90.
- The History of the Speculative Society 1764–1905, Edinburgh: T. & A. Constable,
1905, p. 73.
- Memoirs, p. 27.
- Macknight, ff. 159 verso and 160. The Minutes record that Macknight, an infrequent
visitor to the Speculative Society, was present with Wilde and Mackintosh at the
meeting of 4 May 1784.
- Published for the first time in Wood (1987), pp. 17–19.
- See Courtney (1982), and Dennis Wood, ‘A propos de Constant et John Wilde’,
Lettre de Zuylen et du Pontet, 7 (1982), pp. 8–9.
- Courtney (1982), p. 285.
- Georges Poulet, Benjamin Constant par lui-même, Paris: Du Seuil (Ecrivains de
toujours, 78), 1968, p. 43. It is remarkable that Poulet, who could have had no
knowledge of the existence of the pen-portrait of Constant by Wilde, should have
written in exactly the same terms, e.g. p. 43:
In these obsessive images what strikes us is a central stillness, with
movement taking place out at the periphery. Benjamin Constant
represents himself to himself as a motionless point at the centre
surrounded by a mobile circumference. All the superficial happenings
of life in the world outside, all external pressures and determining
factors are pushed out to that periphery.
52.
Patrice Thompson, La Religion de Benjamin Constant. Les Pouvoirs de l’image,
Pisa: La Goliardica, 1978, p. 40: ‘Gambling, the temptation of suicide, perhaps
sodomy are symptoms of his difficulty in being with other people, something from
which his relationship with Belle de Charrière saved him.’ The question of
Constant’s friendship with the homosexual Johann Rudolf Knecht is dealt with in
Chapter 3, ‘Isabelle de Charrière’.
List of abbreviations 275
