- Ma Vie, ed. C.P.Courtney, p. 14.
- HSSE, p. 147.
- Adolphe, ed. Paul Delbouille, Chapitre VII, p. 173. This image of physical or
intellectual strength unjustly imprisoned and helpless seems to have had peculiar
force for Constant (one is also reminded of the Ann Hurle story discussed earlier, in
Chapter 1). The idea occurs again—significantly in connection with Johann Rudolf
Knecht and linked to that note of regret about the misfortune of Constant’s friends
that is very close to the tone of Ma Vie, which indeed he was composing at around
this time—in a letter to Rosalie de Constant of 24 May 1811:
I was greatly saddened in Berne. I learnt that a man I had been a good
friend of twenty-five years ago, who had been very well off then, was
quite clever, widely read and extremely keen to improve his mind, is
now locked up in the hospital for the rest of his life, in a room with
no light in it and bars on the window. I had seen him again in
Geneva, his reputation ruined because of his reprehensible conduct
and all of his money gone. But the mental picture of him in that
dungeon pursued me for the rest of the evening. For several days
afterwards it was if I had a heavy weight on my heart. Of all the
friends I’ve had, nine-tenths at least are dead, have gone mad or have
turned out badly. Anyone would think I had chosen them deliberately
in order to be able to prove that, for all the stupid things I had done, I
was still the wisest of all of them.
(Benjamin et Rosalie de Constant, Correspondance 1786–
1830, ed. Alfred et Suzanne Roulin, Paris: Gallimard, 1955, p.
140)
56.
See HSSE, especially pp. 7–13.
- Wood (1987), p. 17.
- Macknight, f. 157 verso.
- Lettres de Madame de Staël à Benjamin Constant publiées pour la première fois en
original par Madame la Baronne de Nolde avec une introduction et des notes par
Paul L.Léon. Avant-propos de Gustave Rudler, Paris: Kra, 1928, p. 53.
- Courtney (1967; 2), p. 11.
- Courtney (1967; 2), p. 11, letter to J.-B. Suard of 16 June 1784.
- Gustave Rudler, working on the information given to him by the then Secretary of
the Speculative Society, Sir David Mackenzie, about the Society’s debates, came to
the conclusion that Constant left Edinburgh ‘during the half-yearly holidays, since
Easter fell on 10 April that year’ (Jeunesse, p. 169, note 1). However, Sir David
Mackenzie gave Rudler information about those meetings at which Constant spoke,
the last of these being that of 5 April 1785. The Society’s Minute Book gives
Constant as present at the meeting of 19 April 1785. It is clear, therefore, that he left
Edinburgh between 19 April and 26 April 1785.
- Ma Vie, ed. C.P.Courtney, p. 39: ‘We had never been particularly close when we
were in Edinburgh, but occasionally we had got drunk together.’
List of abbreviations 276
