Benjamin Constant

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  1. Ibid., p. 31.

  2. Ibid., p. 31.

  3. See Dennis Wood, ‘Constant in Britain 1780–1787: a provisional chronology’, ABC,
    no. 7 (1987), p. 16.

  4. Ma Vie, ed. C.P.Courtney, p. 52. Juste was making every effort meanwhile to
    minimize the significance of his son’s act of disobedience, and wrote to his Paris
    banker, the Swiss Rodolphe-Ferdinand Grand (1726–94), on 27 September 1787:


My son, having spent six weeks in the country with my friend
Bridges, has returned to Switzerland where he has now been for a
while. His excursion to England was undertaken without any
particular purpose and has had no unpleasant consequences. He lived
in very good company while he was there, and apart from the
expense little harm has been done.

On this obvious tampering with the truth on Juste’s part, see Henri Bressler, ‘Une
lettre peu véridique sur un épisode du Cahier rouge’, Cahiers Benjamin Constant,
série I, no. 2 (1957), pp. 43–7.


  1. Ibid., p. 54: ‘je lui disais que comme il traitait ses amis comme des chiens, je me
    flattais qu’il traiterait ce chien comme un ami’. For an account of Richard Kentish’s
    colourful career, see Dennis Wood, ‘Constant’s Cahier rouge: new findings’,
    French Studies, XXXVIII (1984), pp. 18–20.

  2. Ibid., pp. 57–9.

  3. See Adolphe, ed. Paul Delbouille, pp. 110–11.

  4. William [et Clara de Charrière] de Sévery, La Vie de société dans le Pays de Vaud à
    la fin du dix-huitième siècle. Salomon et Catherine de Charrière de Sévery et leurs
    amis, Lausanne: Georges Bridel; Paris: Fischbacher, 1911–12, 2 vols, vol. I, pp.
    151–2.

  5. Ibid., p. 155.

  6. The Duke had ruled since 1780. On his life, see Selma Stern, Karl Wilhelm
    Ferdinand. Herzog zu Braunschweig und Lüneburg, Hildesheim und Leipzig:
    August Lax Verlagsbuchhandlung (Veröffentlichungen der historischen
    Kommission für Hannover, Oldenburg, Braunschweig, Schaumburg-Lippe und
    Bremen), 1921.

  7. William [et Clara de Charrière] de Sévery, op. cit., p. 154.

  8. See C.P.Courtney, The Affair of Colonel Juste de Constant and Related Documents
    (1787–1796), Cambridge: Dæmon Press, 1990.

  9. See William [et Clara de Charrière] de Sévery, op. cit., pp. 153–4, Paul-Louis Pelet,
    ‘Le premier duel de Benjamin Constant’, Etudes de lettres, XXI (1947), pp. 25–6,
    and Charrière, Œuvres, III, p. 611.

  10. Lettres de d’Arsillé fils appeared for the first time in 1981 in Charrière, Œuvres, IX,
    pp. 651–78. It seems to have been composed either in 1787–8 or during a subsequent
    visit to Colombier by Constant. On the complex issues raised by the manuscript
    which is written and corrected in the hands of both Constant and Madame de


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