Recollections and Anecdotes; being a second series of Reminiscences of the Camp, the Court, and the Clubs.

By Captain Rees Howell Gronow

Captain Gronow, joined the Grenadier guards as a young subaltern in 1812, having completed his studies at Eton and was widely know in England and the Continent thereafter as a raconteur and a fine pistol shot. His “Reminiscences” span four volumes in their original edition, an edited version was produced around the turn of the 19th century, having varied titles but following a stream of collected anecdotes set in distinct eras. These memoirs have achieved a high degree of fame and are justly accorded much historical respect, especially in those incidents where Gronow was personally present to record the words and deeds of those around him. Although admitted to the highest society, Gronow is far from being a snob and his works bear the stamp of a high degree of moral probity, they could not be described as the handiwork of a gossip.
In this the second volume, there is a more diverse range in the anecdotes, rather than focussing in on a particular period of his life, Gronow’s work is roughly divided into two parts; the first is more of eye-witness account the 1815 campaign and particularly the battle of Waterloo. He is critical of what has been published by some of the French historians who wrote somewhat biased views, and indeed what was reported as Napoleon’s view of the battle.
The second part focuses on the Court and the Clubs, with further tales of famous figures of the era, their vices and their stories. The great and the good of the period appear in thumb sketches and anecdotes; men such as The Duke of Wellington, Napoleon’s family including Madame Mére, Hortense, Jérome et al, Beau Brumell, The Prince Regent, General Ornano, Lord Byron, Shelley, the Duke of York, Alexandre Dumas, Balzac all feature.
“Reading Gronow is like drinking champagne - effervescent and mildly addictive”
Author - Captain Rees Howell Gronow - (1794–1865)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wagram Press
• Release date: Apr 27, 2011
• ISBN: 9781908692658

Book preview

RECOLLECTIONS AND ANECDOTES

BEING A SECOND SERIES OF REMINISCENCES

OF THE CAMP, THE COURT, AND

THE CLUBS.

BY CAPTAIN R. H. GRONOW

FORMERLY OF THE GRENADIER GUARDS, AND M.P. FOR STAFFORD.

 This edition is published by PICKLE PARTNERS PUBLISHING

Text originally published in 1866 under the same title.

© Pickle Partners Publishing 2011, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

A FEW WORDS TO THE READER.

THE unlooked-for favour with which my first volume of Reminiscences was received by the public has induced me to bring out a second series, which I trust will meet with the same indulgence.

However slight the materials may be which form the foundation of this work, they may prove of some interest to my readers; being sketches taken from the life, or anecdotes for the exactitude and veracity of which I can vouch.

The personages whose names I have mentioned, or whose portraits I have attempted to draw, are very generally known in the fashionable, literary, or artistic world. I have endeavoured as much as possible to abstain from ill-natured remarks or comments likely to offend the living, and if I have erred in this respect it has been involuntarily.

Though the battle of Waterloo is almost a hackneyed subject, yet it has been latterly so frequently brought forward by French writers of celebrity, that I have thought some further observations might not prove altogether without interest.

I must conclude with an apology for having introduced French and Italian words and phrases into an English book; but the fact is, that though our language is a far richer one than at least the French, there are certain words that cannot be rendered into their exact corresponding meaning by translation, and consequently the point of many jokes and clever sayings would be entirely lost.

R. H. GRONOW.

Contents

A FEW WORDS TO THE READER. 2

THREE HEROIC BROTHERS 6

FRENCH HISTORIANS OF WATERLOO 7

NAPOLEON AT WATERLOO 8

AFTER QUATRE BRAS 8

THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO 9

COLONEL COLQUITT 11

CAPTAIN CHAMBERS, PICTON’S FAVOURITE AIDE-DE-CAMP 11

CAPTAIN ROBERT ADAIR, OF THE 1ST GUARDS 11

ENSIGN SOMERVILLE BURGES, OF THE 1ST FOOT GUARDS 12

PERCIVAL, OF THE FIRST GUARDS 12

SIR COLIN HALKETT 12

CAPTAIN CURZON 12

CAPTAIN, AFTERWARDS COLONEL KELLY, OF THE LIFE GUARDS, AND OUR CAVALRY CHARGES 12

CHARGE OF THE HEAVY BRIGADE 13

LIEUTENANT TATHWELL: ILL-TREATMENT OF A PRISONER BY THE FRENCH 13

SIR W. PONSONBY, LORD E. SOMERSET, SIR JOHN ELLEY, AND SIR HORACE SEYMOUR 13

THE HONOURABLE GEORGE DAMER AND COLONEL MUTER 13

HOUGOUMONT 14

MEETING OF WELLINGTON AND BLUCHER 14

SUFFERING OF THE WOUNDED 14

EXCESSES OF THE PRUSSIANS 14

PÉRONNE LA PURCELLE 15

VÆ VICTIS 15

NAPOLEON’S MISTAKEN OPINION OF THE ENGLISH ARMY 15

SIR FREDERICK PONSONBY 16

NARROW ESCAPES—RECEPTION IN LONDON 16

CONDUCT OF THE ENGLISH AND PRUSSIAN ARMIES DURING THE OCCUPATION OF PARIS 16

DR KEATE IN PARIS 17

SHAVING IN A MINUTE, AND COLONEL ELLISON 18

THE DUKE AND MR CREEVEY 18

THE DUKE’S RAZORS 19

MADEMOISELLE MARS 19

MADEMOISELLE RACHEL 20

SIR JAMES KEMPT AND MR DAVIES 21

THE CORN-LAW RIOTS AND LORD CASTLEREAGH 21

THEN AND NOW 22

ETON MASTERS 26

COUNT MONTROND 26

SIR PEPPER ARDEN, FATHER OF LORD ALVANLEY 29

JOHN KEMBLE 29

REVOLUTION OF 1848 31

ROGERS AND LUTTRELL 34

THE PIG-FACED LADY 35

BALZAC AND EUGÈNE SUE 36

ALEXANDER DUMAS 37

CIVILITY REWARDED 39

PARTY AT MANCHESTER HOUSE IN 1816, AND THE REGENT’S ETIQUETTE 40

THE BRITISH EMBASSY—LORD AND LADY GRANVILLE 41

HOBY, THE BOOTMAKER, OF ST JAMES’S STREET 42

HAIRDRESSING FIFTY YEARS SINCE, AND VAILS TO SERVANTS 43

TWISLETON FIENNES, THE LATE LORD SAYE AND SELE 43

BURIED ALIVE 44

COUNT D’ORSAY 44

THE SPAFIELDS RIOTS 46

MAD AS A HATTER 47

HARRINGTON HOUSE AND LORD PETERSHAM 47

TOWNSHEND, THE BOW-STREET OFFICER 48

MADEMOISELLE DUTHÉ 49

A STRANGE RENCONTRE 50

ADMIRAL SIR RICHARD STRACHAN 50

THE BONAPARTE FAMILY 51

PARIS AFTER THE PEACE 53

THE OPERA IN PARIS IN 1815 55

THE COUNTESS OF ALDBOROUGH 56

ELECTIONEERING IN 1832 57

STAFFORD IN 1832 58

COUNTESS GUICCIOLI 58

THE LIGHT COMPANY'S POODLE AND SIR F. PONSONBY 59

EXTRAVAGANCE—THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH, GRAND-FATHER OF THE PRESENT DUKE 60

LORD ALVANLEY 60

SALLY LUNN CAKES-THE ETYMOLOGY OF THE WORD BUN. 62

PICTON'S OPINION OF OUR OFFICERS 63

ADMIRAL NAGLE 63

THE LATE LORD SCARBOROUGH 64

POTAGE Â LA POMPADOUR 64

BEARDING THE LION IN HIS DEN 65

A MAD FRIEND 65

LORD ALTHORPE 66

O'CONNELL 66

SNUFF TAKING 66

PETITION AGAINST MY RETURN FOR STAFFORD, AND LORD CAMPBELL 67

THE LATE LORD DUDLEY 68

The Reminiscences of Captain Gronow. Vol. II

THREE HEROIC BROTHERS — Among my souvenirs of 1815 there is one that has always struck me as particularly touching in the annals of French gallantry and heroism, and which shews what men we had to contend with in Spain, Portugal, and Belgium. There were three brothers named Angelet, whose heroic deeds have not, to the best of my knowledge, been recorded in any of the Memoirs of that time, and who all died or were mortally wounded on the bloody field of Waterloo.

The eldest brother started for the army as a conscript; he soon after rose to the rank of serjeant, and for many acts of daring he was raised to the rank of an officer in a regiment of the line. When in Spain he was made prisoner by the guerillas, and as he was on the point of being massacred, his life was saved by an English officer; but he was imprisoned on the Spanish pontoons, where he suffered great hardships. He contrived, however, with singular daring and dexterity, to make his escape.

Angelet went through the Russian campaign as captain in the Imperial Guard, was named major in the 141st Regiment in 1813, and took a glorious part in the battle of Lutzen, where he was dangerously wounded by a cannon-ball in the leg. After his recovery, he returned to the Imperial Guard with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and was engaged in all the battles of 1814. On the return of the Bourbons, he was named colonel of the grenadiers of the Garde Royale; but, on the escape of Napoleon from Elba, he immediately joined his glorious chief. After many heroic deeds at Waterloo, he received five wounds, and died at Brussels, after lingering in great agony for two months. His last moments were soothed by the presence of a beautiful young girl, to whom he was engaged to be married when he left Paris to conquer or to die.

The second brother, St Amand Angelet, was educated at the École Militaire, was present at almost every battle in Spain, and for his gallant deeds obtained the cross of the Legion of Honour, (which was not then as easily won as it is now-a-days,) and the rank of captain. He received a wound in the leg at Orthes, and returned to Paris in 1814 to have it cured; though he was always obliged to go on crutches.

St Amand was named to the regiment commanded by his brother, and had to endure all the insolence that Napoleon’s brave soldiers were forced at that time to undergo from the titled young blancbecs set over them by the Bourbons. St Amand had for his chef de bataillon a young émigré of eighteen, who had never seen a shot fired, was perfectly ignorant of all military science, and excelled only in the art of tormenting his inferiors in grade. On the return of the Emperor Napoleon in 1815, St Amand Angelet compelled this insolent aristocrat to eat his croix du lys, (the order of the Bourbons,) in order that it might meet with the most ignominious destiny.

Angelet, who was a very handsome and agreeable man, and very much the fashion, was one day in a salon of the Faubourg St Germain openly expressing his joy at the Emperor’s return, when a great lady who was present jeered him on his inability, on account of his wounds, to do more than speak in favour of his hero. St Amand, stung to the quick, and devoured by martial ardour and that passionate devotion for his chief which was the characteristic of every man in the French army, started immediately for the frontier, and made the campaign of 1815 on his crutches: he was killed in the early part of the day at Waterloo.

The third brother, who was mild and gentle as a woman in face and manner, also fell bravely fighting in the last charge of that bloody day. After the battle, Doctor D——, an intimate friend of the Angelet family, went to announce to the bereaved mother, who was also a widow, the death of her two younger sons. The eldest was still lingering at Brussels. I do not wish him to recover, said the weeping woman, for then I should be forced to live for his sake, whereas when he goes I may follow and join all those I have loved upon earth. She died in the course of the year of a broken heart — that malady which slays more than are numbered in the lists of men.

FRENCH HISTORIANS OF WATERLOO— As I advance in years, I find myself often wandering back to the scenes of my youth, and living over again the stirring events of my early days; and I confess to feeling a patriotic pride when I call to remembrance, the glorious field of Waterloo — that battle of giants which decided the fate of the world. Many eloquent pages have been written on that stirring topic, and varied have been the accounts of that tremendous conflict; our present brave allies to this very day continue to assert that they were not beaten, but were victims of a mistaken order, an act of treachery, or an evil destiny, — in short, that they succumbed to anything but the genius of Wellington, the energy of Blucher, and the dauntless courage of the English and Prussian armies. I must say that I cannot understand how French writers imagine that they lessen the humiliation of defeat by attempting to decry or diminish the fame and prowess of the victor; or why M. Thiers and others, in their accounts of Waterloo, make so many vain attempts to prove that we ought to have lost the battle.

The Napoleon of M. Thiers’s romance of Waterloo, — it is certainly not a history, — his Napoleon, I say, is not Napoleon as he was, but an ideal hero, omniscient and unerring.  Ney and the other French generals are represented as brave blunderers, who could neither give, obey, nor execute an order; Wellington as a genius of the second-rate order, slow, and unenterprising, and the English soldiers as fellows stubborn enough, but incapable of any aggressive movement — heavy, beef-fed knaves, standing up like logs, to be sabred, shot, and stuck by the active and intelligent veterans of the Garde Imperiale.

M. Thiers has been liberal to us in one respect. He has endowed several of our regiments with a very strong development of the vital principle. Many of our battalions, which, according to this great historian, had been entirely cut to pieces by the charges of French cavalry, nevertheless come to life again towards the end of M. Thiers’s account of the engagement, and join with the utmost ardour in the last charge against the retreating French.

All this is quite unworthy of a great writer and statesman like M. Thiers, who has had every means of knowing the truth; and I, for one, cannot refrain from entering my protest against the innumerable errors, false assertions, and convenient suppressions contained in the twentieth volume of his history. The fame of Wellington, as one of the great captains of the age, is world-wide, and, written as it is on fifty fields of battle, needs no defence from me; but, when I hear the British soldier pooh-poohed and decried by M. Thiers, who never set a squadron in the field, nor the division of a battle knew, I am moved to say a few words more on this stirring subject.

In spite of Les Victoires et Conquêtes de l’Armée Française, I maintain that the British infantry is the finest in the world. I never saw anything to equal our old Peninsular regiments, not only for stubborn endurance, but for dash, pluck, intelligence, and skill in manœuvring. Nothing could beat them; and if we had had the army of veterans with which we crossed the Bidassoa, on the field of Waterloo, we should have attacked the French instead of waiting their onset.