Madame de Stael and the Duke of Wellington, 1814—1817

When late in June 1814, the Duke of Wellington was passing through Paris en route for London and the victory celebrations, he made a special point of calling on Mme. de Stael at the little house in Clichy which was her first Parisian home since Napoleon had exiled her from the capital in 1803. Never having met her before, the Duke marked the occasion by genuflecting as he kissed her hand. The moment was certainly memorable. In the sharply divided Europe of 1814 the British Government set great store by having the famous authoress, who had also been Napoleon’s most prominent single enemy, on the side of the angels. Mme. de Stael had been in London in the dramatic months preceding Napoleon’s first abdication, when the Prince Regent was induced by his Ministers to pay her a visit because, as Lady Melbourne told Byron, she had “such a powerful pen that it was of great consequence to make her speak well of this country.” Her importance was by no means diminished after Napoleon’s banishment to Elba and the Restoration of the Bourbons; more than likely someone dropped a hint to this effect to Wellington.