WOBBSMOKTlfS FRENC A A O UTHEI 1 11 4 2 9 4 5 6 5 ITY /•/■ ^ HUGH REES LTC 5&7. REGENT ST WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER THE STORY OF HER BIRTH. WITH THE CERTIFICATES OF HER BAPTISM AND MARRIAGE GEORGE McLEAN HARPER Professor of Englisfi in Princeton University. Autlior of " John Morley and Other Essays," "William Wordsworth, His Life, Works and Influence," etc. PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON LONDON : HUMPHREY MILFOBD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1931 Copyright 1921, by Princeton University Press Published 1921 Printed in the United States of America LIBRARY UKIVERSITY OF CAMFORIVIA SANTA BARBARA WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER When, in the winter of 1914-15, 1 found among the manuscripts in the British Museum a collection of letters from Doro- thy Wordsworth, the poet's sister, in which she referred again and again to his daughter Caroline, born of a French mother, the discovery did not surprise me. 1 had long been convinced, more by omis- sions than by positive traces in his poems and letters, that his nature had received, while he was in France, a blow from which he never wholly recovered and whose causes had not been made known to the world. These mipublished letters of Dorothy were addressed to her intimate friend, the wife of the famous abolitionist Thomas Clarkson. Mrs. Clarkson had gone to Paris, in the brief interval be- tween the entry of the Allies in 1814 and 6 WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER the return of Napoleon from Elba, in 1815. Under date of October 14, 1814, Doro- thy writes to her: "I cannot help very much regretting that you forgot to tell me where to address you while you were there, as I should have been exceedingly glad that you had seen the young woman whom I mentioned to you, the more so as a treaty of marriage is now on foot be- tween her and the Brother of the officer Beaudouin whom I mentioned to you as having been at Rydale, and she and her Mother are extremely anxious that I should be present at the wedding, and for that purpose pressed me very much to go in October. This, unless such good for- tune had attended us as being taken under your and your Husband's protection, we could not think of at this season, and therefore I wish that the marriage should be deferred till next spring or summer, because I desire exceedingly to see the poor Girl before she takes another pro- tector than her mother, under whom I WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER 7 believe she has been bred up in perfect purity and innocence, and to whom she is life and light and perpetual pleasure; though from the over-generous disposi- tions of the mother they have had to strug- gle through many difficulties. Well, I be- gan to say that I particularly wished that you could have seen them at this time, as through you I should have been able to enter into some explanations, which, im- perfectly as I express myself in French, are difficult, and as you would have been able to confirm or contradict the reports which we receive from Caroline's Mother and Mr. Beaudouin of her interesting and amiable qualities. They both say that she resembles her Father most strikingly, and her letters give a picture of a feeling and ingenuous mind." Sara Hutchinson, Mrs. Wordsworth's sister, was to accompanj^ Dorothy. They dreaded the inconvenience and dangers of travel, these two middle-aged ladies, in a foreign country against which England had been at war for nearly twenty years, 8 WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER and wished they could go under the pro- tection of Heniy Crabb Robinson, the more so as they intended to carry presents of Enghsh manufacture. From a letter begun on the last day of 1814, we learn that the wedding was postponed till April and that they were hesitating about going so late in the spring because they expected to stay nine or ten weeks and would thus be in Paris in June, when King Louis XVIII was to be anointed. They feared the public disturbances and possible out- break of civil war which might attend that event. "Besides," adds Dorothy, "the journey will be very expensive, which we can ill afford, and the money would be bet- ter spent in augmenting my Niece's wed- ding portion. To this effect I have writ- ten to her. She would not consent to marry without my presence, which was the reason that April was fixed." Suddenly this little family project was wiped from the scroll on which Destiny inscribed the Hundred Days and Water- loo. On March 16, 1815, Dorothy wrote WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER 9 to Mrs. Clarkson: "For the sake of our Friends I am truly distressed. The lady whom I mentioned to you from the first was a zealous Royalist, has often risked her life in defence of adherents to that cause, and she despised and detested Buonaparte." Dorothy is referring here to Caroline's mother, and continues, "Poor creature! in the last letter which we had from her she spoke only of hope and com- fort ; said that the king's government was daily gaining strength." On April 11, 1815, she quotes to Mrs. Clarkson from a letter by Caroline's mother describing the march of Napoleon's army into Paris, and adds: "Poor creatures, they say they are shipwrecked when just entering into port." From a letter dated August 15, 1815, eight weeks after Waterloo, we learn that it was proposed to send Caroline to Eng- land to meet Mr. and Mrs. Wordsworth, and incidentally that "Madame Vallon," her mother, had many acquaintances, to one of whom it was possible she might en- 10 WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER trust her daughter for the journey. Dorothy writes on April 4, 1816, still ex- pressing her ardent desire to go to France, even though Caroline's wedding, of which Madame Vallon had sent her a detailed description, had already taken place/ In the summer and autumn of 1820, Mr. and Mrs. Wordsworth, Dorothy, Heniy Crabb Robinson, Thomas Monk- house (a cousin of Mrs. Wordsworth's), JNIrs. Monkhouse, and her sister Miss Horrocks travelled on the Continent. In October the party were in Paris, where they spent nearly the entire month near Madame Baudouin, i.e., Caroline, and her husband and mother. There were fre- quent visits back and forth between the French family, living in the rue Chariot, near the Boulevard du Temple, and the English travellers, who had taken lodg- ings in the same street. Dorothy wrote to Mrs. Clarkson on October 14, saying: 1 These letters to Mrs. Clarkson are given in full or in copious extracts in my Life of William Wordsworth, London and New York, 1916. WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER 11 "We have had great satisfaction at Paris in seeing our Friends whom I have men- tioned to you." Crabb Robinson's Diary fills numerous closely-written little volumes, now pre- served in Dr. Williams's Library, in Lon- don. Only about one-eighth of their con- tents lias been printed, and I was court- eously allowed to examine the manuscript originals at my leisure in 1915. Among the unpublished j^arts of it I found sev- eral references to "Monsieur and Madame Beaudoin" and "Madame Vallon," and abundant proof that they and their Eng- lish visitors were on terms of intimacy. I have often been asked why, having published the letters to Mrs, Clarkson and the extracts from Robinson's Diary, I did not go farther, in my "Life of Words- worth," and make more use of such illumi- nating information. It is true that the facts, of which a brief summary is given above, threw light upon many of Words- worth's poems, but I preferred to let it shine without interposing any medium of 12 WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER my own, and the delicacy of the subject forbade unnecessary speculation. How- ever, having discovered, in July, 1917, the official records of Caroline's birth and marriage and obtained here and there some additional items about her mother's family, all of which would no doubt be dis- closed sooner or later, I have thought it best to give them as simply and correctly as possible, with just the requisite amount of comment. Every fresh fact makes it more and more apparent that whatever, from a legal point of view, may have been the nature of the connection between Wordsworth and Marie- Anne or "An- nette" Vallon, it was openly acknowledged and its consequences were honorably en- dured. Certain biographical and historical facts must be borne in mind in order to under- stand the series of extraordinary situa- tions in which these young persons were placed. Wordsworth, with a college friend, tramped across France in the sum- mer of 1790, when he was twenty years WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER 13 old and the Revolution was in the full bloom of radiant promise. His impres- sions of the country, its inhabitants, and the Revolution were entirely favorable. In November of the following year, hav- ing obtained his degree at Cambridge, and being in an unsettled state of mind and unwilling to engage at once in the studies of a profession, he returned to France and, after stopping five days in Paris, spent the winter at Orleans, and went to Blois, forty miles farther down the Loire, in the spring of 1792. We have only two letters to fix the chronology of his stay at Orleans. He wrote to his brother Richard from that town on December 19, about a fortnight after his arrival there, and to his friend Mathews from Blois, on May 17, some weeks after his change of resi- dence. It was at Orleans that he became acquainted with Marie- Anne Vallon. The letter to his brother, as well as the account given in the "Prelude," Book IX, lines 125-188, depicts the society in which he moved at Orleans as extremely Royalist, 14 WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER aristocratic in its pretentions, and scorn- ful of the common people. We shall see presently that the Vallon family held Royalist views and were made to suffer for them. If Wordsworth, early in the spring of 1792, was driven away from Marie- Anne by her relatives and yet de- sired to remain near her, the place most convenient for him would have been Blois. Had he wished to avoid her, he would have been likely to hide himself in Paris or to go to some distant part of France. At the time of his second arrival in France, the Revolution was still proceed- ing favorably. Considering what an evil incubus had been thrown off, there had been little flagrant injustice and very lit- tle bloodshed, and many fair-minded, moderate men were devoted to the cause. The generous young Englishman threw himself whole-heartedly into the Revolu- tionary current, reading "the master pamphlets of the day," sitting as a dis- ciple at the feet of Michel Beaupuy, a Re- publican officer at Blois, and attending the WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER 15 meetings of a radical club. He was a homeless orphan, and, under the trustee- ship of his uncles, enjoyed the income of a small patrimony, so that the world lay very free around him. If he remained hovering about Orleans, it was, we may assume, because he really loved Annette and refused to abandon her. One of the effects of the Revolution was that the State assumed some of the functions that previously were exercised by the Church. A distressing consequence was confusion in regard to the laws of marriage. Before the Revolution mar- riage was in the hands of the Church and was treated as a sacrament. By a decree of the National Assembly on July 12, 1790, known as the civil constitution of the clergy, all priests and prelates were declared functionaries of the State. Only a few bishops and not quite half of the lower clergy took the oath of office under this law, the rest choosing to remain faith- ful to Rome. It can readily be seen that each side would be reluctant to recognize 16 WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER the validity of marriages celebrated by the other. The ancient sanctity of Church marriages was further assailed in an arti- cle of the Constitution of September, 1791: "The law considers marriage as only a civil contract." In former times the registry of births, baptisms, marriages, and deaths, or what the French call the Hat civil, had been kept by the clergy. After the civil constitution of the clergj'^ the parish registers were placed in charge of the "constitutional" or Revolutionary priesthood, and yet in many parishes, especially in rural parts, the non-juring priests endeavored to retain their old pre- rogatives. A proposal was made in the Assembly, in February, 1791, to have the parish registers kept by the civil authori- ties.' By the law of September 20, 1792, the Legislative Assembly completely secularized the keeping of the Hat civil, "Everywhere the directories and munici- palities claimed a right to oblige the con- 2L. Sciout: Histoire de la Constitution civile du Clerge, Vol. IH, p. 118. WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER 17 stitutional priests to keep no records of the sacramental acts, to give up publish- ing banns, and to treat marriage in church as a mere formality."^ Some bishops agreed to favor this line of conduct; oth- ers objected. Some of them forbade the priests in their dioceses to pronounce the nuptial blessing over persons who refused to have their marriage proclaimed in church.* If the law bore thus heavily upon the constitutional clergy, it was even more oppressive and confusing in the case of non- jurors. Marie- Anne Vallon be- longed to a family which would have con- sidered a merely civil marriage null and void and marriage by a constitutional priest an insult to religion. We are now in a position to inquire more particularly who Marie- Anne Val- lon was, and what was the relation be- tween her and William Wordsworth. Some light has been shed upon the first of 3 Ibid., Ill, 355. * Proclamation of the provisional executive council, January 92, 1793. 18 WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER these questions through a few indirect and accidental references in a book published by Mr. Guy Trouillard, keeper of the Archives of the Department of Loir et Cher: "Memoires de Madame Vallon, souvenirs de la Revolution dans le de- partement de Loir et Cher." Paris, 1913. The writer of these memoirs, whose maiden name was Marie-Catherine Puzela, was the wife of Paul-Leonard Vallon, Annette's brother. She finished them in 1823, and M. Trouillard prepared them for the press at the instance of her grandson M. Omer Vallon, maitre des requetes honoraire au Conseil d'Etat and administrateur delegue du Chemin de Fer du Nord. A descendant of Paul-Leonard Vallon, Madame Maurice Lecoq- Vallon, informs me that, according to a domestic tradition, the correct name of the family was Leonnar, belonging to Scottish an- cestors who came into France with James the Second, and that the name Vallon or du Vallon was substituted for it later. The memoirs narrate, for the benefit of WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER 19 the author's descendants, the adventures and sufferings of herself, her father, and her husband from 1791 to the end of the Terror. She was born in 1776. Her hus- band, the son of Jean-Baptiste-Leonard Vallon, a surgeon, and Fran^oise Yvon, was baptized at Blois in 1763. Paul- Leonard Vallon and Marie-Catherine Puzela were married in 1804, he having been, most of the time since March, 1793, in prison, in exile, or under police sur- veillance, for complicity in a Royalist up- rising at Orleans, where he lived at the outbreak of the Revolution. This was the attempted assassination of Leonard Bour- don, one of the travelling representatives of the Convention. It was bloodily avenged by Fouquier-Tin\'ille and his fellow-delegates, and is frequently re- ferred to in Aulard's "Recueil des actes du Comite de salut public avec la corre- spondance officielle des representants en mission," Paris, 1889-1911. Not until 1804 was Vallon authorized to resimie the practice of his profession as a notary. As 20 WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER soon as he obtained permission from the poHce to do so, he settled at Saint-Dye, a village on the left bank of the Loire, nine miles above Blois, where he was a notary anc justice of the peace till 1830 and died in 1835. It was his devotion to the cause of Royalty and the Roman Catholic Church that gave him favor in the eyes of Made- moiselle Puzela's father. They were fel- low-sufferers. Puzela had himself lan- guished in prison, at Blois and Orleans, between August, 1793, and January, 1794, being saved from the guillotine by the heroic fidelity of his daughter, who in- sisted on sharing his fate. He then began life again as a notary at Saint-Dye, where he lived till his death in 1806. During an illness which resulted from her sacrifices, and especially from overwork while help- ing him in his business, she consulted, to her father's horror, the famous Dr. Cham- bon de Montaux, who had been mayor of Paris from December, 1792, to February, 1793, and in that capacity had led Louis WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER 21 XVI to the bar of the Convention for his trial and accompanied the President of the Executive Council when he went to announce to the King his sentence of death. Writing to her children, and referring to Paul-Leonard Vallon, the author says: "During my convalescence, which was very slow, your father was released from the prison of Sainte-Pelagie, where he had been kept since his return from foreign parts. A small inheritance called him to Saint-Dye. His relatives lived at Blois, and one of his sisters came with him to Saint-Dye. My father was quite famous [for his Royalist views, as the context shows]. The sister held ojiinions which were reputed excellent [i.e., she was strongly Royalist and Catholic], and though she was not acquainted with us, she introduced her brother. The victims of the Revolution told one another their misfortunes and soon became intimate friends. Your father told mine in confi- dence that he was mider the surveillance 22 WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER of the secret police and could reside no- where without a special permit. To at- tempt disobedience would be to defy the tyrants. His sister had heard the sup- posed cause of my illness, and as her brother had been employed fifteen years as a notary's clerk at Orleans and had plenty of ability, she proposed a match between us. Still stunned by Dr. Cham- bon's report of my health, and circum- vented by the sister, who did not give him time to breathe and kept urging this al- liance with a Royalist as a marriage worthy of me, my father, though he had sworn to himself never to let me marry, at last gave in." She was so ill that she had to recline in a big easy chair to re- ceive the formal visit of her fiance and his sister, but the marriage took place three weeks later, on the 10th pluviose, January 31, 1804. The point of interest for us in the fore- going account is that Paul-Leonard Val- lon and Marie- Anne, if she was the sister mentioned, were intensely Royalist and WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER 23 Catholic. Another point made clear in the "Memoires" is that throughout the year 1792 a fierce contest was waged in the country around Blois between the fol- lowers of Rome, who seem to have been numerous in the villages, and the sup- porters of the constitutional clergy. For example, in one village, Saint-Cyr, the Republicans drove away the priests who would not take the oath and locked up the church; whereupon a society of non-con- forming Catholics was organized, which worshipped in a barn. In July a band of armed "patriots," inspired, it was sup- posed, by the Revolutionary club, the Friends of the Constitution, at Blois, in- terrupted a vesper service in the bam; and in the following month several non- juring priests were driven out of the De- partment. It is practically certain that Wordsworth, and quite certain that his friend the officer Beaupuy, attended the meetings of the Friends of the Constitu- tion, which were held nightly in the church of the Jacobins at Blois. The 24 WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER author of the "Memoires," though only sixteen years old, tried to shield her father from the charge of being an aristocrat by attending one of the sessions. "Women," she says, "were admitted just like men. It was there, we were told, that youth was formed in the love of our country; so my age was no obstacle." Borrowing the plain democratic garb of an artisan's daughter, she ventured, as she expresses it, into that cave where people played with the Hves of virtuous citizens. "What a sight! With what horror was I seized when I perceived that it was a church! All my opinions, all my principles, made me see the thunderbolt launched by God's avenging arm. . . . The platform Where men stood to speak was a pulpit from which I had often heard the gentle mo- rality of our holy religion. . . . They crowded round that platform, trying to see who could speak first and be the first to bring accusations, and loud applause was the reward of whoever offered the greatest number of victims." To her hor- WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER 25 ror she saw her father's brother rise to this bad eminence and receive this crown of praise. "Let me out!" she cried to the woman who accompanied her, and return- ing to her father she told him that the de- nunciations seemed to be principally di- rected against the priests, but that he too should at once leave Blois. Under the direction of the constitution- al bishop Gregoire, who was a prominent member of the Convention, the Revolu- tionary church was very successfully or- ganized at Blois and had many adherents. But we learn that non-juring priests held many secret services in the city and that these services were still more frequent in the outlying villages. Gazier in his "Etudes sur I'histoire religieuse de la Revolution fran9aise," Book II, Chap- ters 4 and 5 (as quoted by M. Trouillard) says: "Mass was celebrated at almost every door. . . . The good priests rebap- tized and remarried as fast as they could." All this tends to prove that if William Wordsworth, a Protestant and, moreover. 26 WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER a zealous Revolutionary, desired to marry Marie-Anne Vallon, a Roman Catholic and Royalist, in the year 1792, at Orleans or Blois, he would have had to overcome very great obstacles. It is evident that the Vallon family would not have regard- ed as valid a marriage performed by a constitutional priest, even had they over- come their objections to the young man himself. And if, yielding his principles to theirs, he had employed the services of a non-juring priest, the marriage would have been, strictly speaking, illegal at that time and until the publication of the Con- cordat, April 18, 1802. Whether there was a marriage of this latter kind might have been regarded as an open question, were it not for the two documents which we shall consider presently. As we learn from a letter to his brother Richard, the young poet was still at Blois on the tenth of September, but expecting to be in London "during the course of the month of October."^ His departure from 5 Harper: Life of Wordsworth, I, 173. WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER 27 Blois was probably delayed by the dread- ful events in the first week of September, when the massacres of imprisoned Royal- ists occurred and the Revolution was clearly proved to have got beyond the control of moderate men. He passed through Orleans later in the autumn, on his way to Paris, with what thoughts we can only surmise. Of his ominous fears in Paris he has left a description in the tenth Book of the Prelude. He appears to have returned to England in December, 1792, or even so late as January, 1793. On the first of Februarj^ France declared war against England, and from that time until after the Treaty of Amiens, March 28, 1802, he could not have re-entered France unless in disguise and at the ex- treme risk of his life. I have given some slight bits of evidence, in my "Life of Wordsworth," Vol. I, 209 and Vol. II, 417, for a view that he was in France in 1793, but without attaching much impor- tance to them. On the evidence of Thomas Carlyle, Wordsworth once let 28 WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER fall the remark that he had witnessed the execution of Gorsas, which was in October of that year. If so, he was brave to the point of foolhardiness, almost incredibly clever, and very lucky to escape from France after such an adventure. The next, and by far the clearest ray of light is shed on this obscure story by a, document of which I obtained a copy in July, 1917, through the kindness of M. Jacques Soyer, Keeper of the Archives of the Department of Loiret. It has never before been published: \^ Archives cormiiunules d' Orleans, regis- tre des baptemes de la paroisse de Sainte- Croicc. G.G. 185.^ JLe quinzieme jour de decembre de Van mil sept cent quatre vingt douze, le pre- mier de la Repuhlique, par moi, soussigne, a ete batisse tine fille, nee ce jour sur cette paroisse de Williams Wordwodsih, ang- lais, et de Marie-Anne Vallon, ses pere et mere; nommee Anne-Caroline par Paul Vallon et Marie-Victorie- Adelaide Peig- ne, femme Andre- Augustin Dufour. WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER 29 Williams Wordsodsth , absent, a ete repre- sente en qualite de ph^e de Venfant par le citoien susdit Andre- Aug ustin Dufour, greffier du tribunal du district d'Orleans, en vertu d'un poiivoir ad hoc a nous pre- sent e et signe ''Williams W ordworsth" ' de laquelle signuture les citoiens Andre- Aiigustin Dufour, Paul Vallon et Marie- Victorie- Adelaide Peigne, snsdits, nous ont certifie Vauthenticite par leurs signa- tures, ci-dessous et sous leur responsa- bilite. M. V. A. Peigne. Vallon. Dufour Perrin, Vicaire episcopal. Translation : [Communal Archives of Orleans, registry of baptisms in the parish of Sainte-Croix. G.G. 185.] On the fifteenth day of December, of the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two, the first of the Republic, by me, the undersigned, was baptized a girl, bom the same day in this parish to Wil- liams Wordwodsth, an Englishman, and Marie-Anne Vallon, her father and moth- 30 WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER er; named Anne-Caroline by Paul Vallon and Marie- Victorie- Adelaide Peigne, wife of Andre-Augustin Diifour. Williams Wordsodsth, being absent, was represent- ed as the child's father by the aforesaid citizen Andre-Augustin Dufour, recorder of the court of the district of Orleans, by virtue of a power of attorney ad hoc pre- sented to us and signed "Williams Word- worsth," of which signature the citizens Andre-Augustin Dufour, Paul Vallon and Marie- Victorie-Adelaide Peigne aforesaid have certified to us the authen- ticity by their signatures below and on their own responsibility. M. V. A. Peigne. Vallon. Dufour. Perrin, Episcopal Vicar. In the letters of Dorothy Wordsworth and in her Journal there are several re- marks between 1795 and 1802 which indi- cate that her brother was in correspon- dence with Annette and that Caroline, when she was old enough, wrote to her father. These letters also show that Dor- othy's friend, Mrs. Marshall, was in the WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER 31 secret, if secret it was. Writing to her from Racedown on November 30, 1795, Dorothj^ says : "William has had a letter from France since we came here. Annette mentions having despatched half a dozen, none of which he has received." As soon as it became evident that peace between England and France was at hand, in the spring of 1802, the agitation of William and Dorothy grew veiy painful, and they determined to cross the Channel. The meeting at Calais with Annette and Caro- line followed,® and two months later Wordsworth and Mary Hutchinson were married. Annette was never married, and was known as Madame Vallon. It is strange that no mention of her or of Caro- line is made in any of the published let- ters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, though the story of their lives was known to Mrs. Marshall, Mrs. Clarkson, Crabb Robin- son, Miss Horrocks, Mr. and Mrs. Monk- house, Helen Maria Williams, and the Hutchinson family. It is beyond question 6 Harper: Life of Wordsworth, H, 31. 32 WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER that Caroline's birth was illegitimate, but jthat the subsequent conduct of Words- worth towards her mother was honorable and open I have no doubt whatever. What remains to be discovered is the reason why this connection was not re- sumed and regularized after the meeting in 1802. Further communication was ren- dered extremely difficult or even impos- sible for eleven years by the war, which began again in May, 1803, and did not end till after the first abdication of Na- poleon, in April, 1814, whereupon, as we have seen, William and Dorothy at once got in touch with "Madame Vallon" and her daughter. It is a touching fact that Caroline was married, not as Caroline Vallon, but as Caroline Wordsworth, and with her fa- ther's formal consent. In July, 1917, I copied from the Archives of the Prefec- ture of the Seine, regt. 27, No. 57, the fol- lowing document, regarding that event. It has never been published: WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER 33 Baudouin Uan mil huit cent seize le vingt Fevrier a midi par devant nous Alexandre Cesar Crette, Ecuyer, chevalier de la Legion d'honneur, maire du troisieme arrondisse- ment de Paris, faisant fonction d'officier de Vetat civil — sont comparus Jean Bap- tiste Martin Baudouin, ne a Saulx le Due, departement de la Cote d'Or le vingt quatre septemhi'e mil sept cent quatre vingt, chef de bureau au mont de piete, demeurant a Paris, rue de la Texeranderie No. 82, neuvieme arrondissement, fils majeur de feu Erne Georges Baudouin, et de Marie Anne Etienne sa veuve, de- meurant a Monibard, consentante par acte passe devant Guerard et son collegu£, notaires Royaux au dit Monthard, le seize du courant, enregistre et legalise, d'une part: — et Anne Caroline Wordsworth, nee a Orleans, departement du Loiret, le quinze decembre mil sept cent quatre vingt douze, demeurant a Paris, rue de Paradis No. 35, quartier du Faubourg Poissonniere, file majeure de Williams :}4 WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER Wordsworth, proprietcdre , demeurant a Grasmer, Kendan, Duche de Westermor- land, en Angleterre, consent ant par acte en date du dioc sept octohre dernier, enreg- istre et depose a Me Cleophile Michel Deherain, not aire a Paris, et de Marie Anne Fallon, presente et consentante, d' autre part: Lesquels nous ont requis de proceder a la celebration de leur manage, dont les publications ont He faites au troisieme et an neuvieme arrondissements de Paris, les dimanches vingt huit Janvier dernier et quatre du courant, a midi, et affiches pen- dant Vintervalle present par la lot, sans qu'il nous ait ete signifie aucwne opposi- tion au dit mariage, faisant droit a leur requisition, apres avoir prealablement donne lecture des dites publications, des actes de naissance des comparants, de celui de dices du pere du requerant, du consentement de sa mere, et celui du pere de la requerante, enon^ante que la vraie maniere d'ecrire le nom de la dite requer- ante est Wordsworth et non pas Word- WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER 35 wodsth, comme dans son acte de nais- sance; enfin du chapitre siiV du titre du Code civil intitule du marriage, avons de~ mande au futur epoucc et a la future epouse s'ils veulent se prendre pour mari et pour femme, chacun d'eux ayant re- pondu separement et affirmativement , nous avons declare, au nom de la loi, que Jean Baptiste Martin Baudouin et Anne Caroline Wordsworth sont unis par le mariage: De quoi nous avons dresse acte en presence des sieurs Michel Eustace Baudouin, de St. Etienne, age de vingt- cing ans, instructeur en chef de la com- pagnie Ecossaise, chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur, demeurant a Paris, rue de la Teoceranderie No. 82, frere de Vepouoo, Nicolas Bailly, chevalier officier de la le- gion d'honneur, conseilleur a la cour de cassation, age de soixante six ans, demeu- rant rue Ste. Hyacinthe No. 6, Armand, Parfait huet, age de quarante deux ans, dem't rue des fosses Montmartre No. 17, amis des Epoux, lesquels, aussi que la mere de Vepouse et les temoins out 36 WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER signe avec nous, apres lecture faite. Signe au Registre A. C. Wordsworth, J. B. M. Baudouin, M. A. Fallon, Baudouin de Ste. Etienne, Le chev^^ Bailly — huet, Boullay et Crette. Translation : At noon on February 20, 1816, there appeared before me, Alexandre Cesar Crette, esquire, chevalier of the Legion of Honor, mayor of the third arrondissement of Paris, acting in my capacity as an offi- cer of the bureau of vital statistics, Jean Baptiste Martin Baudouin, born at Saulx le Due, in the Department of the Cote d'Or, September 24, 1790, head of a bu- reau in the government loan establish- ment, residing in Paris, No. 82 rue de la Texeranderie, 9th arrondissement, eldest son of the late Georges Baudouin and of Marie Anne Etienne his widow, who lives at Montbard and gives her consent in an affidavit signed before Guerard and his colleague, royal notaries at the aforesaid town of Montbard, duly registered and legalized, on the one part: — and Anne WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER 37 Caroline Wordsworth, born at Orleans, in the Department of Loiret, December 15, 1792, residing in Paris, No. 35 rue de Paradis, in the quarter of the Faubourg Poissonniere, major daughter of Williams Wordsworth, land-owner, residing at Grasmer (Grasmere), Kendan (Kendal), in the county of Westermorland (West- morland) , England, who gives his consent in an affidavit dated the 17th of last Oc- tober, and duly registered and deposited with Maitre Cleophile Michel Deherain, notary in Paris, and of Marie Anne Val- lon, here present and giving her consent, on the second part: Which parties of the first and second parts having requested me to proceed to the celebration of their marriage, of which the banns were read in the third and ninth arrondissements of Paris, on Sunday, the 28th of last January and Sunday the 4th of the present month, at noon, and posted for the time prescribed by the law, without any objection to the aforesaid marriage having been made, I have granted their 38 WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER request, after having first read aloud the aforesaid banns, the birth-records of the contracting parties, the record of the bridegroom's father's death, his mother's affidavit and that of the bride's father, she stating that the true way to spell her name is Wordsworth and not Word- wodsth, as it stands in her birth-record; and finally, having read aloud chapter six of the Civil Code, entitled Marriage, I have asked the future bride and groom if they would take each other for husband and wife, and each having responded sepa- rately and affirmatively, I have declared, in the name of the law, that Jean Baptiste Martin Baudouin and Anne Caroline Wordsworth are united in marriage: whereof I have drawn up a statement in the presence of Michel Eustase Baudouin, of St. Etienne, aged twenty-five, chief in- structor of the Scottish company, cheva- her of the Legion of Honor, residing in Paris at No. 82 rue de la Texeranderie, brother of the husband, Nicolas Bailly, chevalier and officer of the Legion of WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER 39 Honor, counsellor at the Supreme Court, aged sixty-six, residing at No. 6 rue St. Hyacinth, Armand Parfait huet, aged forty-two, residing at No. 17 rue des Fosses Montmartre, who all, together with the bride's mother and the witnesses, have signed with me, after I read the statement. Signed the register: A. C. Words- worth, J. B. M. Baudouin, M. A. Vallon, Baudouin of St. Etienne, the chevalier Bailly, — huet, Boullay and Crette. From the foregoing pages it must be in- ferred that Wordsworth, being a just, merciful, and brave man, admitted his fault freely and endeavored to shield with his name tlie innocent child of his wrong- doing. Not only once, but twice, and the second time at the risk of losing a reputa- tion for peculiar correctness of conduct, did he publicly acknowledge Caroline as his daughter. And for the space of at least twenty-eight years, as we have seen, he kept in friendly communication with Annette. What seems almost unbeliev- '40 WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER able, and can indeed only be explained on the ground that Mrs. Wordsworth was a woman of extraordinary magnanimity and that he inspired in her a complete sense of his own goodness, is the fact that she, with a company of relatives and friends, should have been willing to visit Annette. I have made no attempt to deny that the origin of all this trouble was a wrong; but the unusual difficulties that stood in the way of a legal marriage be- tween William Wordsworth and Anne- Marie Vallon should be and will be re- membered. It gives me great pleasure to know that my friend, Professor Emile Legouis, of the Sorbonne, is about to publish a revised edition of his delightful book, "The Early Life of Wordsworth," in which he will, I hope, furnish some further information about Annette and Caroline. He appre- ciates the value of these biographical de- tails for the light they throw upon Words- worth's psychology and upon the course of his political and literary development; WORDSWORTH'S FRENCH DAUGHTER 41 and, with his rare insight into the poet's character and his exquisite grace of style, he will doubtless give more coherence and significance to the story than I have done. THE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW. Series 9482 3 1205 02092 1035 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILI' A A 001 429 456