I arrived here the day before yesterday in the diligence from Mayence, the
price of which is two and a half florins the person, and the distance
twenty-five English miles; there is likewise a water conveyance by the Mayn
for half the money.
The road runs thro' the village of Hockheim, which in
England gives the name of Hock to all the wines of Rhenish growth. The
country is undulating in gentle declivities and vales and is highly
cultivated in vines and corn. I put up here at the Hotel Zum Schwan (The
Swan), which is a very large and spacious hotel and has excellent
accommodation. There is a very excellent table d'hote at one o'clock at
this hotel, for which the price is one and a half florins the person,
including a pint of Moselle wine and a krug or jar of Seltzer water.
About four or five o'clock in the afternoon it is the fashion to come and
drink old Rhine wine a l'Anglaise. That sort called Rudesheimer I
recommend as delicious. There is also a very pleasant wine called the
Ingelheimer, which is in fact the "red Hock." At one of these afternoon
meetings a gentleman who had just returned from Paris related to us some
anecdotes of what passed at the Conference between the French commissioners
who were sent after the abdication of Napoleon, by the provisional
government, to treat with the Allies; in which it appeared that the British
commissioner, Lord S[tewart],[28] brother to the Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs, made rather a simple figure by his want of historical
knowledge or recollection. He began, it seems, in rather a bullying manner,
in the presence of the commissioners, to declaim against what he called the
perfidy and mutiny of the French army against their lawful Sovereign; when
the venerable Lafayette, who was one of the commissioners and who is ever
foremost when his country has need of his assistance, remarked to him that
the English revolution in 1688, which the English were accustomed always to
stile glorious, and which he (Lafayette) stiled glorious also, was
effectuated in a similar manner by the British army abandoning King James
and ranging themselves under the standard of the Prince of Orange; that if
it was a crime on the part of the French army to join Napoleon, their
ancient leader who had led them so often to victory, it was a still greater
crime on the part of the English army to go over to the Prince of Orange
who was unknown to them and a foreigner in the bargain; and that therefore
this blame of the French army, coming from the mouth of an Englishman,
surprised him, the more so as the Duke of Marlborough, the boast and pride
of the English, set the example of defection from his Sovereign, who had
been his greatest benefactor. Lord S[tewart], who did not appear to be at
all conscious of this part of our history, was staggered, a smile was
visible on the countenances of all the foreign diplomatists assembled
there, and Lord S[tewart], to hide his confusion, and with an ill-disguised
anger, turned to Lafayette and said that the Allies would not treat until
Napoleon should be delivered to them.
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