Vindication (69 page)

France's rejection of the coup
: The French were attempting to heal relations with the US. Early in Feb. 1794 it was decided that Genêt's successor as French Minister to America, Fauchet, must issue a proclamation ending the Louisiana expedition (see chs 9 and 10 above) against Spain. He was instructed to announce: ‘Every Frenchman is forbid to violate the neutrality of the US.'

dating the Barlows' departure for Hamburg
: American citizens had to be authenticated as genuine by their Minister if they were to obtain a pass to leave Paris. Morris, Papers, show that passports were supplied to RB and JB on 10 Mar. (Letter from Henry W. Livingstone to Gouverneur Morris (10 Mar.).) Colonel and Mrs Blackden, JB's associates, were supplied with passports at the same time.

MW to RB
,
backing the joint enterprise
: 27 Apr. [1794],
MWL
, 253;
MWletters
, 251–2. Their friendship may have also mattered to RB at a time when a brother and sister suddenly died of fever in Connecticut.

Bourbon platters
: MW notes in
FR
, 173, that in 1789 ‘the king sent his rich service to the mint' as a donation ‘to relieve the wants of the country'. Several others made similar donations of jewels and plate. It's not known if GI's thirty-six plates were saved from the mint, or whether they came from another silver service.

£3500
: GI to EB (24 Oct. 1794), reported by EB (18 Nov. 1794) in a letter transcribed by Gunnar Molden. (According to Judge Wulfsberg–who presided over the subsequent criminal case–the value was 17, 000 to 18, 000
riksdaler
.) The sum was first cited in Nyström,
Scandinavian Journey
, a study that marks a turning-point in our knowledge of this phase of MW's career. The author initiated research on the fate of the treasure ship and the subsequent trial. He surmised that the silver was to be exchanged for grain, one of the commodities Backman exported (and some of the money was to pay for repairing or re-rigging the ship).

Ellefsen…pointed out a ship
: Bought by GI from the Laïent brothers of Le Havre.

oak
: The accounts of the repairs later carried out in the Swedish port of Strömstad mention that oak was needed. Enclosed with the ship's papers in the Riksarkivet, Stockholm.

GI's disguising of the ship
: Buus, ‘Promethean Journey', 228, makes clear that Scandinavian neutrality allowed resourceful types from all European countries to carry on business with France despite the British blockade and England's Traitorous Correspondence Bill of 1793. It was common for French ships to be re-registered as neutral Scandinavian ones.

Coleman
: MW's spelling of the name. Sometimes spelt ‘Colman'.

draped the tricolour about his waist
: When Ellefsen was interrogated in Arendal, Norway, on 28 Apr. 1795, he recalled this charming detail.

Algerian pirates
: They had recently captured twelve ships from the rich Hanseatic (north German) towns. Britain permitted these pirates to cruise the Atlantic to prevent France getting supplies from America and to punish the latter for recognising the French republic. (Before the US broke away, they had enjoyed Britain's protection). Britain, France and other countries paid tribute to the pirates to ensure their ships' safety.) Swan told the American Secretary of War that these pirates were expected as far as Elsinore, Denmark. (Swan to Knox (21 Dec. 1793): Knox, Papers.) In mid-July Ellefsen registered the ship with the Danish consul, Mr Pickman, in Rouen, the nearest inland town from Le Havre. Nyström,
Scandinavian Journey
, says that Ellefsen told the Danish consulate the ship was bound for Copenhagen. Elsewhere it is said be Elsinore. But since Ellefsen actually sailed to Norway, this was probably a sop to the Danes in order to be accredited.

naming of the ship
: There is no basis for the idea that GI had the ship named after MW and the Frenchwoman Marguerite who looked after Fanny. The latter was employed only later when MW went to Paris. The spelling is unstable: ‘Margrethe' appears as ‘Margrethe' or ‘Margareta'. Possibly, Peder Ellefsen was also recalling his baby sister Margrethe, who had died aged eight in 1790.

Ellefsen and the mate…loaded the silver
: Details from Judge Wulfsberg's report (18 Aug. 1795) delivered to Danish Prime Minister Bernstorff and copied to the
Stiftamtmann
in Oslo, outlining Ellefsen's actions as part of a case against him. The report emphasises that the silver was loaded ‘without the knowledge of the rest of the crew'. Report discovered by Gunnar Molden in the Oslo Regional Archives.

receipt and other vital papers
: GI's instructions to Ellefsen, Kristiansand Town Magistrate,
Notarialprotokoll
8 (1794–1804). The instructions (dated 13 Aug. 1794) don't specify Norway. The orders are to procure Danish papers for the ship with ‘the utmost dispatch & economy'; EB will reimburse Ellefsen for expenses. This might, in fact, imply that Ellefsen was to go to Norway for properly legal papers, but he did already have papers from the Danish consulate before leaving France. Ellefsen's agreement is witnessed by ‘Wheatcroft jun'. If produced in court this letter would prove that Ellefsen was Imlay's subordinate and not the owner of the ship. Later, Wheatcroft would be called on to testify in court.

letter to EB
: The US Vice-Consul for Le Havre, Francis Delamotte, appears to introduce GI to EB. GI is said to be a native of the US who is worthy of his confidence in a ‘joint commission'. The tone of the letter, co-signed by Delamotte and Imlay, besides being deadpan, is also too deliberately vague to ring quite true. It would be unlikely that GI would be dispatching treasure to a stranger–with his ship due to sail in the next day or two. Could this letter have been a kind of safety net or blind that, if opened, would seem to prove no scheme was afoot, and the relation with Backman as yet nonexistent?
This is another brilliant discovery by Gunnar Molden, deepening the mystery of GI's dealings. (Molden does not agree with my idea that this letter was a blind.) Kristiansand State Archive: Town Magistrate: Notary Protocol 8 (1794–1804), pub. by the Chief of Police, Sorensen (Dec. 1794). Presumably trans. from the English or French of the original into Norwegian. Delamotte was a big businessman and conceivably a player in GI's game, though as yet not enough is known. His correspondence (in French) with the American Minister (Morris, Papers) reveals that Delamotte was arrested on 16 Feb. 1795 for a reason he never spells out. He had an English wife, and may have been suspected of spying. He had had an English business partner who had returned to England two years earlier. His fluency in English and the American ships at his disposal led to suspicions. His English correspondence was scrutinised. His nights were spent in prison; during the day he was allowed to work from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. He remained in prison for four months–that is, till June–fearful for the safety of his wife. Married to a Frenchman, she was automatically protected, but not if that Frenchman was deemed a traitor.

date of ship's departure and nine days at sea
: A later interrogation of Ellefsen at Arendal, Norway, on 28 April 1795, refers to his statement that a letter from GI on 13 Aug. had instructed him to sail to Gothenburg. Ellefsen testifies that the voyage took nine or ten days, and by 25 Aug. he was signing the ship over to his stepfather in Norway. This accords with new evidence in the letter from EB on 18 Nov. 1794 in which he says that the ship sailed from Le Havre on 14 or 15 Aug. It was therefore at sea c. 14–24 Aug.

guillotining of leaders of the Terror
: Eyewitness report in Rowan's
Autobiography
, 238.

dates of JB's visit to Paris
: Letters dated from Paris, 17 and 20 Aug. Houghton.

MW's ‘indignation' with the knave
: 19 and 20 Aug.
MWL
, 260;
MWletters
, 258–9. The dash in place of the name was inserted either by MW herself, or by WG in 1798 when he edited these letters for publication, destroying the originals.

‘fully acquainted…'
: MW's newly discovered letter to Bernstorff.

Paris after the Terror
: Linda Kelly,
Women of the French Revolution
, 153.

Paris fashions in 1795
: Laver,
Taste and Fashion
, 18; Murray,
High Society
, 245, 247, 253–7.

women's protest suppressed
: In May 1795 radical women laid siege to the Convention so as to break the new order. The military was called in, and the Convention banned all unaccompanied women from its meetings and forbade more than five females to walk together in the street. (Jacobs,
Her Own Woman
, 177.) Women repeatedly attempt to enter politically into the Revolution, only to be controlled by the forces in power, whether Robespierre or his adversary Tallien.

the Williams women had fled
: HMW joined her lover John Hurford Stone in Switzerland, and from then they lived as a couple.

Paine's letter to the Convention
: Paine, Dossier. In English with French translation.

James Monroe
: Replacing Morris as Minister, he had arrived at Le Havre at the end of July 1794, when the Terror ended. Conceivably, GI and MW, plus GI's associate Delamotte the Vice-Consul, would have participated in a welcome for Monroe.

von Schlabrendorf on MW in Paris
: His recollections were in the form of notes in German in his copy of the
Memoirs
; relayed by his friend Carl Gustav Jochmann and reprinted in Durant's Supplement to
Memoirs
, xxvii, 251–2. Other recollections are
recorded by Henry Crabb Robinson in his Diary (2 Sept. 1817), after he visited HMW who recalled Schlabrendorf's words (Crabb Robinson,
Books and their Writers
, i, 209).

‘permanent views'
;
‘our being together'
: Though GI's letters have not survived, we can hear his voice when MW repeats his words 9–10 Feb.
MWL
, 278;
MWletters
, 281–2.

honesty
: WG casts doubt on GI's honesty in the caveats of his note to MW's letter of 30 Dec.: ‘the person to whom the letters are addressed, was about this time in Ramsgate, on his return, as he professed, to Paris, when he was recalled, as it should seem, to London, by the further pressure of business
…
'.
Letters to Imlay
, xxxi.

Could GI have been a secret agent…
: If GI was known to be in the pay of Britain, he may have been in danger with the new regime in France–a reason for not visiting MW in Paris, and for sending a servant rather than coming himself when she agreed to join him in London.

money from JJ
: It has been suggested that this money came from her sisters, who did intend sending drafts through JJ with a view to an exchange rate in favour of the English pound. The plan was for MW to keep the money against a time when it would be possible for Bess to join her.

disillusion
: Jacobs, 183, ‘puts this neatly: ‘Imlay's eagerness to pay Mary's bills merely underscored his emotional negligence.'

‘illiterate'
: 20 Aug. 1793, Adams, MS correspondence.

‘Spy Nozy'
: Coleridge,
Biographia Literaria
(1817), ch. 10.

Burke on MW
: Burke to Mrs John Crewe (Aug. 1795),
Correspondence of Edmund Burke
, viii, ed. Thomas W. Copeland (University of Chicago Press, 1969), 304.

Letters for Literary Ladies: Cited in Jacobs, 191.

GI's maxim
: Repeated by MW to GI (29 Dec. [1794]),
MWL
, 272;
MWletters
, 275.

RB's complicity with marital infidelity
: RB to JB (6 and 20 Jan. 1796), Houghton: b MS Am 1448 (542, 546). RB asks JB to confide everything, for her better health: ‘even if you get a sweetheart tell me'. JB was then departing for what turned out to be an almost two-year stay in Algiers. RB's health did deteriorate, and she became a semi-invalid, taking cures, often seemingly close to death. I have wondered if this was in part an effect of sexual betrayal in an exceptionally close marriage–all the closer perhaps for there being no children.

JB and dealings in Hamburg
: JB's letterbook (1797–1803), 69–70, records that Dallarde & Swan in Paris (one of the firms he was working for) later questioned his returns. JB replied rather evasively (Mar. 1798) that the greater part of the goods was sold at a
low
price through the House of Boué before he left Hamburg in July 1795. Houghton: b MS Am 1448(4).

JB's change of fortune
: It may not be entirely unconnected that between Mar. and June 1795 JB's associate Swan was contriving to manipulate the two-million-dollar Franco-American debt to his private advantage.

JB's estate in 1795:
JB's will-letter to RB from Algiers during an outbreak of plague (1796). Draft in Beinecke: Za Barlow 13; final version in Houghton. He remarks that most of their property was ‘now lying in Paris'. Sum cited by Charles Todd,
Joel Barlow
, 117.

Barlow's biographers
: Charles Todd's biography in 1886 offers skimpy evidence of his sudden wealth: ‘He invested largely in French Government consols, which rose
rapidly after the victories of Napoleon and yielded him a handsome fortune' (111). Todd is talking mostly about money coming in at a later period–sliding over the fact that JB was surprisingly well-off already in 1796. Woodress,
Yankee Odyssey
, assumes JB made his fortune as a shipping agent which is closer to the truth, but it can't have been built up bit by bit, given the obstructive freeze of that particular year. The shortest chapter in Woodress (ch. 6, only 10 pages), ‘Commercial Interlude' is where the blank lies. Without a fortune of sorts by the end of 1795, JB could not have hung on in Algiers for nearly two years on a small salary, while supporting Ruth in the pleasant area of the rue du Bac in Paris. Though he undertook consular duties, his position in Algiers remained shaky, according to his letterbooks in Houghton: he had to rebut an accusation from Washington that he was trying to create a diplomatic position for himself.