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Dangerous Liaisons. New light on the reasons for the expulsion of the violinist G.B. Viotti from Britain in 1798
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 October 2016
Abstract
In March 1798 the violinist Giovanni Battista Viotti was expelled from Britain, suspected of being a Jacobin sympathizer. He was allowed to return to England in the summer of 1799 under circumstances that have remained vague to this day. In 1811 he was granted British denizenship, but only after petitioning the Crown. To understand the British Government’s determined stance against Viotti it is necessary to examine his life in Paris in the period 1789–92 – his friendship with the Jacobin journalist-diplomat Hugues Bernard Maret, his entrepreneurial activities, and his attempted takeover of the Paris Opera. These activities were remembered by two eccentric characters of the age, both spies for the British government. The first was an unscrupulous French ultraroyalist, the Comte d’Antraigues. The second was the dogmatic and at times irrational Englishman W.A. Miles, who was especially suspicious of Viotti’s pupil Pierre Rode, who made an unexpected landing in Britain in early 1798. In this article I re-examine the question of Viotti’s expulsion from Britain in light of new evidence against the violinist, some of it apparently damning, and attempt to determine once and for all whether the order was justified.
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- Research Article
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- © Cambridge University Press 2016
Footnotes
I thank Warwick Lister and Philip Dwyer for reading and commenting on the first draft of the article, and Graham Lord for his research help in Paris. All translations are my own.
References
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41 Darlow, Staging the French Revolution, 14, 36.
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51 Journal de la Cour et de la Ville, 26 November 1791.
52 de Goncourt, Edmond, La Saint-Huberty d’après sa correspondance et ses papiers de famille (Paris, E. Dentu, 1882): 200Google Scholar, 206.
53 29, 31 March, 9 May 1782, and 29 May, 8 June 1783. I thank Warwick Lister for providing these dates.
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57 Letter from Citizen Aigoin, 1 August 1793, Archives nationales, Comité de sûreté generale F7 pièce 4720/1, cited in Dorival, Hélène de Montgeroult, 110. It also claims that the marquis soon returned to France to save his property from sequestration. This letter, unlike the one which denounced Viotti, contains many verifiable details.
58 Yim, Denise, ‘Selected letters from G.B. Viotti to Mrs Margaret Chinnery, 1793–1798’, in Giovanni Battista Viotti: A Composer between the two Revolutions, ed. Massimiliano Sala (Bologna: Ut Orpheus Edizioni, 2006): 395–423Google Scholar, at 397.
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62 See Evans, ‘William Pitt, William Miles and the French Revolution’, 193, 199.
63 Masson, Le Département des Affaires Etrangères, 242.
64 Miles, ed., Correspondence, vol. 1, 368.
65 Miles to Lebrun, 18 December 1792, in Miles, ed., Correspondence, vol. 1, 397.
66 See Aigoin’s letter of denunciation in Dorival, Hélène de Montgeroult, 110; and Pélissier, ‘Après l’attentat’, 521.
67 Morning Post, 1 January 1793; Courier, 1 January 1793.
68 See Sparrow, Elizabeth, ‘Secret Service under Pitt’s Administrations, 1792–1806’, History 83 (1998): 280–294CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 282.
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70 The Times, 31 January 1793.
71 Miles to Maret, 12 February 1793, in Miles, ed., Correspondence, vol. 2, 70–71.
72 Transcribed in Yim, ‘Selected letters from G.B. Viotti to Mrs Margaret Chinnery’, 403–8.
73 Masson, Le Département des Affaires Etrangères, 282.
74 Viotti to Mr and Mrs Chinnery, 4 September 1793, Chinnery Family Papers, Sydney, Powerhouse Museum, PHM 94/143/1 – 2/9.
75 Viotti to Mr and Mrs Chinnery, 4 September 1793.
76 Lister, Amico, 89.
77 Yim, Viotti and the Chinnerys, 59, 271.
78 Presumably to assure himself of his friends’ wellbeing.
79 Maret himself wrote an account which was never published, but which was incorporated into his grandson Ernouf’s biography, and into the Biographie universelle, vol. 26, 529–33. The most reliable and comprehensive account is in Rufer’s, Alfred Novate: Eine Episode aus dem Revolutionsjahr 1793 (Zurich, Büchergilde Gutenberg, 1941)Google Scholar.
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82 Kaulek, ed., Les Papiers de Barthélemy, vol. 2, 476.
83 ‘Letters and papers from Mr Consul Watson at Venice to the Secretary of State’, TNA FO 81/9.
84 They may have been school friends, having both been at the collège Louis-le-Grand (Masson, Le Département des Affaires Etrangères, 463, 470).
85 Maret’s was the Bulletin de l’Assemblée nationale, and Noël’s was the Chronique de Paris.
86 Masson, Le Département des Affaires Etrangères, 164.
87 Masson, Le Département des Affaires Etrangères, 164. See also Evans, ‘William Pitt, William Miles and the French Revolution’, 201.
88 Pélissier, ‘Après l’attentat’, 360, 514, 517, 526–7.
89 Paris, Archives nationales, F/7/10771/A. An online French genealogy site (Histoire et généalogie de la famille André par Marc Gauer, www.calameo.com), lists several members of the André family from Nîmes who were bankers and merchants in Genoa, including Dominique-Isabeau André (1766–1844).
90 Viotti to Mr and Mrs Chinnery, 4 September 1793, PHM 94/143/1 – 2/9.
91 Drake arrived in Genoa on 15 August (Drake to George Aust, 17 August 1793, FO 28/6).
92 Viotti to Mr and Mrs Chinnery, 4 September 1793, PHM 94/143/1 – 2/9.
93 Kaulek, ed., Les Papiers de Barthélemy, vol. 2, 435; Mme de Montgeroult to Miles, 24 August 1793, in Miles, ed., Correspondence, vol. 2, 86–7.
94 Rufer, Novate, 123.
95 Mme de Montgeroult to M. de Montgeroult, 1 September 1793, HHStA, ‘Schreiben privates Inhalts an Maret …’, fols 33–34.
96 Viotti to Mr and Mrs Chinnery, 4 September 1793, PHM 94/143/1 – 2/9.
97 Barthélemy to Deforgues, 18 September 1793, in Kaulek, ed., Les Papiers de Barthélemy, vol. 3, 61.
98 Barthélemy to Deforgues, 23 September 1793, in Kaulek, ed., Les Papiers de Barthélemy, vol. 3, 82–3.
99 The sum of 12,000 livres was granted (Deforgues to Barthélemy, 20 September 1793, in Kaulek, ed., Les Papiers de Barthélemy, vol. 3, 66–7).
100 Kaulek, ed., Papiers de Barthélemy, vol. 3, 164.
101 Maret to Mme de Montgeroult, 6 November 1793, HHStA, ‘Schreiben privaten Inhalts an Maret …’, fol. 64v.
102 Maret to Mme de Montgeroult, 12 November 1793, HHStA, ‘Schreiben privaten Inhalts an Maret …’, fols 62r–v.
103 Viotti to Bazetta, 11 November 1793, HHStA, ‘Schreiben privaten Inhalts an Maret … ’, fols 31–32.
104 Viotti to Margaret Chinnery, 4 September 1793, PHM 94/143/1 – 2/9.
105 Miel, ‘Viotti’, 585.
106 Viotti to Margaret Chinnery, 13 October 1793, PHM 94/143/1 – 2/11.
107 Viotti to Margaret Chinnery, 4 September 1793, PHM 94/143/1 – 2/9.
108 Duckworth, The d’Antraigues Phenomenon, 203–4.
109 Consul Watson submitted a bill for £1,848 for secret intelligence in the 14 months prior to 17 August 1793 (FO 81/9).
110 See Godechot, Le Comte d’Antraigues, 120–21. Antraigues’s credibility has been doubted by all the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholars who have examined the so-called Dropmore Papers. These include Mitchell, H., ‘Francis Drake and the Comte d’Antraigues: A Study of the Dropmore Bulletins 1793–1796’, Historical Research 29 (1956): 123–144CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rufer, Alfred, ‘En complément des Dropmore Papers’, Annales historiques de la Révolution française 41/4 (1958): 14–43Google Scholar; Clapham, J.H., ‘A Royalist Spy during the Reign of Terror’, English Historical Review 12 (1897): 67–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Aulard, F.A., ‘Les Bulletins d’un espion royaliste dans les papiers de Lord Grenville’, Revue historique de la Révolution française 32 (1897): 121–128Google Scholar; and Glagau, H., ‘Achtundzwanzig Bulletins über den Wohlfahrtsausschuss’, Historische Zeitschrift 78/2 (1897): 217–237Google Scholar. Surprisingly, neither Durey nor Sparrow (both cited elsewhere in this article) question his credibility.
111 Las Casas to Antraigues, 4 May 1793, cited in Goncourt, La Saint-Huberty, 254.
112 Drake to Grenville, 28 October 1793, PRO, FO 95/5.
113 The Manuscripts of J.B. Fortescue Esq preserved at Dropmore, ed. Walter Fitzpatrick, Historical Manuscripts Commission, 14th Report. Appendix, Part V, 1894, vol. 2, 456–61.
114 From Toulon, Cook carried despatches dated 24 and 27 October (The Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure, vol. 93, (Nov 1793): 390). His ship would have touched at Genoa a day later to collect Drake’s mail.
115 It had been communicated to him by the secretary at the Spanish embassy. Watson to Grenville, 27 September 1793, TNA, FO 81/9.
116 Godechot, Le Comte d’Antraigues, 11.
117 See Durey, Michael, ‘William Wickham, the Christ Church Connection and the Rise and Fall of the Security Service in Britain, 1793–1801’, English Historical Review 121 (2006), 714–745Google Scholar, at 731, 734, 744.
118 Morning Chronicle, 11 February 1794.
119 Viotti to Margaret Chinnery, 6 December 1793, PHM 94/143/1 – 2/14.
120 On Thursday 3 April 1794 there was a guest entered in the Lansdowne House Dinner Books as ‘Mr Voute’. With thanks to Kate Fielden, Bowood archivist, Bowood House, Calne, Wiltshire.
121 Maret to Miles, 26 December 1795, in Miles, ed., Correspondence, vol. 2, 273.
122 Parke, William, Musical Memoirs, 2 vols (London: Colburn and Bentley, 1830): vol. 1, 254Google Scholar; New Briton, 27 December 1794.
123 Durey, ‘William Wickham’, 717.
124 Oracle and Public Advertiser, 11 January 1798; Morning Herald, 29 March 1798.
125 London Metropolitan Archives, MR/A/053.
126 Those of the Chinnery children’s future drawing master Antonio Celli (LMA WR/A/029) and the amateur violinist John Baptist Cimadore (LMA WR/A/039).
127 Circular letter from Whitehall, 26 December 1797, TNA, HO 5/003.
128 Fétis, ed., Biographie universelle des musiciens, vol. 7, 447.
129 True Briton, 9 January 1798.
130 Morning Herald, 16 January 1798.
131 True Briton, 17 January 1798.
132 Pitt had broken with Miles in 1794 (Evans, William Pitt, 209). William Doyle makes the point in The French Emigrés in Europe and the Struggle against Revolution, 1789–1814, ed. Kirsty Carpenter and Philip Mansel (London, Macmillan, 1999): xvi–xvii), that most emigrants who left France after 1792 were not Jacobin agitators, but ordinary people fleeing the consequences of civil war.
133 See Oelkers, Jurgen, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (London and New York: Continuum International Publishing, 2008): 12–13Google Scholar.
134 Especially his oratorio Deborah. See McGeary, Thomas, The Politics of Opera in Handel’s Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013): 135–142CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
135 Hogwood, Christopher, Haydn’s Visits to England (London: Thames and Hudson, 2009): 53Google Scholar.
136 Morning Herald, 28 February 1798.
137 Miel, ‘Viotti’, 588.
138 Fétis, ed., Biographie universelle des musiciens, vol. 8, 471
139 Morning Herald, 19 February 1798; Fétis, ed., Biographie universelle des musiciens, vol. 7, 447.
140 Carter to Taylor, 26 February 1798, TNA, HO 5/003.
141 Presumably the suspicion of the authorities fell on foreign artists working at the Opera, among whom were singers Brigida Banti, Signora Angelelli, Giovanni Morelli, Carlo Rovedino, Giuseppe Viganoni (the last three previously members of Viotti’s Théâtre Feydeau), and instrumentalists Federici, Steibelt, and Mme Krumpholz. The young violinist Julian Baux is the only other musician whose expulsion orders I have found. ‘I have consented to grant him the usual expenses of a passage to Hamburgh’, Thomas Carter wrote to his agent Mazzinghi, 21 February 1798, TNA, HO 5/003.
142 True Briton and Sun, 3 March 1798.
143 Morning Herald, 1 March 1798.
144 Thomas Carter to Walsh Jnr, 5 March 1798, TNA, HO 5/003.
145 Thomas Carter to Walsh Jnr, 2 March 1798, TNA, HO 5/003.
146 Viotti, Précis.
147 On Flint see The Annual Biography and Obituary, 21 vols (London: Longman, Hurst, 1817–37): vol. 19 (1835), 416; Sparrow, ‘Secret Service under Pitt’s Administrations’, 280–94.
148 Circular letter from Whitehall, 28 February 1798, TNA, HO 5/003.
149 Sparrow, Elizabeth, ‘The Alien Office 1792–1806’, The Historical Journal 33/2 (1990), 361–384CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 375.
150 Aliens Entry Books, TNA, HO 5/004.
151 I have searched ‘Letters and papers from Sir James Craufurd to the Secretary of State’, TNA, FO 33/17 (18 Dec 1798–29 Mar 1799), FO 33/18 (2 Apr–30 June 1799), FO 33/19 (2 Jul–27 Dec 1799). The reason no record was kept may have been because Flint’s promotion had been ‘outside normal government practice’ (Sparrow, ‘The Alien Office’, 375), or, more likely, because deportation orders were rarely, if ever, overturned.
152 John Beckett to William Chinnery, 15 June 1811, TNA, HO 5/036.
153 Viotti seems to have begun giving lessons to the duke in 1807 (see Adolphus Frederick to Margaret Chinnery, 23 May 1807, University of Sydney Library, Fisher 2000 – 25/1).
154 Adolphus Frederick to Viotti, 25 July 1811, University of Sydney Library, Fisher 2000 – 38/3.
155 Report on petition for denization of Jean Baptiste Viotti, 12 August 1811, TNA, HO 44/46, fols 162–163.
156 Lists of grants by letters patent, 1801–1873, PRO, HO 4 C97.
157 Margaret Chinnery to George Robert Chinnery, 14 October 1811, Chinnery Correspondence, 1808–1811, University of Oxford, Christ Church Library, MS xlviii a. 42a–a. 55.
158 Flint to Viotti, 24 October 1811, NYPL, JOB 97–52 item 27.
159 Windham Papers, BL Add. MS 37844 fol. 191, cited in Dinwiddy, ‘The Use of the Crown’s Power of Deportation’, 198.
160 Miel, ‘Viotti’, 588.
161 Hélène arrived in Dijon on 26 October and gave a tearful rendition of her signature piano piece, which she describes in a letter to Maret, 27 brumaire, an 2d de la République (17 November 1793) (HHStA, ‘Die Franzosin von Bassano an ihrer in Mantua gewahrsam lebenden Gemahl [sic]’, fol. 6v. (The archivist who labelled this folder mistook Hélène for Maret’s wife.)