Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

There are, apparently, only two letters to Douce surviving from de la Rue’s time in England, for
some of which at least the Abbé was staying with Douce and his wife and would have had no
need to write. It is the subsequent correspondence (of which only de la Rue’s letters are known to
survive) that continued, precariously, through the war years and after that gives an insight into
the two men’s relationship and the ways in which English and French antiquarianism supported
and stimulated one another.
Douce and de la Rue had strong and sharply varying political opinions, which divided
along the absolute opposite of nationalist lines. Douce was a great admirer of Napoleon. De la
Rue was not, referring to him as ‘notre tyran’ [our tyrant]. 16 They agreed, however, that war was
bad for ‘notre correspondence Litteraire’ [our literary correspondence] although this was only
partly true for de la Rue who found that international hostilities brought him an embarrassment
of riches. 17 In May 1798 he was writing from Paris to London of the enormous quantity of
manuscripts flooding into the French national archives from the territories conquered by the
revolutionary armies. He was waiting with particular impatience for those sequestered, or looted,
from the Vatican as he knew that they would include many offering valuable points of
comparison with the early French romances that interested him. He was finding examples of the
songs of Marie unrepresented in the manuscript collections that his exile had allowed him to
study in England.
By July 1799, however, with fifty thousand manuscripts in front of him and ‘point de
catalogue’ [no catalogue] he was feeling somewhat overwhelmed. 18 In addition to this there were
dangers in corresponding with the enemy. He did not, at first, sign his letters to Douce and was
anxious that when his work was published by the Society of Antiquaries his title should not be
added to his name as ‘cela me feroit inquieter ici’[that would cause trouble for me here]. 19
Despite which difficulties the most striking thing about his correspondence with Douce is the
consistency with which, for good and ill, the antiquarian endeavour was prosecuted. The only
hostilities in which de la Rue took part were scholarly. His discovery in Paris of several Anglo-
16
Douce/de la Rue letters, f44, 25 April 1814.
17
Douce/de la Rue letters, f4, 12 May, 1798.
18
Douce/de la Rue letters, f6, 2 prairial an 7, (21 May 1799).
19
Douce/de la Rue letters, f5, 12 May, 1798.
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