wife of Sir Robert Smith, the banker already mentioned.[1] Malmesbury dined with George Hamilton, of Jamaica, and his wife Lady Mary, daughter of Lord Leven. Their two daughters had married French officers. Malmesbury, on account of his fine eyes and profusion of white hair, was compared by a Paris newspaper to a white lion, which made his friends playfully style him "the lion." He had so frequently to send to London for instructions that the caricaturists represented Lacroix as asking him how he was, and Malmesbury as writing to London to know what answer he should give. His bust figured in the waxwork exhibition of Curtius, uncle and predecessor of Madame Tussaud, but was withdrawn immediately on his departure.
International animosity had much cooled down since May 1794, when the Convention ordered that no quarter should be given to the English, a decree which the army refused to execute.[2] There were, however, recriminations respecting the treatment of prisoners which we must hope were, to say the least, exaggerated. While in France it was alleged
- ↑ Paine beguiled his captivity by a correspondence with Lady Smith.
- ↑ Robespierre only a fortnight before his fall complained that the English captured at Nieuport had been spared, and General Dugommier was gently rebuked by the Committee of General Safety for not shooting General O'Hara. O'Hara, speaking to a French fellow prisoner at the Luxembourg of the freedom of the press in England, might well say—"We can exclaim, 'King George is mad,' but you dare not say, 'Robespierre is a tiger.'"
