William Wood - The Winning of Canada: A Chronicle of Wolfe
officer. Perhaps, too, his friends were just a little afraid that he might join the Prussians or the Austrians;
for it was not, in those days, a very strange thing to join the army of a friendly foreign country. Whatever
the reason, the long leave was refused and he went no farther than Paris.
Louis XV was then at the height of his apparent greatness; and France was a great country, as it is still.
But king and government were both corrupt. Wolfe saw this well enough and remembered it when the
next war broke out. There was a brilliant society in 'the capital of civilization,' as the people of Paris
proudly called their city; and there was a great deal to see. Nor was all of it bad. He wrote home two days
after his arrival.
The packet [ferry] did not sail that night, but we
embarked at half-an-hour after six in the morning and
got into Calais at ten. I never suffered so much in
so short a time at sea. The people [in Paris] seem to
be very sprightly. The buildings are very magnificent,
far surpassing any we have in London. Mr Selwin has
recommended a French master to me, and in a few days
I begin to ride in the Academy, but must dance and
fence in my own lodgings. Lord Albemarle [the British
ambassador] is come from Fontainebleau. I have very
good reason to be pleased with the reception I met
with. The best amusement for strangers in Paris is
the Opera, and the next is the playhouse. The theatre
is a school to acquire the French language, for which
reason I frequent it more than the other.
In Paris he met young Philip Stanhope, the boy to whom the Earl of Chesterfield wrote his celebrated
letters; 'but,' says Wolfe, 'I fancy he is infinitely inferior to his father.' Keeping fit, as we call it
nowadays, seems to have been Wolfe's first object. He took the same care of himself as the Japanese
officers did in the Russo-Japanese War; and for the same reason, that he might be the better able to serve
his country well the next time she needed him. Writing to his mother he says:
I am up every morning at or before seven and fully
employed till twelve. Then I dress and visit, and dine
at two. At five most people go to the public
entertainments, which keep you till nine; and at eleven
I am always in bed. This way of living is directly
opposite to the practice of the place. But no
constitution could go through all. Four or five days
in the week I am up six hours before any other fine
gentleman in Paris. I ride, fence, dance, and have a
master to teach me French. I succeed much better in
fencing and riding than in the art of dancing, for
they suit my genius better; and I improve a little in
French. I have no great acquaintance with the French
women, nor am likely to have. It is almost impossible
to introduce one's self among them without losing a
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