1883.] on Count Bumford, Originator of the Boyal Institution. 441 



tiiiued. There was no alteration for the better. He thought of 

 sej^aration, but the house and garden in the Eue d'Anjou being a 

 joint concern, legal difficulties arose as to the division of it. "I 

 hare suffered," he says to his daughter, " more than you can imagine 

 for the last four weeks ; but my rights are incontestable and I am 

 determined to maintain them. I have the misfortune to be married 

 to one of the most imperious, tyrannical, unfeeling women that ever 

 existed, and whose perseverance in pursuing an object is equal to her 

 profound cunning and wickedness in framing it." He purposed 

 taking a house at Auteuil. It would be unfortunate if, notwith- 

 standing all the bounties of the King of Bavaria, he could not live 

 more independently than with this unfeeling, cunning, tyrannical 

 woman. " Alas ! little do we know people at first sight ! Do you 

 preserve my letters? You will perceive that I have given very 

 different accounts of this woman, for ladij I cannot call her." He 

 describes his habitation as no longer the abode of peace. He break- 

 fasts alone in his apartment, while to his infinite chagrin most of the 

 visitors are his wife's determined adherents. He is sometimes present 

 at her tea parties, but finds there little to amuse him. " I have waited," 

 he says (which we may doubt), 'with great, I may say unexampled 

 patience, for a return of reason and a change of conduct, but I am 

 firmly resolved not to be driven from my ground, not even by disgust. 

 A separation," he adds, " is unavoidable, for it would be highly im- 

 proper for me to continue with a person who has given me so many 

 proofs of her implacable hatred and malice." 



The lease of the villa at Auteuil was purchased by Eumford in 

 1808. The separation between him and his wife took place "amicably" 

 on the 13th of June, 1809. Ever afterwards, however, anger rankled 

 in his heart. He never mentions his wife but in terms of repugnance 

 and condemnation. His release from her fills him with unnatural 

 jubilation. On the fourth anniversary of his wedding-day he writes 

 to his daughter, " I make choice of this day to write to you, in reality 

 to testify joy, but joy that I am away from her." On the fifth anni- 

 versary he writes thus : " You will perceive that this is the anniversary 

 of my marriage. I am happy to call it to mind that I may compare 

 my present situation with the three and a half horrible years I was 

 living with that tyrannical, avaricious, unfeeling woman." The 

 closing six months of his married life he describes as a purgatory 

 sufficiently painful to do away with the sins of a thousand years. 

 Eumford, in fact, writes with the bitterness of a defeated man. His 

 wife retained her friends, while he, who, a short time previously, had 

 been the observed of all observers, found himself practically isolated. 

 This was a new and bitter experience, the thought of which, pressing 

 on him continually, destroyed all magnanimity in his references to her. 



From 1772 to 1800, Eumford's house at Auteuil had been the 

 residence of the widow of a man highly celebrated in his day as a 

 freethinker^ but whom Lange describes as " the vain and superficial 

 Helvetius." It is also the house in which in the month of January 



2 G 2 



