All was flux. Looking at the Directors, Talleyrand knew that their government could not last. He decided to join forces with the brilliant young soldier who had conquered Italy, and regularly corresponded with him. After the coup d’état of the 18th Brumaire, he worked closely with Napoleon. These two extraordinary and dissimilar men, despite an antipathy, needed one another. Each admired the other’s qualities, but they never became friends. When Napoleon flew into one of his rages it irritated him beyond endurance that Talleyrand was neither angry nor cowed, but stared into the middle distance maintaining a contemptuous silence. Even when Napoleon shouted that he was ‘shit in a silk stocking’, Talleyrand’s only comment was ‘dommage qu’un si grand homme soit si mal élevé’ [so great, so badly raised]. Napoleon thought it essential that a grand seigneur should deal with foreign courts and give ton [cachet] to his own court. It was one of his fatal mistakes.
During the Consulate Talleyrand was living openly, in his official residence, with a Mme Grand, a beautiful woman with an empty head and a disreputable past. Napoleon insisted that he either get rid of her or marry her. Although he had been excommunicated, Talleyrand had not been granted lay status by the Church. He now asked to be freed from his vows and allowed to marry, but this was more than the Pope was prepared to do. Talleyrand raked up such precedents as he could find, among them the case of Cesare Borgia, who although a Cardinal had been permitted to marry a French princess. It was pointed out that Cesare Borgia had never been ordained a priest, moreover the Pope, Alexander VI, was his father, which made all the difference. However, Napoleon twisted the Papal decree; he announced that Talleyrand had been secularised and granted the right to contract a marriage. Paris was stupefied. That the proud and disdainful aristocrat should marry Mme Grand seemed unbelievable. Mr Bernard thinks he probably did it from indolence, and in order ‘not to disturb a pattern of life which he found agreeable’.
Meanwhile Napoleon pursued his conquests all over Europe. There seemed to be no end to the wars. At St Helena, Napoleon admitted he had made two mistakes: the campaigns against Spain and Russia. Talleyrand, moderate as always, was the advocate of peace, and of the natural or ethnic frontiers between nations. He knew that the defeat of one country by another was never final, but engendered first resistance and then another war. Napoleon was unconvinced; after crowning himself Emperor of the French he crowned himself King of Italy, and bestowed kingdoms upon his brothers and his marshals. Although heavily engaged in Spain he invaded Russia, in the disastrous campaign which led to his downfall. Long before this, Talleyrand had perceived that while Napoleon ruled there could be no peace, and he intrigued with the Russians, the Prussians and the Austrians to encompass his defeat. In his memoirs, Talleyrand seeks to justify this odious and reprehensible treachery by saying that Napoleon was bleeding France and Europe to death.
After the departure of the Emperor and the return of Louis XVIII from his long exile, Talleyrand was sent to Vienna to represent the people of France at the Congress. He took with him his last love, Dorothea de Courland, wife of his nephew Edmond de Périgord. Talleyrand’s brilliance, and the persistence which ensured that he sat as an equal with Metternich, Wellington and the other delegates, were admirable; often he imposed his will on his country’s victorious enemies. France was indeed fortunate to possess such a man at such a moment.
However, as the Prince de Ligne said, ‘Le Congrès danse, mais il ne marche pas’ [The Congress dances but doesn’t budge], and when Napoleon escaped from Elba a great deal remained to be done. The events of the hundred days, and Waterloo, made Talleyrand’s task harder than ever. That he succeeded in keeping France’s natural frontiers was a measure of his success. Not for the first time, nor for the last, representatives of the European powers were astonished at the ignorance displayed by the English in the elements of history and geography, an ignorance which has continued to our own day and which has accounted, in part, for the mistakes made by the Anglo-Saxons when they have taken a hand in re-drawing the map of our continent.
After the second restoration, Talleyrand was out of office for several years, though he had a position at Court. He and Dorothea (now Duchesse de Dino) lived at his hotel on the corner of the rue St Florentin, and spent their summers at his grand castle of Valençay and at Rochecotte, her delightful house near the Loire. In 1820 a daughter, Pauline, was born. Talleyrand loved her tenderly, and was generally thought to have been her father.
Louis XVIII loaded him and his family with titles and honours, but it was only after the abdication of Charles X that Talleyrand was brought once more into public life, when Louis Philippe appointed him ambassador to London. He and Dorothea spent four years in London. They made the embassy a sparkling centre of fashionable society, with the best food and the best talk at their table.
At the age of 80, Prince de Talleyrand retired, and he and the Duchesse de Dino resumed their life between Paris and Valençay. London friends paid them visits at the Château; Lady Granville enjoyed herself and said it was like an English country house. Mme de Lieven, on the other hand, a difficult guest, was bored to tears.
When his old wife, from whom he had been separated for so many years, died at last, Talleyrand began to consider a reconciliation with the Church. Mme de Dino and Pauline, now a pious young lady of eighteen, never stopped urging him to sign a letter to the Pope making his submission to Rome. He finally did so, on his death bed, to their extreme satisfaction. Jean Orieux, author of a recent biography of Talleyrand, describes the scene when, after making his confession, he was to receive the last sacraments. The abbé was about to anoint his palms, but the prince clenched his fists and held them out, saying: ‘Do not forget, Monsieur l’abbé, that I am a Bishop.’ More than forty people were present at his death, and all Paris knew what had happened between the abbé and the prince. ‘Après avoir roulé tout le monde, il a fini par rouler le bon Dieu’ [After taking advantage of the world, he ended it by taking advantage of God], people said.
Mr Bernard’s book is the best and most complete biography of Talleyrand in English. There is little to complain about. When he makes James II a contemporary of George III it is obviously a slip of the pen: he means the Stuart pretender, the Cardinal of York. The organiser of the ill-fated flight to Varennes was Axel Fersen, not Fernsen, and the Prince de Ligne has become, rather absurdly, the Prince de Linge [Linen]. (Both these mistakes appear in the index as well as in the text.) To an English eye the American spelling is unpleasing, and Lady Elizabeth Holland and Lord Charles Grey will hardly do for Lady Holland and Lord Grey. Apart from these relatively trivial errors, the publisher is to be congratulated on an excellent production at a very modest price.
What made Talleyrand so greatly loved and appreciated by his many friends of both sexes and of all ages? Above all, it was his brilliant conversation. Mme de Rémusat speaks of his ‘method of approaching serious subjects in the most frivolous possible manner’, and she says: ‘Although more artificial than anyone I had ever known, he was able, out of a thousand affectations, to construct a perfectly natural manner.’ There was not a trace of pomposity or hypocrisy in him, and Mme de La Tour du Pin, who disapproved of him, says: ‘in spite of everything, he had more charm than any other man I have ever known’, while an observer at the Congress of Vienna declares: ‘He seemed to dominate that illustrious assembly by the charm of his mind and the ascendancy of his genius.’
Talleyrand: A Biography, Bernard, J.F. Books and Bookmen (1973)
Madame du Deffand
Mme du Deffand had the good fortune to live in eighteenth-century Paris, where her surroundings were of perfect beauty. She was pretty, and rich enough to be comfortable, as were her many friends. Versailles, with its jealousies and stifling etiquette, was no longer the magnet it had been the century before; and Mme du Deffand, after a fling in her youth with the dissolute Regent, settled down to what must seem an ideal life. Wit and beauty assembled in her yellow silk drawing room and amused themselves with chat and ca
rds, only interrupted by delicious food.
If an interesting foreigner came to Paris he soon found his way to Mme du Deffand. There was even a spice of danger; free-thinking men and the encyclopedia they were writing were sometimes confined in the Bastille. Mme du Deffand was a comfortable reactionary, but Voltaire, a great friend of hers, lived on the borders of Switzerland. He had been in the Bastille once, and had no desire to go back.
Mme du Deffand partook of the douceur de vivre, which Talleyrand said only those who had lived before the French Revolution had known. Yet long before she went blind she was discontented. She said over and over again she wished she had never been born. Cross and sharp with her servants and companions, when her sight faded she took her niece Julie de Lespinasse to live with her. After a while Julie escaped from her tyranny and set up on her own. She had no money, but all Mme du Deffand’s friends combined to give her what she needed, and annoyed the marquise by making Julie’s salon as brilliant as her own. They were perhaps tired of the eternal grumbling and pessimism, although Mme du Deffand could be excellent company.
When Horace Walpole appeared on the scene Mme du Deffand fell madly in love with him. She was old enough to be his mother, and Walpole fled, terrified of becoming an object of ridicule. He wrote her very cruel and repressive letters, while she tried her best not to allow her love expression in her replies. The whole episode is painful; she lived only for his occasional visits to Paris.
Her letters to Walpole, Voltaire and others, are not to be compared with those of the other marquise, Mme de Sévigné, a century earlier. They are full of complaints, and one feels both Walpole and Voltaire were terrified she might descend upon them, at Strawberry Hill or at Ferney.
Benedetta Craveri’s enjoyable book tells the story well. The footnotes are at the end instead of at the bottom of the page, where they belong, and the translation is riddled with Gallicisms. But Mme du Deffand and the appalling ennui she suffered from demonstrate that perfect surroundings, peace, plenty and wit, do not necessarily make happiness, something twentieth-century grumblers may find it hard to admit.
Madame du Deffand and Her World, Craveri, B. Evening Standard (1994)
Doting Mothers
In theory, everybody is familiar with the letters of Mme de Sévigné. And in practice? Probably a few of those considered suitable were read in the schoolroom and have scarcely been glanced at since. Mrs Hammersley has changed all this; beautifully translated, beautifully produced, her book deserves to be a bestseller, for it is guaranteed to delight, amuse and instruct, with its excellent introduction and scholarly footnotes.
About one sixth of the letters are here; most of them addressed to Mme de Grignan. ‘It is ordained there should be a Mme de Sévigné whose love for her daughter passes the love of mothers, from whom she has constantly to be parted’ wrote the Marquise. Mme de Grignan (who was also a faithful correspondent, but whose letters have not survived) has often been blamed for her coldness—this ‘dry stick of a daughter’ as Irvine calls her—but there is nothing harder to put up with than the sort of possessive, enveloping, passionate love which the mother heaped upon her. And with all this exaggerated adoration, Mme de Sévigné did not scruple to marry la plus jolie fille de France [the most beautiful girl in France] to a forty-year-old man, twice a widower, who had the pox (though this she could not know).
‘All his wives are dead,’ wrote the bride’s mother, cheerfully, ‘and by extraordinary good fortune his father and son as well, so that he is richer than ever before’.
Was seventeenth-century France a different world from our world? Mme de Sévigné’s letters from Les Rochers could almost have been written yesterday. She walked in the woods, received her grand neighbours, chatted with the abbé, read a great many books, and never stopped assuring her correspondents that she was not in the least bored, but on the contrary occupied and amused. Those who love the country will sympathise; they are amused and happy, but Paris could believe it that they feel obliged to mention it each time they write.
Illness, the weather and money troubles were other stock subjects, whether she wrote from country or town. The doctors were very rough; yet to this day any French doctor will put his liverish patient on the diet of rice which M de Grignan found so adoucissant [soothing].
Politics, and church politics, were an unending source of gossip, and in those days everyone, however intelligent, was an amateur Crawfie. Certainly the doings of the royal family were spicy enough; births, deaths and the marriage nights of princes and princesses and of the King’s large family of bastards were attended by the curious courtiers and every detail passed on to friends. Mme de Sévigné, staying at Grignan for her grandson’s wedding, notes with surprise that the young couple were left to themselves all night and that nobody made a bawdy joke when they came down to breakfast.
It was to celebrate this wedding that local ladies, we read, ‘though they knew we wish to dispense with their presence, break the windows or crawl under the doors to come and pay their compliments at the peril of their lives.’ [‘qu’on avait priées de ne point venir, ont rompu des glaces, ont pensé tomber dessous, ont été en péril de leur vie, pour venir faire un compliment…’] It was bitterly cold weather that February in Provence just as it has been this year; even the rushing Rhone was frozen, she writes. Surely it was ice, not windows, they broke in their polite efforts to reach the château?
Not the least of the book’s great virtues is the elegance of Mrs Hammersley’s English, which never jars by being too modern, and yet never irritates by being self-consciously antique.
The illustrations show what we want to see, the charm of Les Rochers, the grandeur of Grignan, the prettiness of Mme de Grignan and the exuberance of the letter writer.
Can one imagine a Mme de Sévigné of today going to watch a woman burned at the stake? I do not feel as certain, in saying no, as I should once have done.
Letters from Madame de Sévigné, ed. and trans. Hammersley, V. (1956)
U and Non-U
BRITAIN
Little Brits
If I were a novelist I should think twice before allowing pre-publication extracts of my books to appear in newspapers. In some shiny journal a chapter from Anglo-Saxon Attitudes, accompanied by huge caricature illustrations in full colour, nearly put me off reading the book. The editor had picked out a plum, one of Mr Wilson’s plummiest and most exaggerated baroque inventions: Mrs Salad, charwoman and former lavatory attendant.
Angus Wilson’s fans know well that he excels at oddities, dotty old women, criminal spivs and guilt-ridden intellectuals; the danger is, perhaps, that he might allow the richness and strangeness of his imagination to over-decorate his writing so that it became like a dinner of marrow bones and chocolate truffles.
In fact, however, Mrs Salad’s place in this novel is a minor one, no greater than Mrs Gummidge’s in David Copperfield. (If Angus Wilson reminds us of Dickens, and he does, it is of a Dickens who has read Freud and lost interest in reform.)
Among the crowd of personages my favourite monster is the Danish woman, Inge Middleton. Here she is with the village children whom she has taught to sing German, French and English carols at Christmas:
And now it was a little Jutland peasant song that the children were to sing, and Ingeborg led them with a deep contralto, her well-supported pastel-blue bosom heaving, her grey eyes round with surprise. ‘Ole Dole, din, din,’ she sang, or that, at any rate, was what it sounded like to the smaller children, who, thus reminded that they were hungry, began to cry.
‘And now little Maurice Gardner will sing a verse of Holy Night and we shall sing the choruses. Little Maurice is a very shy, special little boy,’ she said to the audience, ‘so we must all help him.’ When no sound came from his terror-struck mouth, she bent down from the heavens above and placing her huge doll’s face close to his, she asked, ‘What is the matter, Maurice? Have the trolls bewitched your tongue?’ so creating a deep psychic trauma that was to cause him to be court-mar
tialled for cowardice many years later in World War III.
No wonder her clever, rich, attractive husband (a professor of medieval history) left her; he comes back each year to join the family, children and grandchildren, for a frightful Christmas to which the foregoing scene is prelude. He dislikes most his son John, Inge’s favourite child, a homosexual Labour ex-MP who earns large sums on TV fighting the battles of the little man.
Anglo-Saxon Attitudes is the best novel I have read for a very long time. Among its many merits, it has a plot of extreme fascination; was the indecent fertility idol found by archeologists in the Anglo-Saxon bishop’s coffin buried with him or was it planted there by a cynical practical joker? But the title has another meaning besides, for the book is a portrait of some of the less agreeable attitudes of present-day Anglo-Saxons.
Anglo-Saxon Attitudes, Wilson, A. (1956)
Encyclopedia of Britain
The omniscient Bamber Gascoigne has long since taken all general knowledge to be his province, and he says he wrote this enormous book because he needed it on his shelves. As his métier is asking questions on television he probably does need it, though for most people, like the game Trivial Pursuits, it may be more entertaining than useful.
The dust jacket, with its incredible muddle of people and places, gives a fair idea of what is inside. The Cheshire Cat and Laurence Olivier, a pop star in full cry and Shakespeare, Kitchener and London buses, Queen Elizabeth smothered in jewels and the Jarrow hunger marchers in their painful misery, bracing Skegness and Winston Churchill, W.G. Grace and Winnie the Pooh are jammed together higgledy piggledy, and there’ll be a thumbnail sketch of everyone. Do they add up to ‘Britain’? Rather a grim thought. They are displayed against a sunset. Symbolic? Or just a bit more technicolour?
The Pursuit of Laughter Page 36