Historical Characters: Mackintosh, Talleyrand, Canning, Cobbett, Peel

by Baron Henry Lytton Bulwer Dalling and Bulwer

II.

Charles Maurice Talleyrand de Périgord was born February 2, 1754.[3] The House of Périgord was one of the noblest in France, and in the earliest ages of the French monarchy possessed sovereign power. The principality of Chalais, the only one which existed, I believe, in the time of Louis XIV. (for the other personages called princes at the French court took their titles as princes of the Roman States or the German Empire, and ranked after French dukes), is said to have been eight centuries in this family. Talleyrand, a name usually attached to that of Périgord, and anciently written Tailleran, is supposed to have been a sort of sobriquet, or nickname, and derived from the words, “tailler les rangs” (cut through the ranks). It was borne by Helie V., one of the sovereign counts of Périgord, who lived in 1118; and from this prince (Helie V.) descended two branches of the Talleyrand-Périgords; the one was extinct before the time of Louis XVI., the other, being the younger branch, was then represented by a Comte de Périgord, Captain of the Guards, and Governor of the States of Languedoc. A brother of this Comte de Périgord was the father of Charles Maurice Talleyrand de Périgord (the subject of this memoir), whose mother, Eléonore de Damas, daughter of the Marquis de Damas, was also of a highly noble family, and a lady alike remarkable for her beauty and her virtue.[4]

III.

The seal which marks our destiny has usually been stamped on our childhood; and most men, as they look back to their early youth, can remember the accident, the book, the conversation, which gave that shape to their character which events have subsequently developed.

M. de Talleyrand was in infancy an exile from his home; the fortune of his parents did not correspond with their rank: his father,[5] a soldier, was always at the court or the camp; his mother held a situation in the household at Versailles. To both a child was an incumbrance, and Maurice immediately at his birth was put out to nurse (as was indeed at that time frequently the custom) in the country, where, either by chance or neglect, he met with a fall which occasioned lameness. This infirmity, when the almost forgotten child at the age of twelve or thirteen was brought up to Paris for the purpose of receiving rather a tardy education, had become incurable; and by a conseil de famille, it was decided that the younger brother, the Comte d’Archambaud—subsequently known as one of the handsomest and most elegant of the courtiers of Louis XVI., and whom I can remember under the title of Duc de Périgord—(a title given by Louis XVIII.), should be considered the elder brother, and enter the army, whilst the elder son should be pronounced the younger son, and devoted to the clerical profession, into which the Périgords knew they had sufficient influence to procure his admission, notwithstanding the infirmity which, under ordinary circumstances, would have been a reason for excluding him from the service of the church. From this moment the boy—hitherto lively, idle, and reckless—became taciturn, studious, and calculating. His early propensities remained, for nature admits of no radical change; but they were coloured by disappointment, or combated by ambition. We see traces of gaiety in the companion who, though rarely smiling himself, could always elicit a laugh from others; we see traces of indolence in the statesman who, though always occupied, never did more than the necessity of the case exacted; we see traces of recklessness in the gambler and politician who, after a shrewd glance at the chances, was often disposed to risk his fortune, or his career, on a speculation for money or power: but the mind had been darkened and the heart hardened; and the youth who might easily and carelessly have accepted a prosperous fate, was ushered into the world with a determination to wrestle with an adverse one.

Nor did any paternal advice or maternal care regulate or soften the dispositions which were thus being formed. From the nurse in the country, the lame young Périgord—for Périgord was the name which at this time he bore—was transplanted to the “Collége d’Harcourt,” since called that of St. Louis. He entered it more ignorant, perhaps, than any boy of his years; but he soon gained its first prizes, and became one of its most distinguished scholars.

At the “Séminaire de St. Sulpice,” to which he was removed in 1770, his talent for disputation attracted attention, and even some of his compositions were long remembered and quoted by contemporaries. Whilst at the Sorbonne, where he subsequently completed his studies, this scion of one of the most illustrious French houses was often pointed out as a remarkably clever, silent, and profligate young man: who made no secret of his dislike to the profession that had been chosen for him, but was certain to arrive at its highest honours.

With such prospects and such dispositions, M. de Talleyrand entered, in 1773, the Gallican Church.

IV.

At this time we have to fancy the young ecclesiastic—a gentleman about twenty years of age, very smart in his clerical attire, and with a countenance which, without being handsome, was singularly attractive from the triple expression of softness, impudence, and wit. If we are to credit the chronicles of that day, his first advance in his profession was owing to one of those bon mots by which so many of the subsequent steps of his varied career were distinguished.