At London he had maintained his diplomatic ascendancy, though Palmerston annoyed him exceedingly. There was a good deal of ill-natured carping at his distinction. One day Lord Londonderry was misguided enough to voice this in the House of Lords. He referred to the influence of a certain “astute diplomatist” over the Conference, and said it was “disgusting” to see English Ministers in such assiduous attendance on this man. Talleyrand, he peevishly reminded them, had been the Minister of Napoleon, of Louis, and of Charles, before he took the service of Louis-Philippe. Lord Goderich protested that Talleyrand’s character should have protected him from such an attack, and then Wellington arose. After speaking of his relations to Talleyrand, he said: “I have no hesitation in saying that at that time, in every one of the great transactions in which I have been engaged with Prince Talleyrand, no man could have conducted himself with more firmness and ability with regard to his own country, or with more uprightness and honour in all his communications with the Ministers of other countries than Prince Talleyrand.... No man’s public and private character had ever been so much belied as both the public and private character of that individual.” His words were greeted with loud cheers. Lord Holland added that “forty years’ acquaintance with the noble individual referred to enabled him to bear his testimony to the fact that although those forty years had been passed during a time peculiarly fraught with calumnies of every description, there had been no man’s private character more shamefully traduced, and no man’s public character more mistaken and misrepresented, than the private and public character of Prince Talleyrand.” A visitor the next morning found the aged diplomatist in tears, with the Times in his hand. He wrote to a friend that “at Paris, for which he was killing himself, no one would do as much for him.” Cynics have not failed to point the moral. But it was merely a grateful exaggeration. Casimir Périer wrote to him soon afterwards: “Posterity will do you that full justice which, in times of social agitation, those who have charge of public interests must not expect from their contemporaries.” Unfortunately, posterity still likes to shudder over romantic wickedness.
Casimir Périer died in May, and there were not a few at Paris who thought of Talleyrand as his successor. The Prince was rather bent on retiring from public life. He went over to Paris, and found a condition of comparative anarchy resulting from the death of the strong leader. However, an abler Ministry than ever was got together, and in October he returned to London. If the chroniclers may be trusted, his wit had not diminished with age. A poet of suspicious repute had issued a piece on which his opinion was asked. “C’est que la corruption engendre les vers,” he replied. A more questionable story is that he found Montrond one day in a fit on the floor, clawing at the carpet with his nails. “It looks as if he is quite determined to go down,” he is described as saying.
The Belgian trouble was still unsettled, and in October he signed a convention with England to compel the Dutch to retire from Antwerp in obedience to the Conference. French troops were sent into Belgium, the Prussians massed a considerable force on the frontier, and this was a brief period of great anxiety. The Dutch did not finally yield until May, 1833. But this difficulty had scarcely disappeared before a fresh one arose. The Sultan of Turkey had appealed to Russia for help in subduing a rebellious vassal, and signed a treaty with the Tsar in July. The French were, however, jealous of Russian interference, and Talleyrand had to press at London for joint action. Nothing was done, however, when Russia anticipated them, though there was no slight risk of war at one time.
The crown and end of Talleyrand’s work in England came in April, 1834, when he signed the alliance between England, France, Spain, and Portugal. In August of that year he left England, and shortly afterwards resigned his position of ambassador. A number of reasons for this step are assigned in his letters at the time, though his age and the completion of his work at London by an alliance might be deemed sufficient. To Lady Jersey he spoke of a personal affliction, which is surmised to have been the death of the Countess Tyszkiewitz. To Mme. Adélaide he complained of his growing infirmity of the legs, and the behaviour of Palmerston; and also that her son, the Duc d’Orléans, had been telling his own English guests at Valençay that he was past work. He declared to Von Gagern that he “only quitted affairs because there were none to attend to”; while to the King he explained that he had now secured “the right of citizenship” for France in Europe, and his work was over. All these motives influenced him, no doubt; but there was another one, of some interest. He had witnessed at London the growing agitation for reform, and completely failed to appreciate it. As the agitation wore on, he spoke moodily of the state of France in 1789. The convocation of the first reformed parliament in 1833 he described as “the States-General of London.” He was too old to understand the new movement, to see a permanent and proper advance beneath all the menacing clamour. England was no longer “so rich and peaceful.” He wrote slightingly to the King of her value to France, and thought rather of a coalition of Europe against what he thought to be a rising tide of anarchy.
He resisted, therefore, the kindly pressure of the King and retired to Valençay. “There is,” he wrote to a correspondent, “an interval between life and death that should be employed in dying decently.” There still remained three or four years of life. It is said that he offered to go as ambassador to Vienna in 1835, but Louis-Philippe was apprehensive of advances being made to him by the Bourbons. In that year were published, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, George Sand’s outrageous Lettres d’un voyageur. Imagining her traveller to stand by moonlight before the chateau of Valençay, she puts into his mouth some of the most repulsive calumnies against Talleyrand, as the silhouetted forms appear at the windows. The subject of her ridiculous nightmares was then an old man in his eighty-first year, peacefully concluding his memoirs and passing the last slow days in the company of the Duchess of Dino and her young daughter, Pauline. Maubreuil was hardly less chivalrous. George Sand was a not distant neighbour, and her description of his “daily round” may be less imaginative. He rose at eleven, and spent three or four hours (?) in the hands of his valets. At three he had a drive round the park with his doctor, and at five enjoyed “the most succulent and artistic dinner in France.” After a few words to his family, he would drive in the park again until eleven, and then work in his own room until five o’clock. Visitors still made their pilgrimages to Valençay. We find Sir Robert and Lady Peel there in 1836. His mind is described as retaining its vigour and perspicacity, but by the end of 1835 loss of power in the legs began to foreshadow the end. His temperate habits had their reward in good general health. It is said that after death his organs—apart from the local trouble—were found to be singularly sound for an octogenarian.
From a lithograph by Jeffrey, after a bust by Dantan.
TALLEYRAND
(Portrait-caricature, in later life).
On his eighty-third birthday he wrote a few lines that reveal the pain and weariness that were growing on him. He concluded a rather gloomy summary of his long life with the words: “What result from it all but physical and moral exhaustion, a complete discouragement as to the future and disdain for the past.” On that day he had asked Dupanloup to dinner, but the rector of Saint Sulpice pleaded his work in excuse. “He does not know his business,” said Talleyrand with a smile. For some time the Prince had been importuned from many sides to make his peace with the Church. It is said that on one occasion at Valençay he incautiously asked the little Pauline one Sunday where she had been. “I have been to mass,” she said, “to pray the good God to give you better sentiments.” The Duchess of Dino was deeply anxious to see him reconciled. Letters reached him from very old friends with the same aim. Royer-Collard advised it. The Archbishop of Paris, Mgr. Quelen, who had been coadjutor to his uncle, was pressing as far as discretion allowed. He had obtained instructions from Rome as to the minimum that need be asked of the illustrious apostate. In 1835 he had received the dying Princess Talleyrand into the Church, and made it an occasion for a strong appeal to her husband. Talleyrand politely thanked him for his interest.