It is well known that Napoleon obtained from the fears of the Pope, Pius VII., a brief of secularization for his Minister for Foreign Affairs, and that Talleyrand subsequently married Madame Grand, or, as she is called in this book, Grandt, a lady who had lived with him as his mistress, and who, in consequence of this transformation, became no less a personage than the Princesse de Benevento of the Imperial Court. Much has been written about this woman, whose history was long a mystery; and of whose ignorance, étourderies, and arrogance, every body has heard something. In this volume her introduction to Talleyrand is related in the usual melo-dramatic style of French writers, and her beauty described with that fullness of detail which approaches to voluptuousness. The meeting was accidental, at least on Talleyrand's part. Returning at an early hour of the morning from a gambling visit to the Chevalier Fénélon, the particulars of which are hideous, he found his study occupied by a female, who had waited for five hours alone in the chamber; and who was now fast asleep in an arm-chair by the fire, the upper part of her body enveloped in a fashionable mantle, and the lower part displaying the gilded finery of a ball-dress. The diplomatist was stupefied by the fair vision, which he gazed upon with admiration, and having tried in vain to awaken her by coughing, and other innocent devices, he took up a letter addressed to himself which lay upon the table, and which he found to be from a friend, requesting him to give madame the benefit of his advice in a difficulty in which no one else could assist her. The servant slams the door—the lady awakes—a scene of mutual confusion ensues, which tries to the utmost M. Colmache's powers of description, but which ends in M. de Talleyrand giving to the lovely applicant the document she required, and in the commencement of a liaison which ultimately terminated in matrimony. It was, of course, a trick or practical joke, which had been played off by certain wags, male and female, at Madame Hamelin's assembly on the unsuspecting and guileless Madame Grand, according to M. Colmache; but to any one else it will seem plain enough that it was no more than the step of a daring and clever intriguante, who knew perfectly well what she was about, and who had resolved to conquer where Madame Tallien and Madame Beauharnais had failed—and she did conquer.
Who, then, was this bold lady who contrived so cunningly to ensnare in her toils the wariest man in France? "I have heard," says M. Colmache, "that she was of English origin. This is not true. Her maiden name was Dayot, and she was born at L'Orient; but her connection with India, where a great part of her family resided, and the peculiar character of her beauty, would seem to have been the ground-work of the supposition." (P. 298). We can not clear up this riddle altogether, but we can do something toward its partial solution.
Her family name we are unacquainted with, but she was a native of Scotland, and her first husband was a British officer, though we are likewise ignorant of his name. Her marriage most likely took place in India, and at an early age: for after her husband's death she became the wife of a M. Grand, a French gentleman, who obtained a divorce from her in India in consequence of an improper intimacy with Mr., afterward the celebrated Sir Philip Francis. How long she lived with Mr. Francis we know not, but she subsequently passed under the protection of a Mr. William Macintosh, a British merchant, with whom she returned to Europe in 1781. Mr. Macintosh's private affairs calling him to France, Madame Grand accompanied him; but her protector was an unfortunate man, whose claims upon the French Government were dissipated by the Revolution, and we lose sight of his friend altogether till her reappearance on the theatre of the great world, after that event, as the companion of Madame Beauharnais, and other celebrated women of that day. There is thus a blank in her personal history of twenty-one years which we are quite unable to fill up, and which we must leave to be supplied by others. Mr. Macintosh died at Eisenach, in Saxony, in 1809, at an advanced age; but his name is no longer associated with that of Madame Grand. He left a daughter, who became afterward the Countess de Colville; but whether Madame Grand was her mother, or whether he had married after his separation from that lady, are points on which we can throw no light.[25]
Such, then, was the much-talked-of Madame de Talleyrand, Princesse de Benevento. The date of her death is not given, but she certainly predeceased her last husband by several years. This marriage was not productive of happiness. There was not only much difference of habits, temper, and bearing, between the parties, to say nothing of the antecedents of both, but it appears that madame was jealous "of every member of her husband's family," to whom he showed affection. A separation was the consequence, and this loving couple dwelt in distinct establishments till the end of their lives.
It is a remarkable, and not uninstructive fact, that the revolution could not extinguish the cultivated instincts of this extraordinary man; and one of the most interesting things in this volume, is the glimpses which we occasionally get of his impressions of the new order of things. Harsh, and even cruel, as the old society had been to him, it had a profound hold upon his affections; and when the solitude and satiety of age invited reflection, he was compelled "to doubt whether the good which had been gained could ever compensate for that which had been forfeited" (p. 258). He lived on the memory of the past, and drew his best inspirations from it. "Where," said he, "is the wit of your salons, the independence of your writers, the charm and influence of your women? What have you received in exchange for all these, which have fled forever? I would not give the remembrance of these times for all the novelty, and what you call improvements of the social system of to-day, even with the youth and spirit necessary to enjoyment. 'Tis true, there were abuse and exaggeration in many of our institutions, but where is the system in which these do not exist? If our people were devoured with misery and taxes, yours is wasting to the core with envy and discontent. Our noblesse was corrupt and prodigal; yours is bourgeoise and miserly—greater evils still for the prosperity of the nation. If our king had many mistresses, yours has many masters. Has he gained by the exchange? Thus you see it clearly demonstrated, that not one of the three orders has advanced in happiness by these wonderful improvements which you so much admire."[26] This is a strange testimony to the blessings of revolution on a grand scale, and from one, too, who had been in the midst of it as a prominent actor; but we suspect it is what most others, in like circumstances, would give were they candid, and what, after all, is simply true. Let any man of sound understanding look at France now, and say what she has gained, or the world through her, from the last outburst of popular fury; which has not only left her the prey of charlatanism, but made her the victim of the grossest passions. Talleyrand was, undoubtedly, right in his retrospect, but his healthy convictions came too late to be of any use.
Of Talleyrand's literary habits little is known that can be relied upon, but M. Colmache tells as, that "he could neither write nor dictate with ease"; and that the most trifling productions of his pen caused him as much trouble as the most elaborate dispatch. This may have proceeded from fastidiousness in the choice of language, but was, most probably, attributable to the defects of his education, and to the want of early practice in composition. We are not told what kind of reading pleased him, nor whether he was addicted to books; but he was a great admirer of Voltaire, with whom he had conversed in early life, and whose style, of its class, is perfect. He always deplored the scantiness of his classical attainments, and, particularly, his ignorance of the Greek tongue; and, so far as this volume teaches us, he would not appear to have been what it is customary to call a learned man. M. Colmache gives us certain "maxims for seasoning conversation," which, he says, were Talleyrand's, but which convey to the mind the idea of a lively and acute, rather than that of a profound thinker. If they want the bitterness of Rochefoucauld, they have not the point and pith of Bacon, nor the gravity of Locke. Three of these may suffice as specimens, and as favorable ones:
"Both erudition and agriculture ought to be encouraged by government; wit and manufactures will come of themselves.
"Metaphysics always remind me of the caravanseras in the desert. They stand solitary and unsupported, and are always ready to crumble into ruin.
"A great capitalist is like a vast lake, upon whose bosom ships can navigate; but which is useless to the country, because no stream issues therefrom to fertilize the land."
M. Colmache professes to give two fragments of the Memoirs, but he does not state how he came by them, and we doubt the fact of their being genuine. They are gracefully written, however, and that on the death of Mr. Fox particularly so. In his "Maxims" he speaks of women disrespectfully—a consequence, no doubt, of his disregard for the domestic virtues, and of the dissolute manners which prevailed in the higher ranks of French society in his time—and of the priesthood contemptuously. No hatred is so intense, or so durable, as that which is begotten of apostasy; and a renegade clerk, or a renegade politician, may be always expected to rail fiercely against his original creed. In his personal habits, the Prince of the Empire would seem to have adhered closely to the manners of the ancien régime, in the bosom of which he had been nurtured. He was courtly, formal, and somewhat exclusive; but his rigid temperance, and his regularity were proper to the man, and neither to the past nor present age. Of his bons mots we have a sprinkling, and but a sprinkling, in this volume; but the celebrated one about language is not there, though others of less piquancy are. Did M. Colmache consider it of apocryphal authenticity? We suspect so.