Memoirs of the Duchesse de Dino (Afterwards Duchesse de Talleyrand et de Sagan), 1831-1835

Mr. Spring Rice has just been elected at Cambridge, but by a small majority, which is by no means pleasant for the Ministry.

Sir Henry Halford, M. Dedel and the Princesse de Lieven came back from Oxford yesterday, moved, enchanted, intoxicated by the festivities on the occasion of the installation of the Duke of Wellington as Chancellor of the University. This occasion is really in its way unique. The Duke's character and his past career – it is only four years since he would have been stoned at Oxford for having passed Catholic emancipation – the magnificence of the ceremony, the number and the quality of the company, the immemorial traditions of the scene, the excitement of everybody, the unanimous applause – everything in fact was wonderful and the like will never be seen again. Even the Duke of Cumberland, universally unpopular as he is, was well received there. The Anglican spirit was in the ascendant, all personal animosities vanished in the presence of the dangers with which the Church is threatened, and this secured a favourable reception for every one who is believed to be ready to rally to her defence. In the Duke of Wellington it was less the great Captain whom they were cheering than the Defender of the Faith.

It is annoying to record that the undergraduates used the licence granted to them on such occasions to hoot the names of Lord Grey and others, which they called out loudly in order to have the pleasure of hissing them. The Duke of Wellington, on every occasion of their occurrence, showed that these demonstrations displeased him, but in spite of these signs of his disapproval they were several times repeated.

They say that when the Duke shook hands with Lord Winchelsea, on whom he had just conferred the Doctor's degree, every one recollected the duel which had once taken place between the two, and that this gave rise to a storm of cheering. The applause, however, was not less when Lord Fitzroy Somerset approached the Duke, his faithful friend and comrade, and being unable to give him his right hand, which he lost at Waterloo, extended his left. But what excited the greatest and most prolonged enthusiasm was an ode addressed to the Duke, the two final lines of which were as follows:

Till the dark soul a world could not subdueBowed to thy genius, chief of Waterloo.

At this point the whole audience rose spontaneously; the cries, the tears, the acclamations were thrilling; and, as Madame de Lieven said: "The Duke of Wellington may die to-day, and I may depart in peace to-morrow, for I have been present at the most marvellous scene that there has been during the twenty-two years that I have spent in England."

London, June 14, 1834.– A German improvisatore named Langsward has been recommended to me by Madame de Dolomieu. I had to gather together in his honour all the people here (few enough) who know a little German. The entertainment was not bad. There were bouts rimés, which he filled up very creditably; some verses about Inez de Castro; and, later on, a prose piece – a scene of lower-class Viennese life – which showed real verve and talent. The talent for poetic improvisation almost always indicates faculties of an unusual order. This is the case even with Southern people, whose language is naturally very harmonious. Poetic inspiration is a proportionately greater achievement in the less flexible accents of Northern countries. Still improvisatori, even Sgricci, have always seemed to me more or less frigid or more or less absurd. Their enthusiasm is overdone and false; the close rooms in which they are confined inspire neither the poet nor his audience. Nothing in them or their surroundings is in the key of poetry. I think that if you are to produce an enthusiasm which will really gain every one you must have a landscape for your stage, the sun to light you, a rock for seat, a lyre for accompaniment, for your subject great and immediate events, and a whole nation for audience. Corinna if you like, Homer above all! But a gentleman in a dress-coat in a little London drawing-room, posturing before a few women who are trying to get away to a ball, and a few men, of whom half are thinking of the Belgian protocols and the other half of Ascot races, can never be more than a trifling little rhyming doll who is tedious and quite out of place.

Madame de Lieven showed me yesterday a letter from M. de Nesselrode, in which he complains of the ill-will and the troublesome, teasing manner of Lord Ponsonby, who, he adds, is goading the poor Divan to fury. Admiral Roussin appears charming by comparison.

Dom Miguel has really embarked, and is going to Genoa.

London, June 15, 1834.– Dom Pedro is hardly relieved of his brother's presence and free of the supervision of the Cortes, and he has already begun to destroy convents, monks, and nuns. I do not know whether this, too, will excite admiration at Holland House, but to me it seems a piece of impious folly which may well bring speedy repentance in its train.

The Rothschilds, who are by way of knowing everything, have been to M. de Talleyrand to say that the Marquis de Miraflorés has just left for Portsmouth to take money to Don Carlos on condition of his signing guarantees similar to those given by Dom Miguel.

M. Bignon, the day he dined at Lord Palmerston's, when M. de Talleyrand was there, said to the latter that he wished to have a word with him, and with a mysterious and confidential air, added: "Now that I have dined with Lord Palmerston they can no longer say at Paris that I can't be Minister." This curious piece of reasoning was followed by a series of indiscreet criticisms of the French Cabinet and expressions of surprise that overtures of the same kind had not been made to M. de Talleyrand by M. Dupin. Nothing assuredly can be more presumptuous than this spirit, whether it takes the supple and cringing form of M. Bignon or the didactic and crude shape of M. Dupin.

London, June 16, 1834.—A propos of M. Dupin, when his mother died some time ago, at Clamecy en Nivernais, he had cut on her tomb, "Here lies the mother of the three Dupins."

There are some good stories here of him and the amiable Piron, his cicerone. Mr. Ellice one day took them both to see some sight or other in London. In the carriage M. Dupin unfolded a large-checked pocket handkerchief, very vulgar in design, and holding it some distance from his face, spat into it, aiming very precisely at the middle of the handkerchief. On this M. Piron said to him aloud, with a very knowing air, "Sir, in this country one does not spit in public."

The choice of Mr. Fergusson for a high legal appointment gives an even more Radical tinge to the English Cabinet. Lord Grey, almost without knowing it, has thus been dragged to the verge of an abyss, into which his weakness is thrusting him, but from which all his instincts and natural tendencies hold him back. Lord Brougham boasts that he has set everything right; Lord Durham, on the contrary, says (no doubt in order to prepare the way for himself) that it is he alone who has persuaded all the new recruits to join. Meanwhile he has retired to his villa near London, whence he declares, "I have made Kings and refused to be one myself."

The Marquis of Conyngham is, they say, to go to the Post Office and not to have a seat in the Cabinet. His selection is a social matter, with which politics, it appears, have very little to do.

The Duke of Richmond has accepted an invitation to the High Tory dinner to be given on the 22nd to the Duke of Gloucester. The Duke of Wellington, who has sworn never to go to the City again after their shameful conduct to him in 1830, refused, and did not conceal the reason. And yet the Lord Mayor is not the same as in 1830, and probably the Duke would now have a most flattering reception. However, he has taken an oath and will not break it.

Mr. Backhouse, Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, has been sent to Portsmouth to hold himself at the disposition of Don Carlos on every point except that of offering him money. This reserve seems to be the only way of assisting the negotiations which are being conducted by the Marquis de Miraflorès, who is himself commissioned to offer the Infante, on behalf of his Government, an annual allowance of £20,000 sterling, on condition of his entering into obligations similar to those contracted by Dom Miguel. It is thought that the abject poverty to which the Prince himself, his wife and children, the Duchess of Beïra, seven priests, and a suite of ladies (seventy-two persons in all), who are with him in the Donegal

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1

Of King William IV.

2

Eridge Castle is in the county of Sussex, and still belongs to the Abergavenny family.

3

Warsaw, capital of the Duchy of the same name, had been ceded to the Russians in 1815. In November 1830 a terrible insurrection broke out there, which liberated Poland for several months; but, in spite of a glorious campaign against Diebitsch, Warsaw was finally retaken by Parkéwitch on September 8, 1831.

4

Stoke is situate in the county of Stafford, and has a great porcelain manufactory founded by Wedgwood.

5

(1) Doña Jennaria, born 1819; (2) Doña Paula, born 1823; (3) Doña Francisca, born 1824; (4) Dom Pedro, born 1825, who in 1831 became Emperor of Brazil under a regency.

6

On the occasion of the Revolution in France in 1830, new agitations arose in Switzerland. Bâle divided itself in 1831 into Bâle-Ville and Bâle-Campagne.

7

Miaulis had retired to Paros, and had put himself at the head of the rebellious Hydriotes.

8

From March to September 1831 insurrection, or at least agitation and tumult, was almost continual in the streets of Paris.

9

M. de Courcel.

10

Leopold I., elected King of the Belgians in 1831, married in 1832 Louise, Princess of Orléans, daughter of Louis-Philippe, King of the French.

11

In 1832 King Ferdinand VII. became so seriously ill that he was thought to be dead. Calomarde then joined the Carlists, and forced the dying monarch to sign a decree cancelling the declaration of 1830 abolishing the Salic Law in Spain.

12

Valençay, where the Duchesse de Dino had just gone, is situate in the Department of the Indre. The château and the park are magnificent, and the ornamental water is very fine. The house was built in the sixteenth century by the d'Étampes family, from the designs of Philibert Delorme. In 1808 and 1814 it served as the prison of Ferdinand VII. and the Spanish Princes when they were detained by Napoleon I. The Prince de Talleyrand, who had bought the property at the end of the eighteenth century, was very fond of the place and lived there a great deal.

13

The three great allied powers – Austria, Prussia and Russia – held meetings in three successive years either at Téplitz or at Münchengraetz for joint deliberation on the European situation. There by a new secret compact they guaranteed to each other their respective possessions in Poland, whether against external aggression or internal revolution. They also considered the affairs of France and Italy, and the constant activities of Italian societies and refugees in French territory, which were then causing serious anxiety about the tranquillity of the Peninsula. It was finally decided that the Cabinets of Austria, Prussia and Russia should each send a separate note to the Government of King Louis-Philippe, urging a more careful surveillance of the revolutionary propaganda.

14

Louis-Antoine, Duc d'Angoulême (1773-1844), eldest son of King Charles X., married during the emigration in 1799 his cousin Marie Thérèse Charlotte, daughter of King Louis XVI. and Queen Marie Antoinette, but had no children. After 1830 the Duc d'Angoulême ceded his rights to his nephew, the Duc de Bordeaux (Comte de Chambord), and retired into private life.

15

The little Court of Charles X. was the scene of two factions, one being the partisans of inertia, though not of resignation; the other, being all in favour of action. Mme. de Gontaut fell a victim to the former, a letter in which she expressed disapproval of the situation to her daughter, Mme. de Rohan, having been intercepted. The King, whom she accused of weakness, reproached her violently, and after the interview she finally left Prague and the Court.

16

A follower of Socinus, who disbelieved in the Trinity and in the Divinity of Christ.

17

No. 21 Hanover Square, the French Embassy of the period.