FAMOUS AMBASSADRESS

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 208, 3 September 1938, Page 10 (Supplement)

FAMOUS AMBASSADRESS

Hyde has made use of this material, The hinjiraphy may have dull moments for some readers—the court life in

ured on the courtly stage a female intriguer more restless, more arrogant, more mischievous, more (politically,

WE read much about ambassadors, those exalted beings of whom it was said by one of them - —with about as much truth as there is in most generalisations— that they were men sent abroad to lie for their country, but not nearly so much about their wives. Yet wives of ambassadors from time to time must have influenced the course of history. Sometimes one suspects thcv were "the better man." This was certainly true of the celebrated Princess Lieven, wife of the Russian ambassador who served in England for a period that began when Napoleon was retreating from Moscow and ended two years after the Reform Act of 1832. A gotjd deal has been known about the Lievens, but important family documents were not made available until two years ago, and in his "Princess Lieven" (Harrap), Dr. H. Montgomery

Kussin. for example, is rather dreary— but to those interested in the history of the times it has a real value.

Influence in British Politics Dorothea Lieven had a very remarkable career. Married at fourteen to a Russian nobleman, she was a minister's wife at court when the Czar Paul was assassinated, and she became a friend of his successor, the unpractical, mystic Alexander. During her long residence in London she was not only in the thick of international diplomacy, but influenced British politics as well. She was one of the leaders of society, and introduced the waltz to English ballrooms. She knew everybody and liked to have a finjrer in every pie. As a force in diplomacy she seems to have quite overshadowed her husband, and her tion for intrigue (that was what her enemies called it) was such that when I Palmerston brought about her husband's i recall "The Times" gave her an editorial [ that made her weep. "There never fig-

and therefore we mean it not offensively) odious than this supercilious ambassadress." This was unkind, for

Dorothea a*t least had charm, but she was a public character, anil the journalism of that day was very personal. George IV. liked her and tried to add her to his long list of mistresses. His principal Ministers cultivated her friendship. She had a hand in the elevation of Canning to the Premiership and Palmerston to the Foreign Office, a.id knew Wellington well enough to tell him he was a« stubborn as a mule. For some time she was the mistress of Metternich, the foremost diplomatist in Europe, and Castlereagh was not above making use of that fact. In middle life she kept a salon in Paris, whore she became the mistress of Ouizot, the French statesman and historian, and died in 1857, her last days embittered by the war between her own country and France and England. Dorothea Lieven was a somewhat baffling mixture, and Dr. Hyde analyses her impartially. She seems to have been

a rather shallow woman with a flair for politics as the game was played then in a very limited circle. She must have had some fine qualities, or so many statesmen would not have consulted her. Her private life conformed to the looseness of the times when there were rulers and statesmen who might appropriately have been heralded by a fanfare of trumpets. In her early married life she had lovers, but how far these affaire went does not seem certain. One gathers that her liaison with Metternieh was prompted partly by her passion for politics; at any rate she threw him over coolly. She was not a loose woman. She was genuinely fond of her husband and bore him children during this intrigue.' A reactionary in politics, who wished England to be governed like Russia, she was nevertheless partly responsible for the liberation of Greece.

The book is a picture of the times. One might be reading English memoirs of the Regency and after. English society is shown in the condition depicted in so many books, corrupt and threatened with revolution. Diplomacy concerned rulers only; the fate of peoples rested with a few individuals. It is curious to reflect that after the apparent triumph of democracy in the nineteenth century a large part of the world is governed in a similar way to-day. The only difference ie that the rulers are not crowned.