Helpmate Of Talleyrand

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29910, 25 August 1962, Page 3

Helpmate Of Talleyrand

IRetrtewea t>ii K i I

The Duchess of Dino. By Philip Ziegler. Collins. 382 pp.

Dorothea, born Princess of Courland in the year 1793, i was to be successively i Countess Edmond de Talley-rand-Perigord, Duchess of j Dino, Duchess of Talleyrand, , and Duchess of Sagan. There i is some doubt as to her paternity, though it seems likely that her real father was her mother's current lover, the Pole, Alexander Batowski, a professed liberal who lived with the Courlands as a more or less permanent guest. Dorothea was born in Prussia, whence the Duchess had fled after the Russian occupations of her estates in 1792, and hardly surprisingly was brought up against the backcloth of lies and plots, passions and hatred, disloyalty and insincerity which characterised an aristocratic society in flux. She grew up to be an aristocrat of the aristocrats whose criterion was birth rather than country. She described herself as a child as: “small, skinny, yellow in complexion, always ill from the moment of my birth. My eyes were so dark and huge that they were out of all proportion to the rest of my face and seemed to dwarf the other features. I would have been decidedly ugly if it had not been for my constant ardour and animation which made people forget about my cadaverous features and suspect the existence of the force which lay underneath. I sullen nature and only in my sulkiness did there seem to be anything which properly belonged to childhood. Sad to the point of melancholy, I remember perfectly how I longed to die. . . .” There is about all this an aura of the poor little rich girl. It is undoubtedly true that Dorothea's childhood was lacking in affection and that she was highly intelligent, but her portraits suggest that she was neither skinny nor sullen Certainly, when another of her mother’s lovers discovered that the child was prodigiously intelligent she was over abundantly catered for with a tutor and governess who disagreed vehemently on the basic principles of her education. Similarly, by the age of 12, she had her own salon, a rival to her mother’s, in which several men and women of grea’. talent would foregather. These included such notables as Jean-Pierre Ancillon, later to be President of the Prussian Council of Ministers, Madame Unzelmann, the greatest of the German actresses of the period, Iffland, Director of the Royal Theatre, and occasionally even the great Schiller himself. Not surprisingly her education developed as a crazy patchwork of startling ignorance and precocious knowledge Perhaps, too, we should also not be surprised by the fact that by the time she reached the age of 14, she believed herself in love with a man whom she had never me: and was 23 years her senior—Prince Adam Czarytowskc

However, born in high estate, her ultimate marriage at the age of 15 was destined to be dictated by other considerations. for, at that stage, no less a person that Prince Talleyrand approached the Emperor of Russia to seek Dorothea's hand for his nephew. Alexander had no objection: the Duchess of Courland. who. it was subsequently alleged, cherished the project of supplanting Empress Josephine on the throne of France, welcomed the match. Dorothea, herself, finally banished her romantic dream of marrying Prince Czarytowski and with a sign accepted Count Edmond de Perigord, explaining to him

at the time that she did so solely in order to meet the wishes of her mother, to which he replied with equal frankness that he was activated by no other purpose than the desire to give pleasure to his uncle. Edmond indeed gave great pleasure to his uncle but had little part in it himself, for, if he rapidly disappeared from Dorothea's lite, the aged Talleyrand dominated it.

When Dorothea was 21 and Talleyrand 60, he took her as his hos.ess to the Congress of Vienna. Dorothea, a woman by now of great beauty, distinction and charm, well educated and of semi-royal birth, from thereon devoted 24 of the most important years of her life to the man who was her husband’s uncle, had been her mother's lover, and may well have been the father of her own last child.

The author, Ziegler, who has in turn devoted himself to Dorothea, seems to have right-minded doubts about this and conveniently ignores the fact that Duff Cooper in his biography of Talleyrand seems reasonably convinced of Talleyrand’s paternity and suggests that his actions tend to indicate that he himself believed that he was the father Ziegler tries hard not to over-emphasise Dorothea’s role as adviser and helpmate of Talleyrand but cannot resist crediting her by implication. Obviously she was a congenial helpmate and extremely loyal subordinate. but even to the last, when he delayed rejoining the Roman Catholic church despite her behests until a few hours before his death, there is no real evidence that Talleyrand was ever willing to hand over his independent role to anyone, not even the Duchess.

This is an interesting and readable account based throughout on printed sources. The author admits at the outset that the biography of Dino was intended to be “another way of writing about Talleyrand”; but realised subsequently that “she was a very acceptable substitute for her uncle." Though it might well be thought that the author’s interest in his subject is admirable, it does lead to a somewhat overenthusiastic approach and an uncritical reliance on memoirs The Duchess of Dino, despite undoubted ability and charm, remains one of the minor characters of history. There is little of importance appearang in this book which is not already well covered in Duff Cooper’s •’Talleyrand.” on which Ziegler relies heavily, and the Duchess of Dino fails to rise beyond what was substantially her real role—an intelligent, loyal, nineteenth century public relations officer for Talleyrand.