Charming old fox

Talleyrand was 76 when he took up the post of French ambassador in London in 1830. Linda Kelly deals only with the last phase of Talleyrand’s long and tumultuous career, but this short book brings him marvellously to life.

He was not an impressive figure. Little over 5’3” in height, he walked with a limp —one leg was in an iron brace. ‘Always dress slowly when you are in a hurry,’ was one of his maxims, and each morning during his lengthy toilette his valet coiffed his long, straggly white locks with curling tongs. One wag described him as ‘a big packet of flannel enveloped in a blue coat and surmounted by a death’s head covered in parchment’. His morals were notoriously ancien regime, and his life was littered with ex-mistresses, many of whom remained his intimate friends. His chief rival for the job of London ambassador was his tiresome illegitimate son, the Comte de Flahaut.

Talleyrand had last visited London in 1792 when he was fleeing the French Revolution, and the British government expelled him for his links with extremists. An aristocrat who began life as a bishop, he rose to become foreign minister to Napoleon. Nimbly changing sides, he engineered the restoration of the Bourbons, and his skilful diplomacy saved France from a punitive peace at the Vienna Congress. His aim in coming to London in 1830 after 15 years’ retirement was to make the new liberal government of Louis Philippe respectable.

Talleyrand brought with him as ambassadress in London his niece, the Duchess of Dino. Thirty-nine years younger than him, she was his companion and rumoured also to be his mistress. Beautiful, clever and socially ambitious, she had many other lovers, but ‘old Talley’ wasn’t jealous, and he and Dino formed a formidable power
couple.