Daughters of Eve

Front matter

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Preface

With the exception of Charlotte Corday, that personification of the Marseillaise— who had the whole stage to herself for one sublime moment — none of the women whose strangely contrasted lives are recorded in this book can be said to occupy a conspicuous niche in the history of their times. Nevertheless, what they lack in public importance, which too often possesses only a political significance, they make up in private or human interest.

It is as the merry magdalen with the heart of gold rather than as a brilliant and accomplished actress that Peg Woffington appeals to the imagination. The Duchesse de Choiseul deserves to be rescued from oblivion as the most devoted of wives and most loyal of friends in an age in which fidelity was held up to ridicule. Always true to herself, she knew how to command the respect of the sans-culottes of the Revolution in the day of her adversity, as in the period of her splendour she had cast the spell of her purity over the cynical and frivolous society of the old regime. Domestic happiness, which was her ideal, was the aim also of the Countess Potocka's feverish existence, but she sought it in a very different way. She was the woman of impulse par excellence — passionate, ardent, reckless, and warmhearted, with a career as stormy and romantic as a page

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in the history of her native Poland. While the Countess Potocka is familiar to all by reason of her lovely portrait, the Princess Tarakanof is not even so much as a name to the general reader. But the story of this mysterious adventuress, whose daring aspirations and brutal abduction form one of the most dramatic episodes in the reign of the Empress Catherine, is none the less amazing.

In the case of each it is her personality that is her chief claim to distinction. It is a claim that seldom fails to obtain recognition, and one which it is the object of this book to attempt to make good.

Concerning the frontispiece, a word of explanation is necessary. The original of this celebrated picture — a pastel in the Berlin Museum which frequent reproductions have rendered familiar to all — has afforded much speculation both as regards the identity of the artist and the person whom it represents. Attributed variously to Vestier, Antoine Graff, Angelica Kauffmann, Kucharski, and Madame Vig^e Lebrun, it was long supposed to be the portrait of the Countess Sophie Potocka de Witt, known as La belle Grecque. On the other hand, the late Madame Lucien Perey, the accomplished biographer of the Countess Vincent Potocka, nde Helene Massalska, claimed it to be the portrait of the latter as a girl, on the strength of information she received from the family of de Ligne, into which Hdene Massalska originally married. It is this opinion, as the inscription on the frontispiece indicates, with which I am inclined to agree. As the proofs, however, on which it is based are not accepted

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Preface

as conclusive by those who would claim the portrait for the Countess Sophie Potocka, I have reproduced other portraits of both the ladles in question, painted at a later period in their lives and of unquestioned authenticity, in order that readers, by comparing them with the frontispiece, may judge for themselves as to which of the two the portrait in dispute is the more likely to be attributed.

For the rest, I am greatly indebted to the Prince de Ligne, Sir Henry Bellingham, and Count Mycielski, for their kindness in allowing me to publish the various portraits in their possession, now reproduced for the first time, and a description of which will be found on the pages they illustrate.

August igii.

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Contents

PAGE

Louise Honorine Crozat du ChAtel, Duchesse de

Peg Woffington, i 720-1 760 121

II Baron Gleichen

Duchesse de Gramont . . ...

DuCHESSE DE ChOISEUL AND MaRQUISE Du DeFFAND

Abb£ Barth^lemy

• 65

Czarina Elizabeth

Razumovski

. 91

Prince Charles Radziwill

• 97

Alexis Orlof

• 105

Empress Catherine

• "5

Sir Charles Hanbury Williams ....

Kitty Clive

• 155

George Anne Bellamy

. 161

XI

List of Illustrations

H^LfeNE Massalska, Princesse Charles de Ligne Prince Ignace Massalski, Bishop of Wilna

COMTESSE DE BrIONNE

Prince de Ligne Princesse de Ligne .

Countess Sophie Potocka Prince Charles de Ligne Countess Anna Mycielska Count Vincent Potocki SiDONiE de Ligne Charlotte Corday Barbaroux .

Marat ....

To face page 179

243 249 278 285

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LOUISE HONORINE CROZAT DU CHATEL, DUCHESSE DE CHOISEUL

1734-1801

THE DUCHESSE DE CHOISEUL

(After Carnwntelle)

Reproduced by the courtesy of the Director of the Musee Condi.

*' There lived a singer in France of old By the tideless dolorous midland sea. In a land of sand and ruin and gold

There shone one woman, and none but she."

Swinburne : " The Triumph of Time."

LOUISE HONORINE CROZAT DU CHATEL, DUCHESSE DE CHOISEUL

1734-1801

I

Attar de Choiseul ! Parfttm de la vieille cour / How faint and faded is the memory of its once incomparable charm. Yet it is as fresh as ever in the witty memoirs and brilliant letters in which the beautiful, proud, old-world name is preserved. Turn the pages, shake the leaves, and you will still find clinging to them the fascination oi " cette belle ^ cette delicieuse, cette sMuisante duchesseT

But it is too subtle an essence for its full effect to be perceptible at once. Charming in little things, sublime in great, Madame de Choiseul, like a picture of Rembrandt, a sonnet of Ronsard, or an opera of Mozart, requires to be studied to be appreciated.

She was not, strictly speaking, beautiful, yet the charm of her expression, the gentleness of her manners, the captivating sweetness of her voice and the matchless grace of her petite figure combined to produce that impression. In speaking of her, all her contemporaries are unanimous in expressing admiration ; there is not one dissentient voice. Horace Walpole, most fastidious and critical of men, thought her " the most perfect being of either sex " he knew. " Nothing," he says in one of his letters, "that I ever saw anywhere was like the Duchess of Choiseul, who has more parts, reason and agreeableness than I ever met in such a delicate little creature. Her face is pretty, though not very pretty ; her person a little model. You would take her for the queen of an allegory. Oh, it is the gentlest, most amiable and civil little creature that ever came out of a fairy ^^'g ! "

Madame Du Deffand, who was even harder to please than Walpole, is equally rapturous. " What a pity that she is an angel ! " she writes. " I would rather she were a woman, but she has only virtues, not a weakness, not a fault."

Speaking of her health, which was always delicate, the Abbe Barthelemy declared that " if he were her master he would deprive her of half her virtues, it would make her twice as strong, and she would still remain the best woman in the world, without any longer being the most frail."

Some one has described her as one of the moral assets of the eighteenth century. But this very imperfectly explains her charm, for a blameless life and a spotless reputation are not necessarily attractive in themselves. How many good people only succeed in boring, antagonizing or repelling us, while others without a stitch of morality to their backs contrive somehow to awaken our sympathy ! To be adored, virtue must possess a heart as well as a conscience. The Duchesse de Choiseul was one of the rare instances of a eood woman with both — rare, for however familiar the type may be in ordinary life, it is unfortunately not one that has been particularly conspicuous in history. In the eighteenth century, that age of loose morals and corrupt refinement, the type is so rare that you can count the number on the fingers of one hand.

Goodness in her was an instinct, she had no need to cultivate it. Nevertheless, although she had so little in common with her times that she remained virtuous when it was the fashion to be vicious, she did not altogether escape their influence. If she lived like a saint, she was as sceptical as a philosopher. She thought like Montesquieu and wrote like Madame Du Deffand. But though exquisitely sensitive, tender, and sympathetic, she did not weep like Rousseau. Her nature was essentially cheerful and practical. In following her through the various stages of her strangely chequered career we shall find her, whether at the dazzling height of her good fortune or in the slough of adversity, always equal to herself, enduring every change with imperturbable serenity.

As a child she was left entirely in the hands of servants. " My child," said her mother to her once, "have no likes or dislikes." It was the only advice or instruction she could remember ever to have received from her mother. Precocity made her old before her time. " I never knew youth," she said ; "of the illusions of childhood, I was early and cruelly bereft."

Gifted with great good sense, tact, wit, and quick perception, she evaded the guillotine as she had passed unscathed through the corrupt society of the old Court — apparently without giving the least thought to her safety in either case. The ancien regime and the Revolution alike respected her. Indeed, the esteem in which she was held was so universal that in the midst of the Terror, aristocrat though she was, she procured life and liberty for more than one of her intimate friends threatened with death by simply begging for them.

But while the sublimity of her friendship was only put to the test on great and rare occasions, her unswerving fidelity to a faithless and dissolute husband — which is the dominant feature of her character — was tried every day for years in a hundred secret and ignominious ways. It is true she adored him, but it is this very fact which constitutes her fame and her charm.

In spite of all the talk of love in the eighteenth century, true love was so rare that only Mademoiselle Aisse was capable of dying for it, and Mademoiselle de Lespinasse of it. But rarer still was respect for the marriage tie — only the Duchesse de Choiseul was capable of glorifying it when it galled.

II

It is rather curious to note that she, in whom all the graces for which the aristocracy of the old regime was so conspicuous were displayed in their most perfect development, was herself of plebeian origin. In 1734, when Madame de Choiseul was born, her grandfather, who had started life as a merchant's clerk, if not as a lacquey as Saint-Simon maliciously asserts, was still living. Antoine Crozat, however, had brains, and turned them to such good account that he amassed an immense fortune, whereupon he promptly sought, with the usual modesty of the parvemi, to divert attention from his great abilities by changing his name.

As he was worth more than twenty millions, Louis XIV was easily persuaded to make him a marquis, and he accordingly selected du Chatel as his title, which was the name of the estate he had bought in Brittany. But the world always persisted in calling him, behind his back bien entendu, Crozat as before — Crozat le Pauvre to distinguish him from his brother, Crozat le Riche, whose fortune was still greater.

By the humble partner of his early struggles, the new marquis had three sons and a daughter, through whom he souorht the noble kindred he lacked. For a

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millionaire this was just as easy under the old regime, when, according to the Princesse de Lamballe, nobody was worthy of the name of 7na7i under the rank of baron, as it is to-day. Honest old Crozat, as may be imagined, never did things by halves. A dowry of 500,000 crowns bought the Comte d'Evreux, the youngest son of the Due de Bouillon, the head of one of the most historic houses in France, for his daughter. But the old family, as is often the case, got the best of the bargain, and the Comtesse d'Evreux shortly after her marriage was glad to return to the parental roof. It was with her dot that her husband built, in what was then open country, the palace, afterwards bought by Madame de Pompadour, now known as the Elysee.

Old Crozat, however, had better luck with his sons.

The youngest married a Montmorency, and spent his time collecting pictures, like his uncle Crozat le Riche, who left him his own superb collection, which his daughters on his death sold to the Empress Catherine, who placed it in the Hermitage at St. Petersburg, where it is still to be seen. For his eldest son old Crozat purchased Mademoiselle de Gouffier, whose mother was a member of the ducal house of Luynes. Thus did the multi-millionaire, who had once been "a clerk at Parmantier's in Toulouse," ally himself to the best families in the kingdom.

His eldest son, the second Marquis du Chatel — and the last, for the title became extinct for lack of male heirs to perpetuate it — had two daughters. Antoinette Eustache married the Due de Gontaut- Biron ; while Louise Honorine found a husband in the Comte de Stainville, afterwards Due de Choiseul.

In the present shoddy age when the vulgar are courted in society, and the ignorant belauded in politics, it is the fashion to deride such a thing as a pedigree. All the same it is the only privilege of the aristocracy that legislation is incapable of suppressing, and the sole one, if there be any virtue in heredity, that really matters. When the Comte de Stainville began life it was the only fortune he possessed, and he managed to exist on it very handsomely till he married old Crozat s granddaughter.

The Choiseuls, of which family the Stainvilles were a branch, traced their descent to the tenth century, or more than a hundred years before William the Conqueror invaded England. Under the old regime, a pedigree of such antiquity had a special claim to the protection of the State, and the Comte de Stainville had been provided with a commission in the French army at an early age. As wars were frequent in the eighteenth century, he saw a great deal of active service, in the course of which he acquired a reputation for valour. During the Marechal de Belle- Isle's heroic retreat from Prague, which was almost the last and by far the most glorious achievement of French arms under the old regime, he had covered himself with glory. But his notoriety was chiefly confined to mess-rooms. In society where blue blood is debased and bravery eclipsed by poverty, he was merely a needy officer of good family, on whom old Crozat's granddaughter with her 1 20,000 a year was considered to have thrown herself away.

But though of so little consequence at the time of his marriage, there was no man in France better qualified to give his wife a more splendid position — if that was what she wanted — than the Comte de Stainville, He was one of those men who are predestined to "arrive." His wife's fortune undoubtedly hastened his success, but was not essential to it. Had he married any one else or remained single his career would have been precisely the same. Fortune had bestowed on him the most valuable of all her gifts — personality. The very defects of his appearance predisposed one at first sight in his favour. In spite of his insignificant figure, pale face, red hair, and sarcastic manner, it was impossible to refrain from liking him. His little eyes sparkled with intelligence, his snub nose gave him a comical look, and his sensual mouth, round the corners of which there always lurked a smile, suggested merriment.

His high spirits infected all who came in contact with him. " When he entered a room," says Gleichen, " the very manner in which he put his hands in his pockets seemed to suggest that they were filled with an inexhaustible store of gaiety and wit. I never met a man who created such an atmosphere of goodhumour and contentment around him as he. Amiable, noble, frank, generous, gallant, magnificent, liberal, proud, daring and passionate, he was like some French knight of the olden times."

As a conversationalist, in a period when conversation was cultivated as an art, the Comte de Stainville — or Due de Choiseul, to give him the name by which he is best known — was unrivalled. He was a past-master in the difficult art of pleasing. " Grace, good company, and gaiety are no longer to be found in any one but him," wrote Madame Du Deffand ; " every one else is dull, ridiculous or pedantic." In his early days the mordant persiflage for which he was noted caused him to be regarded contemptuously by those whom it wounded — and they were not a few — as " a brainless coxcomb who had some brimstone in his wit." But when he was once fairly launched on his dazzling career he quickly made his abilities respected, though history, judging them by the levity and frivolity in which he wrapped them, has not done them the justice they deserve.

His character was so full of inconsistencies as to be well-nigh inexplicable. Goncourt, struck by its amazing contrasts, aptly declares that one can only judge him by "the profile of his personality, for the full face has always been hidden from the historian." Even this profile, he might have added, was masked. What the real Choiseul was like nobody ever knew, save, perhaps.

THE DUC DE CHOISEUL

{From the fiorirait at Versailles)

\Tofacef>. ii his sister, who inspired him, and his wife, who loved him.

The most frivolous of Cabinet ministers, he worked eight hours a day without turning a hair. The instinct of pleasure was so strong in him that he never checked it, even in the Council Chamber. In Choiseul's day the gravest affairs of state were discussed with a jest. Never was minister more indiscreet or more audacious. Honour, apart from a sort of etiquette of birth, he did not understand. If it suited his purpose, he never hesitated to break his word, or to ruin a man, or betray a secret. Yet, though full of malice, which he vented even on his intimates, no one was less vindictive. He took a delight in converting enemies into friends. Once, incensed by a foul lampoon directed against his private life, he offered a reward to discover the author. The latter, tempted by the bait, had the hardihood to claim it in person. Choiseul was for a moment speechless with amazement, then offering the fellow his hand he said lightly, "Yes, it is true I promised a reward. If my friendship is of any use to you, accept it and grant me yours in return." Whether his frankness was studied or not, it served him well. But his unalterable good-nature, which was his chief virtue, prevented him from hating any one. He regarded those whom he ruined merely as obstacles in his path that it was incumbent on him to remove. To his friends he was always loyal.

The only part of his nature that he did not trouble to hide was its sensuality. Judged by his vices he was probably more representative of his age than any of his contemporaries. From the point of view of immorality, Choiseul was the eighteenth century incarnate.

II

The role he aspired to play, and to the study of which he devoted more pains than to the government of the country, was that of Lothario. " He made his debut in the world," says Goncourt, "as a squire of dames, a merciless worker of evil, a consummate rake, marching onward to his goal with heedless gait, never moving a step or uttering a single word without having some design on a woman."

So perfectly had he studied the role of seducer, that he mig^ht have served as the model of Valmont in Laclos' diabolically clever novel Les liaisons dangereuses. It was as Valmont that Choiseul began and finished his career, and nothing ever interrupted or prevented his performance of the part — least of all his marriage.

The manner in which this event was "arranged" casts a lurid light on the morality of the man and his times.

Between Choiseul and his wife's brother-in-law, the Due de Gontaut, there existed one of those friendships that stand any test to which they are put. To outvie one another in manifestations of their mutual regard seemed to be the object of their lives. As a graceful proof of his devotion Choiseul had fallen in love with the Duchesse de Gontaut, who promptly, and with the full approbation of her husband, returned the compliment. But these marks of their esteem by no means ended the friendly contest. Threatened with extinction by Gontaut's lack of offspring, the great family of Biron were in despair. To the devoted Choiseul a reproach so injurious to the honour of his friend was not to be borne, and to lift it he resolved to be the faiher of Gontaut's child as he had been the lover of his wife.

But, alas ! in giving the Birons the heir ^ for which they longed, Choiseul robbed Gontaut altogether of his wife. For the Duchesse de Gontaut, in fulfilling her part of the bargain, was unexpectedly summoned to the next world. Before her departure, however, she had time to give her lover a last and substantial proof of her attachment. Aware that he had no fortune — at the time of his marriage his worldly possessions were said to consist of 2,000 francs — Madame de Gontaut determined to provide him with one on her death-bed. She accordingly sent for her sister, then only twelve years old, and extorted from her a promise, which the child faithfully kept, that she would marry the Comte de Stainville.

Ill

In the sphere to which the Choiseuls belonged, marriage, sous Louis Quinze, was generally a domestic disaster. In nine cases out of ten a couple whose characters and tastes were so different would very soon have agreed to live apart. But neither Choiseul nor his child-wife — she was but fifteen at the time of her marriage, he thirty-one — were like the ordinary run of people. It was not in the nature of either to quarrel or bicker; and as for separating, he had no motive for leaving her had he been so disposed, while she was the last woman in the world to dream of such a thing. On the contrary, though obliged to live at

1 The Due de Lauzun, afterwards Due de Biron. Under both titles he was one of the most conspicuous figures in the social world of his time. That he was the son of Choiseul, Talleyrand declared nobody doubted.

first with Madame de Choiseul's mother — with whom also Gontaut made his home — a condition well calculated to try the temper of a newly married couple at any time, and especially so in this instance, owing to the lack of sympathy between the mother and daughter — they contrived to live harmoniously.

Such a miracle, in such an age, as the maintenance of perfect amity, exposed as it was perpetually to all sorts of mortifications between a husband and a wife so dissimilar, could only be worked by great love on the part of one or the other. And the love of Madame de Choiseul for her faithless and fascinating husband was not only great, but unreasoning.

With the passage of time, moreover, it increased rather than diminished. As the years went by, the worship of her husband became a cult with her. The friendly notice he had taken of the precocious, lonely, neglected little creature, with whom his intimacy with the Gontauts constantly brought him in contact, had won her heart long before she promised her sister to marry him. His wit, his gaiety, and his bravery in battle, of which she had heard many tales, had dazzled her youthful imagination ; and the disparity in their ages had assisted the process of idealization. She had looked forward to marrying him as the realization ot some wonderful dream. When on her father's death her uncles brought an action against her and the Due de Gontaut, as her sister's heir, to dispossess her of her fortune, his willingness to marry her without a dowry had completed his conquest of her heart. The fact that his poverty had tempted him to run the risk of her uncles' losing the suit — as they did — was nothing to her. She regarded the act as a supreme proof of his good-nature and kindness of heart. So deep was her passion that, had she not been his wife, she must have been his mistress, for all her virtue. It was the thought that he had saved her from this degradation by marrying her that made her look up to him. She felt she owed him a debt she could never pay.

But the flame he had kindled failed to warm him, and the delicacy of her health, which was always feeble, was not conducive to love. To his credit, however, be it said, Choiseul was not ungrateful for the affection he was unable to return. To please her he was ready at any time to do anything save interrupt an intrigue or sacrifice a mistress of whom he had not yet tired. During the long illness with which his wife was afflicted shortly after her marriage, though most assiduous in the attention he paid her, he did not for a moment dream of breaking with the beautiful and notorious Princesse de Robecq, who at the time possessed his fickle heart.

Naturally, loving him as she did, the Duchesse de Choiseul suffered much from the flaunted infidelities of her husband. But such things were too much a matter of course in the eighteenth century to outrage the dignity, or shock the susceptibilities of any woman. The wound they inflicted on her feelings was of quite another character. She blamed herself and not her husband for all she suffered. The knowledge that she had won his respect, but was incapable of winning his love, was the real source of her mortification.

But though she endured his follies and infidelities without complaint, the luxurious idleness in which Choiseul lived was the despair of the Due de Gontaut.

" With your wealth, your rank, and your abilities," he was continually saying, *' you ought to have a great career." And to prove to his friend the gratitude he felt for having saved the family of Biron from extinction, though devoid of ambition himself he endeavoured to awaken it in Choiseul by dangling before his eyes the immense influence he possessed over Madame de Pompadour.

This, Gontaut had acquired by the faculty of making himself indispensable to those to whom he attached himself. Of Fortune, all he desired was the privilege of dancing attendance on the mighty. Having been the fast friend of the Duchesse de Chateauroux when she was maitresse en titre, he had found the means after her death of making himself equally agreeable to her successor. Madame de Pompadour was seldom seen anywhere without her "White Eunuch," as he was nicknamed. It was the Due de Gontaut who accompanied her on the mysterious visits she paid to fortune-tellers, in whose predictions she placed the greatest faith, ever since one had foretold that she would become the King's mistress at a time when such a contingency seemed utterly out of the question.

" He is," says Madame du Hausset, " a useful piece of furniture for a favourite ; he makes her laugh, never causes jealousy or interferes, and never asks for anything either for himself or for others."

He was ready enough, however, to make an exception in favour of Choiseul had his brother-in-law permitted him. But Choiseul's aversion to court the Pompadour, of whom he had made an enemy by a mordant jest at her expense, was as great as his

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-V ambition was difficult to awaken. Nevertheless, Gontaut was too devoted to his friend to abandon the hope of surmounting either of these difficulties, and the manner in which he eventually overcame them is an admirable instance of Court intrigue in the days of Louis Ouinze.

The position of a king's mistress is never secure. Madame de Pompadour, whose consummate craft enabled her to hold the post even when the King's passion had cooled, lived in such constant dread of being supplanted that she declared her life was "like that of a Christian, a perpetual fight." It was in a particularly disturbing royal "infidelity," as she termed the feeble efforts Louis made from time to time to break her spell, that the Due de Gontaut found his opportunity. The captor of the King's fancy was a certain Comtesse de Choiseul-Romanet, the young and charming wife of a cousin of Choiseul. Intoxicated by the passion she inspired, and egged on by a powerful cabal composed of all the enemies of the Pompadour, she ventured to make the dismissal of the maitresse en litre the sine qua non of her favours. An order to that effect, it was rumoured, was actually signed, and Madame de Pompadour was so convinced of the futility of any attempt to regain her ascendency that she determined to make her fall as light as possible by going before she was compelled.

But her rival was a fool. While Madame de Pompadour was packing her trunks, Madame de Romanet was so indiscreet as to boast of her victory, which she declared she was certain of from the tone of the King's letters to her. Such news travelled c 17 like wild-fire at Versailles, and Gontaut, most harmless and insignificant of men, no sooner heard of these royal love-letters than he bethought himself of a scheme to get possession of them and save Madame de Pompadour, which proved him not to be such a fool as he seemed. It was diabolical enough to have originated with Choiseul himself.