From soon after his death in 1838, Prince de Talleyrand, First Minister, Foreign Minister, President de Conseil and Grand Chambellan under a succession of French governments, became the subject of innumerable biographies. They have continued to pour out, year after year, though few of them have been as enjoyable as Duff Cooper’s Talleyrand in 1932, or as comprehensive as Michel Poniatowski’s five volumes in the 1980s. Some writers, like Sainte-Beuve, painted a man so venal and corrupt that lies came to him more naturally than the truth, but most sought hard to discover inner principles behind the cynical and secretive facade.
For Robin Harris, boldly tackling Talleyrand’s life again, the balance has in recent years swung too far in favour of the inner principles. His Talleyrand is not just a slippery figure, but a dangerous one — along with being, as no one has ever disputed, charming, immensely clever and very good company. Talleyrand’s treachery was, he writes ‘sustained and remorseless, occupying all his waking moments’. What Harris has done extremely well is to portray a man not only quite unlike others, but in the end unknowable. Rather than try to pin down his basic elusiveness, as others have done — Talleyrand’s own memoirs are a model of non-revelation — Harris leaves it to the reader to decide for himself which facets of this extraordinary statesman he prefers to dwell on.
It was of Talleyrand that Napoleon allegedly said that he was nothing but ‘a shit in silk stockings’. Certainly he inspired great loathing in those he traduced and great affection in his friends; no one was indifferent, and he was particularly loved by women, friends as well as mistresses, who found his enigmatic charm and witty intimacy irresistible. Vitrolles,
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