Grande dame
Peter Quennell
On 18 December, 1812, a new Russian ambassador, Count Christopher Lieven, presented his credentials at the Court of St James. Though loyal, conscien- tious and industrious, he was not a very gifted man; and his colleagues had nick- !lamed him Vraiment?' because he received any considerable piece of news with an air of vague surprise. His 27-year-old wife, on the other hand, Dorothea, an off-spring of the Benckendorff family, had already shown unusual talents. She was never a beauty — so thin and angular and long- necked that her English acquaintances labelled her 'The Snipe'; but besides Possessing a high degree of sexual Magnetism, which she seldom hesitated to use, she had a keen mind and a strong, determined character; and in English socie- ty, where she immediately felt at home, she soon became the most elegant and fashionable personage of the London diplomatic world.
During the autumn of 1818, when she and her husband attended the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, she acquired additional distinction. She became briefly, yet impor- tantly, the mistress of Prince Metternich, Austrian Chancellor and, as chief exponent Of ultra-conservatism, the 'Grand In- 9uisitor of Europe'. Metternich was then 45, superbly handsome in his bland Olym- Dian style and an experienced homme-d- fetnmes. He was also smug and self- satisfied and, at times, a trifle self- ,righteous. Later, he would congratulate Madame de Lieven on having, through Count Lieven's agency, once again conceiv- ed a child. 'Mon amie' he had declared in December 1818, 'I thank you for your treat- ment of your husband. You know that I Wish you to be good, gentle, excellent in your attitude towards him. I have not his rights, and he cannot have mine ... I have never disturbed the peace of a household. I respect the law . .
Their sentimental conjunction — epis- tolary rather than amorous, since, after the Congress had dispersed, they could very rarely meet — lasted six absorbing years, until Metternich, his high-born wife having died, wooed and wedded Marie-Antoinette von Leykam, an undoubtedly beautiful but positively middle-class young girl, which Madame de Lieven thought both inex- cusable and inexplicable; she then cut short their relationship. But meanwhile, she asserted, in reply to his hundred and forty- seventh letter, that they were beloved ac- complices and kindred spirits. 'We should be hard put to it, you and I ... to find peo- ple of our own calibre. Our hearts are well matched, our minds too ... You will find no one better than me. If you discover your like, show him to me. Goodbye'.
Nowadays, when the words 'elite' and 'elitist' are commonly employed for an abusive purpose, Madame de Lieven, I sup- pose, must lack much popular appeal. She remains, nevertheless, a strangely notable figure — the greatest woman politician of her century, or indeed, of any period, who associated on familiar terms with such statesmen as Canning, Castlereagh, Well- ington, Lord Grey and, during her latter years, the high-minded and enlightened Francois Guizot, and, among royal per- sons, with George IV, who made desperate attempts to win her favours. True, she was afterwards snubbed by the youthful Queen.
But even of the Princess Victoria, long before her accession, Madame de Lieven had a fascinating glimpse. She had watched the Princess being spoiled and petted by her sexagenarian uncle: 'In spite of the caresses the King lavished on her, I could see that he didn't like dandling on his ... knee this little bit of the future, aged seven'.
Madame de Lieven's letters to Prince Metternich, first published in 1937, are a far more interesting collection than Metter- nich's sententious and slightly pompous epistles, edited by Hanoteau in 1909.
Cynical, satirical, often extremely vivid and direct, they give us a brilliant, though ob- viously one-sided picture of English politics and social life between 1820 and 1826, and provide, at the same time, a memorable self-portrait. She was a woman who loved power and had violent political views. But to say that she was always single-minded, or that her views were invariably consistent, would be a gross exaggeration.
'Pour elle' , remarked the diarist Madame de Boigne, 'tout se reduisait a des questions de personnes' ; and there were moments
when her affection for a man — as she herself admitted, she was 'very much a woman' — inclined her to embrace his policy. Thus, having been the confidante of George IV and a leading member of the notorious 'Cottage Clique' which plotted to 'blow up Mr Canning', she became one of Canning's dearest friends. Similarly, having once admired Wellington, she presently developed a deep regard for Lord Grey, aristocratic supporter of the first Reform Bill. Just as her political allegiances were fre- quently coloured by her private feelings, so all her love-affairs, from her liaison with Metternich to her long and happy relation- ship with the solemn, virtuous Guizot, had a political or intellectual basis; she could not have loved a man whose beliefs and aims she ultimately failed to share. Men, however, were by no means her only friends. She delighted the clever, humorous Lady Granville, wife of the British Am- bassador in Paris, after Madame de Lieven had rebelled against the Czar and deserted her patient husband, and was living there in quasi-exile. 'Madame de Lieven is more in- teresting, amusing, agreeable than I can say', the ambassadress reported to her sister.
Princess Lieven by Madeleine Bingham, who has published literary portraits of Mary, Queen of Scots, Sheridan, Henry Ir- ving and Beerbohm Tree, as well as a vivacious book entitled Earls and Girls, is not, alas, quite the kind of biography that this remarkable character deserves. The writer is evidently addressing a popular au- dience, and seldom shuns a well-worn phrase. Describing her heroine's youth, 'even in jolly games' (she tells us) Dorothea 'had always been surrounded by the highest in the land'; when she grew up, 'the hours were ticking away'; the Czar Paul I was a murderous lunatic and, once his mother died, 'the flood-tide of his resentment was unleashed'.
The narrative includes another ex- asperating detail — Dorothea's pet-name in the nursery was Dana; and in the final chapter she is 'Dada' still; which is as if a biography of Queen Victoria should dub her 'Vicky' to the end. Madame de Lieven, originally Countess, later Princess, was an intransigent grande dame, and had refused to marry her last lover because (she asked a woman friend) 'can you imagine me being announced as Madame Guizot?' It is dif- ficult to think of an historic character whom a childish pet-name suited less.
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