Dino Dorothée - Memoirs of the Duchesse De Dino (Afterwards Duchesse de Talleyrand et de Sagan), 1841-1850

Nice, December 30, 1841. – Yesterday was Pauline's twenty-first birthday and to celebrate the double anniversary of her birth and her majority, she came to lunch with me with her husband and her little girl. She found some small presents and a German cake with as many candles as she had lived years. This little surprise pleased her. In the morning I went with Fanny and her former governess to visit a garden on the hillside protected by wooded slopes from the wind, with a view of the mountains and the sea which is reputed to be extremely pretty. The villa in the centre was closed, but the garden, which contained a large number of rare flowers and is more carefully tended than usual here, was open. We met the owner, a merchant of Nice, at the end of a walk where he was giving instructions to his workmen. He was very polite, loaded us with flowers and promised me some seeds for Rochecotte; his villa is called St. Helena. We returned very pleased with our walk, although the weather was by no means kind.

Nice, December 31, 1841. – The Grand Duchess called yesterday when I was finishing lunch and carried me off to see a country house near Nice which is very well situated and remarkable for the surrounding woods of pine-trees and holm oaks and arbutus. The shade of trees is not often to be found here, as the gardens are usually built in terraces looking southward and leading more or less towards the sea; any variety of style is therefore not to be despised. Moreover yesterday's walk reminded me of one which I had projected in the woods around Rochecotte and pleased me for this reason. The owner is a retired merchant and an old bachelor. He is very polite, and, according to the custom of the country, loaded us with flowers and gave us orangeade to drink. I thought this refreshment cold under the circumstances, for it was by no means hot and driving had certainly made us no warmer. I therefore walked home from the house of the Grand Duchess to restore the circulation; the distance is about that from the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe in the Champs Elysées.

This is the last day of a year of which I am not sorry to see the end: it can count as two years in my life by reason of its length; however, it has not been entirely unfortunate; the months spent at Rochecotte were quiet and the time while I was in Germany was not without interest and satisfaction.

This is also the second anniversary of the death of Mgr. de Quélen. It could not pass unnoticed by me, for he was a great loss to me, and his regular and protecting kindness left one of those gaps which can never be filled, for nothing can take the place of that which has been consecrated by time.

Nice, January 1, 1842. – Yesterday I made a very beautiful excursion with my son-in-law. We drove to the foot of a crag on which a convent for men is built. The church is pretty, especially by reason of a projecting portico from which there is a beautiful view of the sea including Nice, the Fort of Saint Elmo, and of the chief points of the landscape in a delightful setting. We walked up to the convent which is called Saint Pons: the religious order there established is comparatively new, and is called gli oblati della santissima Virgine ; young ordained priests from the time when they are allowed to say Mass, and until they can perform the holy office of confession, or in other words receive the cure of souls, spend a year here in preparation. This institution seems to me to be peculiar to Nice, and in my opinion is a very wise idea.

Nice, January 2, 1842. – Yesterday evening I went with the Castellanes to the official reception given by the Governor of Nice. 48 48 Comte de Maistre. It is customary here that on New Year's Day every native who has been presented at Court and all foreigners should attend this reception, the men in uniform and the women in full dress. The idea is that in this way one congratulates the King and Queen of Sardinia. The ceremony somewhat resembles a London Drawing-room, or one of the great diplomatic routs at Paris. There were some curious figures, but on the whole the society was unexceptionable and the crowd suffocating. Some games were made up in the last reception-room where it was not so hot, and refreshments went round, while flowers, which are never wanting here, were to be seen everywhere in profusion, and the light was brilliant. The whole scene looked very well. I went round the rooms twice, once on my son-in-law's arm and the second time with the Duke of Devonshire, who pays me much attention. The Grand Duchess was covered with diamonds but not with beauty, for she had no head-dress, which made her look old. The Princesse Marie also looks better when she is not so over-dressed.

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The Duc Pasquier was, in fact, elected member of the French Academy on February 17, 1842, in place of Mgr. Frayssinous, Bishop of Hermopolis (1765-1841), high master of the University, who was very ill in January 1841.

The publication which appeared in 1848 under the title The History of Madame de Maintenon and of the Principal Events of the Reign of Louis XIV.

Madame Récamier, at the outset of the Restoration and after her husband's ruin, settled at the Abbaye au Bois. All the famous men of the age struggled to secure admission to her salon, which apart from politics was a sort of nineteenth-century Hotel de Rambouillet, with Madame Récamier as Julie.

This woman, Eselina Vanayl de Yongh, under the name of Ida de Saint-Elme, was a famous adventuress. The supposed letters of Louis-Philippe had been entirely invented by her.

An allusion to the painted cloth manufacture founded in the eighteenth century by Oberkampf at Jouy-en-Josas, in the department of Seine-et-Oise, not far from Versailles.

The daughter of Lady Palmerston by her first marriage and a niece of Lord Melbourne. Lady Fanny was to marry Lord Jocelyn a few months later.

Young Colonel Cardigan had several quarrels with officers in his regiment, and after a duel with Captain Harvey Tuckett, whom he wounded, he was summoned before the House of Lords in its judicial capacity in 1841; he was acquitted, and his trial was merely a necessary concession to the law of the land against duelling.

M. de Bacourt, to whom this letter was addressed, was still acting as French Minister at Washington. This incident explains the coolness which arose between the Duchesse de Talleyrand and M. Thiers.

This great work consisted in copying and classifying papers which were collected under the title, Memoirs of the Prince de Talleyrand .

The Irish Registration Bill had been proposed by Lord Morpeth in the House of Commons, where it met with considerable opposition.