A GREAT RUSSIAN AMBASSADRESS.* OLD Walton, writing the Life of
Sir H. Wotton, calls an Ambassador an honest man sent abroad to lie for his country. He does not define the public duties of the Ambassadress; but he would have approved the record of Dorothea, Princess Lieven, a German-Russian of the Baltic provinces, whose marriage with a Russian diplomatist brought her in 1809 to Berlin, where she resided until her husband was promoted to the Czar's Embassy in London, a post held by him from 1812 to 1834. With the figure of this remarkable woman the expert reader has, of course, long been familiar: the present correspondence, which was addressed to her brother, General Benckendorf, is a new publication. Translation, as the Italians say, is treason ; and exact as Mr. Robinson's version of the letters appears to be, we miss the finesses of style which the original text doubtless presents. Princess Lieven had not the refined, reflective intelligence of Madame de Sevigne, and like another notable French authoress, she only paints herself en busts. Her brother is not told of her introduction of the waltz to London ballrooms, or of the literary and artistic celebrities with whom she must have been in touch; she betrays no interest in painting or the Opera; while as to books, we find a few allusions to Moliere, and one to Shakespeare. What we get is an admirable salmi of first-rate gossip, and full notes of the lady's intimate conversations with the political leaders of the day, her graphic, slashing portraiture of whom is the more instructive as it is not drawn from our own hackneyed points of view.
As was natural in a visitor full of remembrances of the horizons of Riga and Berlin, the Princess was an ardent worshipper of the landscape beauties of our island, which she thought attained a maximum in the vicinity of Richmond. The gaucherie of "the silent English" did not prevent her enjoy- ing London life, and after going " the round of all the country seats of the kingdom," she marvelled at first at the splendour and comfort of our provincial life and at the happiness which our landowners seemed both to enjoy and to spread around them, a view subsequently replaced by the belief in the crying wrongs of the lower classes while the aristocracy were rolling in riches. Our political institutions and habits by no means captivated this daughter of despotism ; we had no parties with defined objects, only groups of place-hunters, and the country was at the mercy of " a few noisy speech-makers." For her brilliant successes as a society queen in Harley Street and Richmond the Princess cared leas than for the influence she strove to attain over
• Letters of Dorothea, Princess Lies", during her Residence in London. 181534, Edited by Lionel O. Bobinsom London : Longmans and Co. [14a. net.]
personages likely, as she thought, to serve as catspaws of Russia. With the Duke of Wellington and Lord Grey, Aber- deen and Canning, Palmerston and Peel, she formed relation- ships of the most intimate order; the photogravure of her picture in her girlish days, painted by Lawrence, does not suggest the idea that her numerous diplomatic conquests were due to the usual seductions of the ewig-weibliche. Impartiality of appreciation was not one of her gifts. When the Duke of Wellington displeases her he is "thoroughly mediocre," Lord Goderich is " as cowardly as the most timid woman," Aberdeen's " thoughts are mean and cowardly," the Grey Government are " a poor lot," and so on. In Canning, strange to say (who objected to the bestowal of the Garter on the Emperor Nicholas), she saw an eventual helper, and he is termed "the sincere friend and ally of Russia." Such was her skill in " pumping," that the Iron Duke went so far as to let out that the King was " stupid," and he talked to her of secrets of State without reticence. The haughty and reserved Earl Grey, who at one time visited the Princess "every day," almost treated her as a member of his Cabinet. Amazing as it may sound in 1902, before Parliament opened in June, 1830, the Prime Minister called on the Ambassadress to feel her pulse as to an allusion in the King's Speech to the Polish insurrection of the time. Order, to use Sebastiani's phrase, was not yet reigning in Warsaw, and the paragraph in question called the movement a " war," for which word the Princess requested Lord Grey to substitute stauggle." Her reasons are re- capitulated in a notable letter subsequently addressed to the Prime Minister. She observes that whereas the draft Speech terms the Italian insurrection a "civil commotion," it calls the Polish uprising, which was of identical character, a "war." Strictly speaking, " war " was a conflict of two belligerent Powers, while the fighting in Poland was between a legitimate, recognised Sovereign and his lawful subjects. Putting her case with great dialectical dexterity, the lady diplomatist con- cludes : " Grant me the word struggle' instead of war,' and I shall be thoroughly gratefuL" The siren prevailed; the reluctant Premier whittled the objectionable word down to " contest." But the Ambassadress had two strings to her bow. Lord Grey's intended premature recognition of Leopold as King of Belgium being to her distaste, she adroitly let fall her objections to the Duke of Wellington, by whom they were so astutely utilised in the Address debate that the Premier, though "furious," was driven to drop his scheme. Once the Princess wrote:—" Dismiss from your mind, if you ever had it, that Lord Grey is a Liberal. He is so near to becoming the very opposite that only yesterday he told me that his only wish was to be dictator for six months. His greatest fear is Italy, and the mere thought of troubles in Piedmont gives him the stomach-ache." At one time "Lord Grey is possessed by a demon of madness "; he seemed wiser when, after his refusal to receive a certain petition from thirty thousand workmen, he said to his Russian confidante:— " At the first sign of disorder I begin with the cannon—and that will settle the business."
Princess Lieven regarded not only the House of Lords, but also the Prime Minister's dinner-table as within the bounds of her protectorate. When the Polish patriot, Czartoryski, visited London he dined quietly with Lord Grey, the only other guest being Lord Palmerston, then head of the Foreign Office. This act of civility to a "State criminal" was dis- approved by the Ambassadress, who expostulated with the offender in several angry letters, which, however, remained unanswered. On the completion of his arrangements for the formation of the Reform Cabinet of 1830, Lord Grey came to the Russian Egeria with a full account of his programme, and the list of his eventual colleagues, of whom Lord Lansdowne was designated as Foreign Secretary. Thereupon, departing from what she called her " rule of never meddling with the political affairs of this capital," the lady advised the appoint. ment of Lord Palmerston to the said post. " Grey," she told her brother, "consented at once in the hope that the choice would be agreeable to our Court," a statement fortified by the late Lord Chelmsford's remark that " after all, it was Madame de Lieven who made Lord Palmerston." At first she called her friend "our Minister," but soon perceived that she bad mistaken her man. When Hume and O'Connell spoke in Parliament of her idol the Czar Nicholas in opprobrious terms, her nominee listened from the Treasury Bench and held his tongue. The incident made the Princess " choke with rage," and she accordingly gave Lord Grey " a bit of her mind." To her brother she wrote :—" All this is the result of sheer stupidity and ignorance of good manners. The English learn Latin, but they don't learn the art of living." When further evidence proved that her old partner in the first waltz ever danced at Almack's was anything but a Russo- phile, she said :—" Lord Palmerston is a poor, small- minded creature, wounded in his vanity, who wants a great warlike demonstration behind which he hopes to con- ceal his blunders." And she further wrote :—" Palmerston fancies himself still in a rhetoric class, working at his theme. He will never be more than a schoolboy, and is not brilliant as that." But if the Foreign Secretary was a mere boggler, and the Whig "idiots" behind him were " cowards and fools," Russia had no reason to complain. Thanks to " these good creatures," the Czar's gigantic Empire had been driven to assume the leadership of conservative Europe, thereby doubling its moral strength.
This slight spicilegium of the contents of a mere fraction of the letters gives no notion of the fulness and lucidity of the Princess Lieven's descriptions of the various phases of our domestic situation, her comments on Ministerial changes, on the characteristics and plans of political parties and their leaders, and the like. In his historical introductions, ap- pendices, and explanatory notes, Mr. Robinson has reached a height of editorial perfection more often attained in Paris or Leipsic than in London. His researches show that the lady's assertions are not always pure gospel, but her slips and seeming unveracities are not of abnormal dimen- sions. As to her so-called " intrigues," the verdict of a jury of Ambassadors' Attaches would unquestionably be that she seldom, if ever, outran the fair limits of the diplomatic function. Weathercocks are seldom popular, and the rapidity with which the Princess shifted her friendships may have brought her into disrepute; but, as we think, she only did her duty as her husband's adjunct if she tried to turn to the advantage of her country the instruments who, in her opinion, might be made to play into her bands. Of her eventual censors none were more bitter than her once bbsom friend the Duke of Wellington, whose diatribes on her malignancies and indiscretions, and in particular, on her efforts to upset his own Government, are no less acrid than Lord Palmerston's confidential estimates of her character and doings.
The end came in 1834. The Lievens were adepts at their craft ; but by no possible application of what Burke called " balmy diplomatic diachylon " could the policy of Downing Street be brought by them into good tune with the designs entertained on the Neva for the settlement of the questions of Greece, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and the trickery of Unkiar- Skelessi. The case of the regretted M. de Steal may seem to contradict us, but experience shows that a period of twenty- two years is twice too long for an Ambassadorial lease of office. London tired of the woman whom George IV. called " the biggest political animal in the kingdom," and the anti- Lieven agitation was largely fanned by a female gang of whom Lady Jersey was chief. Characteristic is a final fling at " our Minister." Sir James Graham, one of her " old friends," having placed a ship of war at the disposal of the Lievens for their voyage home, the Princess writes that had the offer "been made by Palmerston, I should have declined it without hesitation." After a short sojourn in St. Petersburg as Lady-in-Waiting on the Empress, the ex-Ambassadress abruptly quitted Russia for good. As she had previously told her brother, " a centrifugal force drew her to Paris." Her well-known attachment to Guizot, which assumed a definite shape when she had passed ber fiftieth year, and the devotion received by her in return, were, as our editor rightly puts it, "honourable to both, a beautiful sunset to a stormy life." The publication of Guizot's papers, now in the hands of M. Daudet, may throw the lights hitherto wanting on her activities at Val Richer, in London, and in Paris, where she died after the Crimean War aged seventy- two, in the house—so the irony of history dictated—of her old adversary, the " unprincipled rascal " Talleyrand..
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