Chapter XXXIII · A Few Foreign Diplomats

During the quarter of a century that I lived in Paris I was fated to see many changes among the Diplomatic Corps, first at the Court of Napoleon III., and afterwards at the Elysée. I must say that in all the diplomatic circle I seldom found unpleasant or rude colleagues, but that, on the contrary, I have met most charming men and women whom it was a privilege and an honour to know. It is impossible to speak of them all, but there are a few figures which have left such a vivid remembrance in my mind that I must mention them.

I think I have spoken of Prince and Princess Metternich; they were great favourites with the Empress Eugénie, and another Ambassador who shared her affections was Count Nigra, one of the ablest diplomats Italy could ever boast. A faithful servant and pupil of the great Cavour, he watched on his behalf everything that was going on in France, and helped the unfortunate Empress in her flight, or rather did not help her, because his intervention, together with that of his Austrian colleague, consisted in advising her to run away, and perhaps even in obliging her to do so, from a feeling that later on it would be easier to get a revolutionary government to shut its eyes to the advance of the Italian troops on Rome, and their conquest of the Eternal City.

Count Nigra was a charming man. It was said that one could never believe anything he said, or rely upon anything he promised. But apart from this he was the pleasantest colleague one could have, and contrived to remain on good terms with all those he knew, even when in diplomacy he had cheated them of something or other. After he left Paris, I met him in Vienna and in St. Petersburg, and was always delighted to have those opportunities.

Lord Lyons spent long years in Paris, and represented the government of Queen Victoria with great dignity. He was a gentleman and also a most able diplomat, and whilst he stayed at the Faubourg St. Honoré, Anglo-French relations remained excellent in spite of the many attempts made to spoil them. His successors also left excellent memories behind them when their term of office came to an end; and Lord Lytton especially had contrived to make for himself many friends among French society, which at that time did not look upon foreigners with the same enthusiasm it professes to-day. Lord Lytton was a scholar, a writer and also a statesman, a combination one does not meet frequently in our age of mediocrities. He was a great friend, and, I think, also a distant relation, of Lord Salisbury, who had firm confidence in his abilities; he enjoyed greater latitude than other Ambassadors had done or did later on.

I will say nothing about Count Arnim. We were never intimate or even on friendly terms with each other. He was extremely stiff, and had a considerable amount of the morgue prussienne in his ways, so that very few people sympathised with him or with his opinions. Nevertheless, his trial, and the long war which Prince Bismarck waged against him, aroused an interest in his fate which would not have existed under different circumstances. But, all the same, one was not sorry when Prince Hohenlohe succeeded him. The Prince was received with a certain amount of kind feeling such as could not have been expected under ordinary conditions.

Prince Hohenlohe was one of the greatest among the grand seigneurs in Germany. He was related to the Royal Family of Prussia and to almost all the crowned heads in Europe. He had been President of the Bavarian ministry, and as such had shown great devotion to the cause of German unity. His character had always been above reproach, his tact was exquisite, and his straightforwardness was recognised even among the enemies of his political ideas and opinions. He was essentially a man of duty, and he never failed in its fulfilment, no matter how painful this might be. All those who knew him respected him, and when he was sent to Paris as Ambassador, it was felt among the diplomatic circles of Europe that his presence there would help to do away with many prejudices and misunderstandings.

I was a frequent visitor at the house of Prince Clovis, as we called him familiarly, and whenever I left him it was with admiration for his shrewd intelligence and the logic displayed in all his reasonings and appreciations of men and of events. He had very few illusions, but at the same time an excessive kindness in all his judgments of other people. Ill-nature was unknown to him, and he was always ready to find excuses for the mistakes he could not help noticing in his neighbours. Prince Hohenlohe was infinitely above all his contemporaries in everything, both as a private and as a public man, and in all the high offices which he held he won for himself the esteem and the affection of all who had to do with him.

He made himself liked, too, in Paris in those first years which followed upon the war, in spite of the natural prejudice which existed against everything German. He had some relatives in the Faubourg St. Germain, where both he and his wife were received with more cordiality than in official circles, and he felt more or less at home among them. This fact made him cling to his Paris mission, where it was felt at the time that it would be difficult to replace him, and where, later on, his appointment as Chancellor of the German Empire was received with a certain amount of sympathy.

Princess Hohenlohe was a fitting wife for that distinguished man. She was also a grande dame, highly born and highly connected, with some of the bluest blood in Europe flowing in her veins. She admirably filled her position as Ambassadress, and she made for herself in France, as everywhere else, a considerable number of friends.

Prince Hohenlohe’s successor, Count Munster, as I think I have already remarked, was in appearance more an Englishman than a German. His wife had been English, and he affected great sympathies for everything that was British, loving London, where he always declared he spent the happiest time of his life, and crossing the Channel whenever he found it possible to do so. He was in Paris at the time of the Dreyfus affair, and contrived not to make for himself too many enemies, in spite of the difficult position and circumstances in which he found himself during that anxious period. Among diplomats he was liked, his advice being always appreciated and mostly followed. I cannot say the same thing about his successor, Prince Radolin, formerly Count Radolinski, who, in spite of the many years he remained in Paris, did not succeed in attaining the great position which had belonged to Prince Hohenlohe or to Count Munster.

During the latter’s tenure of the German Embassy, the present Prince von Bülow was one of his secretaries. Intelligent, clever in noticing what ought to be noticed, and in not seeing the things which apparently did not concern him, he contrived to keep himself exceedingly well au courant of all that was going on around him, and of the intentions and designs of French diplomacy. He was a man singularly unprejudiced, for whom the end always justified the means. He may perhaps have had too high an opinion of his own merits, and too much confidence in his power to do always what he liked and wanted. He could make himself very charming when he saw a personal advantage, and he was constantly on the look out for the things that others did not see or did not care to notice. His admiration for Prince Bismarck was unbounded, and he fondly nursed an ambition to replace him as Chancellor of the German Empire. Even at the time when he was a simple secretary at the Paris Embassy, he told a friend of his that he would probably never become an ambassador, but might, if circumstances favoured him, come to be at the head of Germany’s foreign policy.

Prince Bülow, who fell from his high position because he had not understood the character of the Emperor William II., and imagined that the latter would not notice or would forgive him for trying to keep him in leading-strings, married one of the most distinguished women in Europe, an Italian by birth, and the daughter of the Princesse de Camporeale. Madame Bülow was the wife of another German diplomat, Count Donhoff, when she made the acquaintance of the future Chancellor. No one can doubt his love for the beautiful and intelligent woman who at present is his wife.

The first Ambassador whom Russia sent to Paris after the signature of peace with Germany was Prince Orloff, one of her greatest noblemen. His exalted position and high moral character put him above any suspicion of playing a double game between France and Prussia, and he had, moreover, the advantage of being a personal friend of President Thiers. He remained at his post for something like ten years, and when he was removed to Berlin, at the express desire of Prince Bismarck, his departure was mourned by all those who knew him.

Of his successor, Baron Mohrenheim, I shall say no more than that he had a very complex personality. He was not liked in France nor in Russia; it is said that he only kept his post because he enjoyed the protection of the Empress Marie Feodorovna, the Consort of Alexander III.

It was M. Nelidoff who replaced him, and who remained in possession of the Russian Embassy in Paris until his death. M. Nelidoff was a diplomat of the old school, who had spent almost his whole career in the East, and who had served under Count Ignatieff in Constantinople, accompanying him to San Stefano, where his signature figures on the famous treaty which was signed there, and which Europe did not consent to accept. He was not a man who would shrink with horror when seeing something dirty under his feet, but rather one who would try not to step into it. No one knew better than he did how to get over a difficulty, or how to avoid a mistake. He can certainly be considered as an able diplomat, and certainly also he cut a better figure in Paris than his successor, M. Izvolski, whom wicked tongues in St. Petersburg nicknamed Izvostchik, which means a cabdriver.

Prince Orloff had had for private secretary during his stay in Paris Count Mouravieff, whom he took with him to Berlin, and who was ultimately to be put in possession of the Russian Foreign Office after the unexpected death of Prince Labanoff. Count Mouravieff was one of the most charmingly amiable men that Russian diplomacy ever possessed. His tact was something surpassing, and his cleverness, which had no shade of pedantry mixed with it, made him delightful. He has been accused of many things, including that of not being either a good or a faithful friend. I have had occasion to see that this was a most unjust and untrue reproach, because Count Muravieff, far from deserting those who had been his companions, when their worldly star did not shine any longer as brightly as it had done, was, on the contrary, always eager to oblige them in anything that he could possibly do for them, and kept up his relations with them sometimes even at the cost of some personal sacrifices. He was not liked by those who saw in him a possible rival, his quick career interfering with their own, but the few who knew him well esteemed him as much as they appreciated his intelligence and his pleasant conversation.

I must, before ending with these few words of remembrance that I have given of my former colleagues, say something about the Italian Ambassador, Count Tornielli, or rather about his wife, who was a Russian by birth, a Countess Rostopschine, the granddaughter of that Count Rostopschine who burned Moscow rather than give it up to Napoleon. She was an amiable woman, whose house was always open to her compatriots; one who had kept a great attachment for the land of her birth, and whose salon was a favourite resort for those who cared more for clever conversation than for polo or for tennis. She had a sister, the Countess Lydie Rostopschine, who has written several books full of interest, among them one called “Rastaquèropolis,” which is the best description that has ever been published of Nice society and in general of the life and the people of the French Riviera.