Note 8 — Chapter IV · “I LIVED IN PHILADELPHIA.”

The residence of Talleyrand in America is an obscure period in his history. We may learn more of it when the long-expected memoirs are published. The first part of his exile was spent in the neighbourhood of New York, and time hung heavily on his hands, for his pecuniary resources were scanty; and, indeed, this period was afterwards one of the most painful memories of his life. There does not appear any foundation for the suspicion that Talleyrand was a spy in the pay of the French Government, although it is probable enough that he kept his eyes open on his own account. At last he determined (as he wrote to Madame Genlis) to try and retrieve his fortunes with mercantile speculations; and in this he was successful. Towards the close of 1795, he sent a petition for the revocation of his banishment, which was ultimately granted, and he returned to France in the course of the following year. (Vide “Biographie Universelle;” also Touchard-Lafosse: “Hist. Polit. de Talleyrand.”)

A singular contribution to Talleyrand’s history occurs in “Men and Times of the Revolution,” by Elkanah Watson (New York, 1856, pp. 387, 388). It will serve to refute the notion that he had any particular mission. “In the years 1794 and 1795, I resided in the northern suburbs of Albany, known as the Colonie. Monsr. Le Contaulx, formerly of Paris, a very amiable man, was my opposite neighbour. His residence was the resort of the French emigrants. During that period, Count Latour Dupin, a distinguished French noble, made a hair-breadth escape from Bordeaux with his elegant and accomplished wife, the daughter of Count Dillon. They were concealed in that city for six terrible weeks, during the sanguinary atrocities of Tallien, and arrived at Boston with two trunks of fine towels, containing several hundred in each, the only property they had been able to save from the wreck of an immense estate.… They purchased a little farm upon an eminence nearly opposite Troy. Here they were joined by Talleyrand, who had arrived about the same time in Albany, also an exile and in want. I became intimate with them.… They avowed their poverty, and resided together on the little farm, suffering severe privations, bringing to Albany the surplus produce of their land, and habitually stopping, with their butter and eggs, at my door. They yielded with a good grace to their humiliating condition. In the year following, I was surrounded in my office by a group of distinguished Frenchmen; the Count, Talleyrand, Volney, the philosophical writer and traveller, Mons. Pharoux, … and Desjardins, a former Chamberlain of Louis XVI.” This intercourse at length terminated, through the avowed dislike of the émigrés to American institutions, habits, and customs.