by his French students. He was in London from 1743 to 1745, under a
name not his own, but that which he later bore at the Court of France.
From the allusion to his jewels (those of a deserted Mexican bride?),
it appears that he was already as rich in these treasures as he was
afterwards, when his French acquaintances marvelled at them. As to his
being 'mad,' Walpole may refer to Saint-Germain's way of talking as if
he had lived in remote ages, and known famous people of the past.
Having caught this daylight glimpse of Saint-Germain in Walpole,
having learned that in December 1745 he was arrested and examined as a
possible Jacobite agent, we naturally expect to find contemporary
official documents about his examination by the Government. Scores of
such records exist, containing the questions put to, and the answers
given by, suspected persons. But we vainly hunt through the Newcastle
MSS. and the State Papers, Domestic, in the Record Office, for a trace
of the examination of Saint-Germain. I am not aware that he has
anywhere left his trail in official documents; he lives in more or
less legendary memoirs, alone.
At what precise date Saint-Germain became an intimate of Louis XV.,
the Duc de Choiseul, Madame de Pompadour, and the Maréchal de
Belle-Isle, one cannot ascertain. The writers of memoirs are the
vaguest of mortals about dates; only one discerns that Saint-Germain
was much about the French Court, and high in the favour of the King,
having rooms at Chambord, during the Seven Years' War, and just before
the time of the peace negotiations of 1762-1763. The art of compiling
false or forged memoirs of that period was widely practised; but the
memoirs of Madame du Hausset, who speaks of Saint-Germain, are
authentic. She was the widow of a poor man of noble family, and was
one of two _femmes de chambre_ of Madame de Pompadour. Her manuscript
was written, she explains, by aid of a brief diary which she kept
during her term of service. One day M. Senac de Meilhan found Madame
de Pompadour's brother, M. de Marigny, about to burn a packet of
papers. 'It is the journal,' he said, 'of a _femme de chambre_ of my
sister, a good kind woman.' De Meilhan asked for the manuscript, which
he later gave to Mr. Crawford, one of the Kilwinning family, in
Ayrshire, who later helped in the escape of Louis XVI. and Marie
Antoinette to Varennes, where they were captured. With the journal of
Madame du Hausset were several letters to Marigny on points of
historical anecdote.[45]
[Footnote 45: One of these gives Madame de Vieux-Maison as the author
of a _roman à clef_, _Secret Memoirs of the Court of Persia_, which
contains an early reference to the Man in the Iron Mask (died 1703).
The letter-writer avers that D'Argenson, the famous minister of Louis
XV., said that the Man in the Iron Mask was really a person _fort peu
de chose_, 'of very little account,' and that the Regent d'Orléans was
of the same opinion. This corroborates my theory, that the Mask was
merely the valet of a Huguenot conspirator, Roux de Marsilly, captured
in England, and imprisoned because he was supposed to know some
terrible secret--which he knew nothing about. See _The Valet's
Tragedy_, Longmans, 1903.]
Crawford published the manuscript of Madame du Hausset, which he was
given by de Meilhan, and the memoirs are thus from an authentic
source. The author says that Louis XV. was always kind to her, but
spoke little to her, whereas Madame de Pompadour remarked, 'The King
and I trust you so much that we treat you like a cat or a dog, and
talk freely before you.'
As to Saint-Germain, Madame du Hausset writes: 'A man who was as
amazing as a witch came often to see Madame de Pompadour. This was the
Comte de Saint-Germain, who wished to make people believe that he had
lived for several centuries. One day Madame said to him, while at her
toilet, "What sort of man was Francis I., a king whom I could have
loved?" "A good sort of fellow," said Saint-Germain; "too fiery--I
could have given him a useful piece of advice, but he would not have
listened." He then described, in very general terms, the beauty of
Mary Stuart and La Reine Margot. "You seem to have seen them all,"
said Madame de Pompadour, laughing. "Sometimes," said Saint-Germain,
"I amuse myself, not by making people believe, but by letting them
believe, that I have lived from time immemorial." "But you do not tell
us your age, and you give yourself out as very old. Madame de Gergy,
who was wife of the French ambassador at Venice fifty years ago, I
think, says that she knew you there, and that you are not changed in
the least." "It is true, madame, that I knew Madame de Gergy long
ago." "But according to her story you must now be over a century old."
"It may be so, but I admit that even more possibly the respected lady
is in her dotage."'
At this time Saint-Germain, says Madame du Hausset, looked about
fifty, was neither thin nor stout, seemed clever, and dressed simply,
as a rule, but in good taste. Say that the date was 1760,
Saint-Germain looked fifty; but he had looked the same age, according
to Madame de Gergy, at Venice, fifty years earlier, in 1710. We see
how pleasantly he left Madame de Pompadour in doubt on that point.
He pretended to have the secret of removing flaws from diamonds. The
King showed him a stone valued at 6,000 francs--without a flaw it
would have been worth 10,000. Saint-Germain said that he could remove
the flaw in a month, and in a month he brought back the
diamond--flawless. The King sent it, without any comment, to his
jeweller, who gave 9,600 francs for the stone, but the King returned
the money, and kept the gem as a curiosity. Probably it was not the
original stone, but another cut in the same fashion, Saint-Germain
sacrificing 3,000 or 4,000 francs to his practical joke. He also said
that he could increase the size of pearls, which he could have proved
very easily--in the same manner. He would not oblige Madame de
Pompadour by giving the King an elixir of life: 'I should be mad if I
gave the King a drug.' There seems to be a reference to this desire of
Madame de Pompadour in an unlikely place, a letter of Pickle the Spy
to Mr. Vaughn (1754)! This conversation Madame du Hausset wrote down
on the day of its occurrence.
Both Louis XV. and Madame de Pompadour treated Saint-Germain as a
person of consequence. 'He is a quack, for he says he has an elixir,'
said Dr. Quesnay, with medical scepticism. 'Moreover, our master, the
King, is obstinate; he sometimes speaks of Saint-Germain as a person
of illustrious birth.'
The age was sceptical, unscientific, and, by reaction, credulous. The
_philosophes_, Hume, Voltaire, and others, were exposing, like an
ingenious American gentleman, 'the mistakes of Moses.' The Earl
Marischal told Hume that life had been chemically produced in a
laboratory, so what becomes of Creation? Prince Charles, hidden in a
convent, was being tutored by Mlle. Luci in the sensational philosophy
of Locke, 'nothing in the intellect which does not come through the
senses'--a queer theme for a man of the sword to study. But, thirty
years earlier, the Regent d'Orléans had made crystal-gazing
fashionable, and stories of ghosts and second-sight in the highest
circles were popular. Mesmer had not yet appeared, to give a fresh
start to the old savage practice of hypnotism; Cagliostro was not yet
on the scene with his free-masonry of the ancient Egyptian school. But
people were already in extremes of doubt and of belief; there might be
something in the elixir of life and in the philosopher's stone; it
might be possible to make precious stones chemically, and
Saint-Germain, who seemed to be over a century old at least, might
have all these secrets.
Whence came his wealth in precious stones, people asked, unless from
some mysterious knowledge, or some equally mysterious and illustrious
birth?
He showed Madame de Pompadour a little box full of rubies, topazes,
and diamonds. Madame de Pompadour called Madame du Hausset to look at
them; she was dazzled, but sceptical, and made a sign to show that she
thought them paste. The Count then exhibited a superb ruby, tossing
aside contemptuously a cross covered with gems. 'That is not so
contemptible,' said Madame du Hausset, hanging it round her neck. The
Count begged her to keep the jewel; she refused, and Madame de
Pompadour backed her refusal. But Saint-Germain insisted, and Madame
de Pompadour, thinking that the cross might be worth forty louis, made
a sign to Madame du Hausset that she should accept. She did, and the
jewel was valued at 1,500 francs--which hardly proves that the other
large jewels were genuine, though Von Gleichen believed that they
were, and thought the Count's cabinet of old masters very valuable.
The fingers, the watch, the snuff-box, the shoe buckles, the garter
studs, the solitaires of the Count, on high days, all burned with
diamonds and rubies, which were estimated, one day, at 200,000 francs.
His wealth did not come from cards or swindling--no such charges are
ever hinted at; he did not sell elixirs, nor prophecies, nor
initiations. His habits do not seem to have been extravagant. One
might regard him as a clever eccentric person, the unacknowledged
child, perhaps, of some noble, who had put his capital mainly into
precious stones. But Louis XV. treated him as a serious personage, and
probably knew, or thought he knew, the secret of his birth. People
held that he was a bastard of a king of Portugal, says Madame du
Hausset. Perhaps the most ingenious and plausible theory of the birth
of Saint-Germain makes him the natural son, not of a king of Portugal,
but of a queen of Spain. The evidence is not evidence, but a series of
surmises. Saint-Germain, on this theory, 'wrop his buth up in a
mistry' (like that of Charles James Fitzjames de la Pluche), out of
regard for the character of his royal mamma. I believe this about as
much as I believe that a certain Rev. Mr. Douglas, an obstreperous
Covenanting minister, was a descendant of the captive Mary Stuart.
However, Saint-Germain is said, like Kaspar Hauser, to have murmured
of dim memories of his infancy, of diversions on magnificent
terraces, and of palaces glowing beneath an azure sky. This is
reported by Von Gleichen, who knew him very well, but thought him
rather a quack. Possibly he meant to convey the idea that he was
Moses, and that he had dwelt in the palaces of the Ramessids. The
grave of the prophet was never known, and Saint-Germain may have
insinuated that he began a new avatar in a cleft of Mount Pisgah; he
was capable of it.
However, a less wild surmise avers that, in 1763 the secrets of his
birth and the source of his opulence were known in Holland. The
authority is the 'Memoirs' of Grosley (1813). Grosley was an
archæologist of Troyes; he had travelled in Italy, and written an
account of his travels; he also visited Holland and England,[46] and
later, from a Dutchman, he picked up his information about
Saint-Germain. Grosley was a Fellow of our Royal Society, and I
greatly revere the authority of a F.R.S. His later years were occupied
in the compilation of his Memoirs, including an account of what he did
and heard in Holland, and he died in 1785. According to Grosley's
account of what the Dutchman knew, Saint-Germain was the son of a
princess who fled (obviously from Spain) to Bayonne, and of a
Portuguese Jew dwelling in Bordeaux.
[Footnote 46: _Voyage en Angleterre_, 1770.]
What fairy and fugitive princess can this be, whom not in vain the
ardent Hebrew wooed? She was, she must have been, as Grosley saw, the
heroine of Victor Hugo's _Ruy Blas_. The unhappy Charles II. of Spain,
a kind of 'mammet' (as the English called the Richard II. who appeared
up in Islay, having escaped from Pomfret Castle), had for his first
wife a daughter of Henrietta, the favourite sister of our Charles II.
This childless bride, after some ghostly years of matrimony, after
being exorcised in disgusting circumstances, died in February 1689. In
May 1690 a new bride, Marie de Neubourg, was brought to the grisly
side of the crowned mammet of Spain. She, too, failed to prevent the
wars of the Spanish Succession by giving an heir to the Crown of
Spain. Scandalous chronicles aver that Marie was chosen as Queen of
Spain for the levity of her character, and that the Crown was
expected, as in the Pictish monarchy, to descend on the female side;
the father of the prince might be anybody. What was needed was simply
a son of the _Queen_ of Spain. She had, while Queen, no son, as far as
is ascertained, but she had a favourite, a Count Andanero, whom she
made minister of finance. 'He was not a born Count,' he was a
financier, this favourite of the Queen of Spain. That lady did go to
live in Bayonne in 1706, six years after the death of Charles II., her
husband. The hypothesis is, then, that Saint-Germain was the son of
this ex-Queen of Spain, and of the financial Count, Andanero, a man,
'not born in the sphere of Counts,' and easily transformed by
tradition into a Jewish banker of Bordeaux. The Duc de Choiseul, who
disliked the intimacy of Louis XV. and of the Court with
Saint-Germain, said that the Count was 'the son of a Portuguese Jew,
_who deceives the Court_. It is strange that the King is so often
allowed to be almost alone with this man, though, when he goes out, he
is surrounded by guards, as if he feared assassins everywhere.' This
anecdote is from the 'Memoirs' of Gleichen, who had seen a great deal
of the world. He died in 1807.
It seems a fair inference that the Duc de Choiseul knew what the Dutch
bankers knew, the story of the Count's being a child of a princess
retired to Bayonne--namely, the ex-Queen of Spain--and of a
Portuguese-Hebrew financier. De Choiseul was ready to accept the
Jewish father, but thought that, in the matter of the royal mother,
Saint-Germain 'deceived the Court.'
A queen of Spain might have carried off any quantity of the diamonds
of Brazil. The presents of diamonds from her almost idiotic lord must
have been among the few comforts of her situation in a Court
overridden by etiquette. The reader of Madame d'Aulnoy's contemporary
account of the Court of Spain knows what a dreadful dungeon it was.
Again, if born at Bayonne about 1706, the Count would naturally seem
to be about fifty in 1760. The purity with which he spoke German, and
his familiarity with German princely Courts--where I do not remember
that Barry Lyndon ever met him--are easily accounted for if he had a
royal German to his mother. But, alas! if he was the son of a Hebrew
financier, Portuguese or Alsatian (as some said), he was likely,
whoever his mother may have been, to know German, and to be fond of
precious stones. That Oriental taste notoriously abides in the hearts
of the Chosen People.
Nay, never shague your gory locks at me,
Dou canst not say I did it.
quotes Pinto, the hero of Thackeray's _Notch on the Axe_. 'He
pronounced it, by the way, I _dit_ it, by which I _know_ that Pinto
was a German,' says Thackeray. I make little doubt but that
Saint-Germain, too, was a German, whether by the mother's side, and of
princely blood, or quite the reverse.
Grosley mixes Saint-Germain up with a lady as mysterious as himself,
who also lived in Holland, on wealth of an unknown source, and Grosley
inclines to think that the Count found his way into a French prison,
where he was treated with extraordinary respect.
Von Gleichen, on the other hand, shows the Count making love to a
daughter of Madame Lambert, and lodging in the house of the mother.
Here Von Gleichen met the man of mystery and became rather intimate
with him. Von Gleichen deemed him very much older than he looked, but
did not believe in his elixir.
In any case, he was not a cardsharper, a swindler, a professional
medium, or a spy. He passed many evenings almost alone with Louis
XV., who, where men were concerned, liked them to be of good family
(about ladies he was much less exclusive). The Count had a grand
manner; he treated some great personages in a cavalier way, as if he
were at least their equal. On the whole, if not really the son of a
princess, he probably persuaded Louis XV. that he did come of that
blue blood, and the King would have every access to authentic
information. Horace Walpole's reasons for thinking Saint-Germain 'not
a gentleman' scarcely seem convincing.
The Duc de Choiseul did not like the fashionable Saint-Germain. He
thought him a humbug, even when the doings of the deathless one were
perfectly harmless. As far as is known, his recipe for health
consisted in drinking a horrible mixture called 'senna tea'--which was
administered to small boys when I was a small boy--and in not drinking
anything at his meals. Many people still observe this regimen, in the
interest, it is said, of their figures. Saint-Germain used to come to
the house of de Choiseul, but one day, when Von Gleichen was present,
the minister lost his temper with his wife. He observed that she took
no wine at dinner, and told her she had learned that habit of
abstinence from Saint-Germain; that _he_ might do as he pleased, 'but
you, madame, whose health is precious to me, I forbid to imitate the
regimen of such a dubious character.' Gleichen, who tells the
anecdote, says that he was present when de Choiseul thus lost his
temper with his wife. The dislike of de Choiseul had a mournful effect
on the career of Saint-Germain.
In discussing the strange story of the Chevalier d'Éon, we have seen
that Louis XV. amused himself by carrying on a secret scheme of
fantastic diplomacy through subordinate agents, behind the backs and
without the knowledge of his responsible ministers. The Duc de
Choiseul, as Minister of Foreign Affairs, was excluded, it seems, from
all knowledge of these double intrigues, and the Maréchal de
Belle-Isle, Minister of War, was obviously kept in the dark, as was
Madame de Pompadour. Now it is stated by Von Gleichen that the
Maréchal de Belle-Isle, from the War Office, started a _new_ secret
diplomacy behind the back of de Choiseul, at the Foreign Office. The
King and Madame de Pompadour (who was not initiated into the general
scheme of the King's secret) were both acquainted with what de
Choiseul was not to know--namely, Belle-Isle's plan for secretly
making peace through the mediation, or management, at all events, of
Holland. All this must have been prior to the death of the Maréchal de
Belle-Isle in 1761; and probably de Broglie, who managed the regular
old secret policy of Louis XV., knew nothing about this new
clandestine adventure; at all events, the late Duc de Broglie says
nothing about it in his book _The King's Secret_.[47]
[Footnote 47: The Duc de Broglie, I am privately informed, could find
no clue to the mystery of Saint-Germain.]
The story, as given by Von Gleichen, goes on to say that Saint-Germain
offered to conduct the intrigue at the Hague. As Louis XV. certainly
allowed that maidenly captain of dragoons, d'Éon, to manage his hidden
policy in London, it is not at all improbable that he really entrusted
this fresh cabal in Holland to Saint-Germain, whom he admitted to
great intimacy. To the Hague went Saint-Germain, diamonds, rubies,
senna tea, and all, and began to diplomatise with the Dutch. But the
regular French minister at the Hague, d'Affry, found out what was
going on behind his back--found it out either because he was sharper
than other ambassadors, or because a personage so extraordinary as
Saint-Germain was certain to be very closely watched, or because the
Dutch did not take to the Undying One, and told d'Affry what he was
doing. D'Affry wrote to de Choiseul. An immortal but dubious
personage, he said, was treating, in the interests of France, for
peace, which it was d'Affry's business to do if the thing was to be
done at all. Choiseul replied in a rage by the same courier.
Saint-Germain, he said, must be extradited, bound hand and foot, and
sent to the Bastille. Choiseul thought that he might practise his
regimen and drink his senna tea, to the advantage of public affairs,
within those venerable walls. Then the angry minister went to the
King, told him what orders he had given, and said that, of course, in
a case of this kind it was superfluous to inquire as to the royal
pleasure. Louis XV. was caught; so was the Maréchal de Belle-Isle.
They blushed and were silent.
It must be remembered that this report of a private incident could
only come to the narrator, Von Gleichen, from de Choiseul, with whom
he professes to have been intimate. The King and the Maréchal de
Belle-Isle would not tell the story of their own discomfiture. It is
not very likely that de Choiseul himself would blab. However, the
anecdote avers that the King and the Minister for War thought it best
to say nothing, and the demand for Saint-Germain's extradition was
presented at the Hague. But the Dutch were not fond of giving up
political offenders. They let Saint-Germain have a hint; he slipped
over to London, and a London paper published a kind of veiled
interview with him in June 1760.
His name, we read, when announced after his death, will astonish the
world more than all the marvels of his life. He has been in England
already (1743-17--?); he is a great unknown. Nobody can accuse him of
anything dishonest or dishonourable. When he was here before we were
all mad about music, and so he enchanted us with his violin. But Italy
knows him as an expert in the plastic arts, and Germany admires in him
a master in chemical science. In France, where he was supposed to
possess the secret of the transmutation of metals, the police for two
years sought and failed to find any normal source of his opulence. A
lady of forty-five once swallowed a whole bottle of his elixir. Nobody
recognised her, for she had become a girl of sixteen without observing
the transformation!
Saint-Germain is said to have remained in London but for a short
period. Horace Walpole does not speak of him again, which is odd, but
probably the Count did not again go into society. Our information,
mainly from Von Gleichen, becomes very misty, a thing of surmises,
really worthless. The Count is credited with a great part in the
palace conspiracies of St. Petersburg; he lived at Berlin, and, under
the name of Tzarogy, at the Court of the Margrave of Anspach. Thence
he went, they say, to Italy, and then north to the Landgrave, Charles
of Hesse, who dabbled in alchemy. Here he is said to have died about
1780-85, leaving his papers to the Landgrave; but all is very vague
after he disappeared from Paris in 1760. When next I meet
Saint-Germain he is again at Paris, again mysteriously rich, again he
rather disappears than dies, he calls himself Major Fraser, and the
date is in the last years of Louis Philippe. My authority may be
cavilled at; it is that of the late ingenious Mr. Van Damme, who
describes Major Fraser in a book on the characters of the Second
Empire. He does not seem to have heard of Saint-Germain, whom he does
not mention.
Major Fraser, 'in spite of his English (_sic_) name, was decidedly not
English, though he spoke the language.' He was (like Saint-Germain)
'one of the best dressed men of the period.... He lived alone, and
never alluded to his parentage. He was always flush of money, though
the sources of his income were a mystery to every one.' The French
police vainly sought to detect the origin of Saint-Germain's supplies,
opening his letters at the post-office. Major Fraser's knowledge of
every civilised country at every period was marvellous, though he had
very few books. 'His memory was something prodigious.... Strange to
say, he used often to hint that his was no mere book knowledge. '"Of
course, it is perfectly ridiculous,"' he remarked, with a strange
smile, '"but every now and then I feel as if this did not come to me
from reading, but from personal experience. At times I become almost
convinced that I lived with Nero, that I knew Dante personally, and so
forth."'[48] At the major's death not a letter was found giving a clue
to his antecedents, and no money was discovered. _Did_ he die? As in
the case of Saint-Germain, no date is given. The author had an idea
that the major was 'an illegitimate son of some exalted person' of the
period of Charles IV. and Ferdinand VII. of Spain.