Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 5/Count de St. Germain
COUNT DE ST. GERMAIN.
The last century was very fertile in adventurers, who cleverly took advantage of the struggle continually going on between superstition and scepticism to enrich themselves at the expense of their dupes. Such men as Cagliostro could only exist at a period when people still believed in the philosopher’s stone, and hoped to restore their estates injured by frantic extravagance by the employment of the Great Secret. Among these adventurers, one who made a great sensation in his day—and probably the best of the gang—was a person who began to be talked about in 1750, first under the name of the Marquis de Montferrat, then at Venice as the Count de Bellamare, at Pisa as the Chevalier Schœning, at Milan as Chevalier Welldone, at Genoa as Count Soltikoff, and at Paris as Count de St. Germain, which name he retained till the end of his life. His speciality was, that he gave himself out as a practical proof of the possibility of extending the limits of strength and life far beyond the ordinary compass, if not of attaining eternal youth and physical immortality. No one was ever able to discover his real origin, or the country where he was born, and even Frederick the Great speaks of him in his Memoirs as a man whose secret could never be discovered. When St. Germain alluded to his childhood, which he was fond of doing, he represented himself as surrounded by a numerous suite, enjoying a delicious climate on magnificent terraces, just as if he had been heir-presumptive to some king of Granada in the Moorish times. An old Baron de Stosch declared that he had known, during the regency, a Marquis de Montferrat, who passed as the natural son of the widow of Charles II., King of Spain, by a Madrid banker; others took St. Germain for a Portuguese Baron de Betmar; others, again, for a Spanish Jesuit of the name of Aymar; while, on the other hand, many declared that he was an Alsacian Jew, of the name of Wolf, or else the son of a customs-officer at San Germano in Savoy, called Rotondo. One day, when in a violent passion, the Duke de Choiseul declared that he was the son of a Portuguese Jew, which would coincide to a certain extent with the version of Baron de Stosch. He spoke English and German well, Italian admirably, French with a slight Piedmontese accent, and Spanish and Portuguese in perfection.
The Duke de Choiseul had a grievance against St. Germain, because he had served as the instrument in an intrigue which the King, or rather the Marshal de Belle-Isle, had formed without the cognisance of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. The Duke’s favourite plan—which he regarded to some extent as the glory of his political career—was the reconciliation and intimate alliance he had succeeded in establishing between the Houses of France and Austria. Belle-Isle, the old adversary of Austria since the war of succession, eagerly combated the Minister’s policy; but Louis XV. and the Pompadour were tired of the war, which did not progress as they wished. Choiseul also desired peace, but doubts were entertained whether he sought it as actively as the other party desired. St. Germain was among Belle-Isle’s intimate friends, and often gave him remarkable advice. At this period he told the Marshal that he was on very friendly terms with Prince Louis of Brunswick, who was then at the Hague, and assured him that nothing would be easier than to open negotiations for peace by the intermediation of this prince. The king and the minister of war therefore sent St. Germain to the Hague; but Count d’Affry, the French envoy at that court, discovered the secret of this mission, and immediately sent off a courier to Choiseul, complaining bitterly that peace was being arranged under his very eyes by a perfect stranger. Choiseul sent back the same courier at once to d’Affry, with despatches enjoining him to demand most emphatically from the States General the extradition of St. Germain, who was to be sent in handcuffs to the Bastille. The following day Choiseul communicated d’Affry’s despatch to the council, read the answer he had sent, and then, looking boldly at the king and Belle-Isle in turn, he said:
“If I did not await the king’s orders in this matter, it resulted solely from my conviction that no one here would dare to treat for peace without the cognisance of your majesty’s minister for foreign affairs.”
The king looked down like a culprit, Belle-Isle did not say a word, and Choiseul’s measures were approved. But, for all that, St. Germain was not put in the Bastille. The States General certainly displayed a readiness to consult the king’s wishes in this matter, and at once sent a large body of troops to arrest St. Germain; but as, at the same time, they secretly warned him of what was taking place, he had time to escape and seek shelter in England. Thence he proceeded to St. Petersburg, where, we are told, he played a part in the revolution of 1762, though it is impossible to discover in what character. One thing is certain, that at a later date he became an intimate friend of the Orloffs. When he appeared at Leghorn, in 1770, with a Russian uniform and name, he was treated by Alexis Orloff with a degree of respect that haughty personage showed to few. And Gregory Orloff, who met him, in 1772, at Nuremberg, with the Margrave of Anspach, called him his caro padre, gave him, it was asserted, 20,000 Venetian sequins, and said of him to the Margrave, “That is a man who played a great part in one revolution.” From St. Petersburg he proceeded to Berlin, and then travelled through Germany and Italy. He resided a long time at Schwabach and the court of the Margrave of Anspach, whom he accompanied to Italy. Eventually, he settled at Eckernförde, in the duchy of Schleswig, near the Landgrave Charles of Hesse, who was a great professor of the hermetic sciences, and consequently the prey of a multitude of charlatans. It was at the court of this prince that he died, wearied of life, in 1780. During the latter part of his life he was only attended on by women, who nursed and pampered him, and in their arms he heaved his last sigh, after watching his strength gradually expire. His papers passed into the hands of the Landgrave Charles, from whom no information could ever be drawn as to the enigmas St. Germain’s life offered to his contemporaries, and who, besides, was not competent to appreciate the character of individuals of that class.
Altogether, it may be said of St. Germain, that he seems to have been one of the most inoffensive of the charlatans of the eighteenth century, and that his work had no other object than to allow him to enter the fashionable world and share in its pleasures: to lead a comfortable life at the expense of a few great lords, and amuse himself at the astonishment his eccentricities excited. For this purpose, he profited very cleverly by the mystery that surrounded his birth, the possession of some chemical secrets, and the very rare advantage of retaining for many years that appearance of vigour which led to the belief that his exterior always remained the same; a fact which may possibly be explained by the employment of certain cosmetics, the secret of which his chymical researches had supplied. It is possible, moreover, that during his repeated journeys through Europe, this man, who was not restrained by any regard for social position, might have been employed in secret intrigues that constantly extended his sphere of action. He seems also never to have aimed at exercising lasting influence, and to have been exceedingly modest in his pretensions.
He was of middle height, and powerfully built; and, indeed, retained the most robust appearance for a long time. Ramon, envoy from France to Venice, asserted that he knew him in that city in 1710, as a man who appeared of about fifty years of age. In 1759, he was assumed to be sixty; and Morin, Secretary to the Danish Legation, who made his acquaintance in Holland in 1735, asserted five-and-twenty years later that he did not then appear a year older. In Schleswig, he retained to the last moment the appearance of a “well conserved” man of sixty. If all this be exact, he possessed either rare good fortune or great skill. Possibly, though, the Venetian St. Germain of 1710 was not the same; and, if this hypothesis is admitted, there would be nothing extraordinary in what we are told on this subject.
It is certain, however, that he sought to make persons believe that he had attained an extraordinary age; and he employed for this purpose various artifices, though he never made any positive assertions. Still, we must remark, in his defence, that he never went so far, as has been said, as to assert that he was a contemporary of Pontius Pilate, to whom he had rendered certain services, or boast of the efforts he had made at the Council of Nicea to promote the canonisation of St. Anne. These stories emanate from a mystification which was carried on far too long, and practised by a Parisian joker of the day, who possessed a peculiar talent for counterfeiting people, and who was eventually surnamed “My Lord Gower,” because he mainly exercised his talent at the expense of newly-landed Englishmen. This individual was introduced to circles where St. Germain was unknown, and he was passed for the latter, and exaggerated his part, though he did not meet with less credulity on that account. Still, it is true that St. Germain credited himself with several centuries of life: if he were speaking with a weak-minded person, of events that occurred in the reign of Charles V., he would confide to him quite naturally that he was present at them; but if he had to do with a less credulous person, he contented himself with describing the slightest details with such vivacity and minuteness, and even the chairs and seats the actors occupied, that his hearer must fancy he was listening to a man who had really been witness of the facts he narrated.
At times, for instance, when alluding to a conversation with Francis I. or Henry VIII., he would feign absence of mind, and say, “The king then turned to me and said—,” but immediately recollecting himself, he would recal the last words, and add, “and said to Duke so and so.” He was thoroughly acquainted with anecdotic history, and in this way composed pictures and scenes drawn so naturally, that no eye-witness could have described in a more effective manner than himself events that happened in past ages. “Those humbugs of Parisians,” he said one day to Baron Von Gleichen, “imagine that I am four hundred years old, and I confirm them in the idea, because I see that it affords them such pleasure. Still, for all that, I am many years older than I appear.”
He possessed a great number of chemical receipts, especially for the composition of various cosmetics, and colouring matters, a very fine alloy of copper and zinc, and also for the manufacture of false precious stones, as it seems. He one day showed Baron Von Gleichen, in addition to a small collection of exquisite paintings, among which was a Holy Family by Murillo, a mass of diamonds so brilliant and large, that Gleichen fancied he gazed on the treasures of the Wonderful Lamp, and there was nothing to prove that the stones were false. But he no more asserted that he possessed the universal specific, than he did the Philosopher’s Stone. He lived most temperately, never drinking at his meals; and the only medicine he took consisted of senna, prepared by himself. This was the sole advice he gave to his friends, when they consulted him on the art of living for a long while. It is true, though, that he spoke now and then with mysterious emphasis of the profundities of Nature, and opened up a large field for the imagination with reference to his learning and illustrious descent.
Differing from other charlatans, he never offered to sell governments the art of making gold; but, in accordance with the greatest lights of the age in which he lived, he pointed out to them the means of enriching themselves indirectly by the employment of all sorts of economical receipts, as well as great financial operations. While he thus had all the appearance of a man seeking to make a fortune, he was one day arrested in Piedmont on account of a note which was alleged to be false; but he produced more than 100,000 crowns in excellent securities, immediately paid the suspected note, and was so infuriated with the governor of the town, that the latter immediately had him set at liberty, with many humble apologies for the mistake that had been made.
He treated the Margrave of Anspach in the coolest possible way, like a young man who as yet knew nothing about superior things. To add to the consideration he enjoyed at that little court, he at times showed letters from Frederick the Great.
“Do you know that handwriting?” he said one day to the Margrave, showing him a letter still in its cover.
“Yes, it is the king’s private seal.”
“Well, you shall not know what is inside,” and he coolly returned the letter to his pocket.
Such are all the facts I am enabled to collect with reference to Count St. Germain, who greatly excited public curiosity in his day. Possibly he was a rogue. I am not at all prepared to deny it; but at any rate he did not prey on public credulity to the extent of other men of his stamp. I have collected this memoir of him, merely to show by what clumsy artifices our ancestors could be gulled.