Talleyrand

by Joseph McCabe

Sainte-Beuve, after an attempt that one cannot describe as successful, declared that “it is hardly possible to write the life of M. de Talleyrand.” Frédéric Masson noticed the figure of the great diplomatist as he passed with a disdainful “ce Sphinx.” Carlyle forgot his dogmatism for a moment, and pronounced Talleyrand “one of the strangest things ever seen or like to be seen, an enigma for future ages.” Even a woman of penetration, Mme. de Staël, who had known him well, assures us that he was “the most impenetrable and most inexplicable of men.”
There were a few who thought that the long-sealed “Memoirs” of the Prince, which were published only a few years ago, would reveal every secret. They forgot that these were the work of the man who held (improving on Voltaire) that “speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts”—the man who conducted his exit from the world with all the art he had used at the Congress of Vienna. Yet, if the “Memoirs” have thrown no light, or only a deceptive light, on some of the obscurer passages in Talleyrand’s career, they have at least filled in our picture of his personality, so that the tradition of its inscrutability must be surrendered. There has been a prolonged and microscopic research into the age or ages of Talleyrand,—the Old Regime, the Revolution, the Consulate, the Restoration, and the second Revolution. The memoirs of nearly all his contemporaries have seen the light, and official records everywhere have been examined. I have made a careful use of all this research up to date, and find it possible to present a consistent and intelligible personality.
Lady Blennerhassett included the material of the “Memoirs” in the biography of Talleyrand that she wrote ten years ago. But a good deal of light has since been thrown on the earlier part of his career, and in this regard I gratefully avail myself of the investigations of M. de Lacombe. Moreover, Lady Blennerhassett is chiefly occupied with the Prince’s diplomatic action. His personality does not stand out very clearly from her very crowded canvas. That is an inherent disadvantage in writing the life of a great diplomatist. However, in spite of the alluring character of the stretch of history across which the thread of Talleyrand’s life passes, I have tried to keep it in its place as a background, and to bring out into the fullest light the elusive figure of the man who made and unmade a dozen oaths of loyalty.

446 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 23, 2014

About the author

Joseph McCabe was born in Cheshire, England, on November 12, 1867 to Catholic parents. His father, William McCabe, was born in Ireland and had inherited the faith. He fled famine and poverty in Ireland and wound up in the Lancaster slums of England. Joseph's mother, Harriet Kirk, was English and converted to Catholicism when she married William. Harriet named her second son Joseph, hoping he would follow his namesake's lead and enter the church.

The McCabe children attended the local Catholic schools where Joseph attained the stature of a model pupil and a zealous believer. (The details of McCabe's early life are in his autobiography and literary classic, Eighty Years a Rebel, published by E. Haldeman-Julius.) At the age of 16 (1883) McCabe entered the preparatory college at the Gorton Franciscan Monastery. He was ordained at age 23 (1890) and became a Catholic priest. Then, in recognition of his outstanding intellectual prowess, he was appointed to a prominent post of "professor of philosophy." However, as his knowledge deepened his doubts grew.

At the age of 23 he renounced the church and thereafter dedicated his life to promoting intellectual emancipation. It was during the Christmas break of 1895, while at the Franciscan Monastery, that he "descended" into the final crisis of faith.

McCabe was a very popular lecturer and gave many thousands of lectures for over five decades throughout the world, including frequent lecture tours in the United States. McCabe himself stated that, "At least one million folk have heard me lecture in America and Britain."

McCabe exchanged many letters with well-known politicians, scientists (most notably, Ernst Haeckel), and writers of his time. This correspondence included such famous men as Bertrand Russell, Arthur Conan Doyle, Francisco Ferrer, a Spanish anarchist, and the famous historian and writer, H.G. Wells, among many others.

It was McCabe's influence that is largely credited with convincing H.G. Wells of the nefarious nature of the Catholic church, to such an extent that Wells went on to write, "The most evil institution in the world is the Roman Catholic Church."

Haldeman-Julius, once wrote that, "If I had done nothing more than bring McCabe's talents to the attention of what has become a world-wide audience--if I had done only this job, I believe I'd have established myself as a force for mass education and enlightenment with immediate and constructive effects on the thinking portion of the population. My association with McCabe has been enough to build a career for anyone."

McCabe was an ardent student and supporter of the theory of evolution. His translation of Ernst Haeckel's work on evolution in 1900 (McCabe retitled it The Riddle of the Universe) put McCabe on the world's literary map. McCabe's translation sold an astonishing number of copies for that or any other period of time--over half a million copies in Germany alone and a quarter of a million copies elsewhere!

In 1949 Haldeman-Julius stated that by his own reckoning McCabe had written 121 "Little Blue Books" and 122 "Big Blue Books," for a total of some 7,600,000 words. For this monumental output the author was paid a total of about $100,000. McCabe, according to his own estimate, claimed that in his 50 years of writing he had penned the astonishing total of 15 million words--a record that may never be equaled in all of literary history!

You owe it to yourselves to acquaint and reacquaint and enrich and enlighten your life by learning more about this most remarkable man, Joseph McCabe.

More: https://ffrf.org/publications/freetho...

http://infidels.org/library/historica...

http://www.philosopedia.org/index.php...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_M...