Catherine Grand

Catherine Noël Grand (née Worlée; 21 November 1762– 10 December 1834) was a French courtesan and noblewoman. She was the daughter of a colonial officer in French India, who became the mistress and later the wife of French diplomat Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, the first Prime Minister of France. From 1806 until her death she was Catherine Noël de Talleyrand-Périgord, Princesse de Bénévent. She was known for her beauty.

Life


Catherine Noël Worlée was born in the Danish possession of Tranquebar, to a French colonial official Peter John Werlée, Capitaine du Port, stationed at nearby Pondicherry, captured by the British earlier that year. She had both French and Danish heritage. The family later moved to Chandernagore where Catherine met George François Grand, a British civil servant of French-Swiss Huguenot descent stationed at nearby Calcutta. They were wed in Chandernagore on 10 July 1777.

The young Catherine caught the attention of British colonial official Philip Francis, who was found trying to seduce her at her home on 8 December 1778. The scandal caused Catherine's husband to send her back to live with her family in Chandernagore, and successfully sued Francis for adultery, receiving 50,000 rupees. Madame Grand left for Europe in December 1780. In about 1782 she moved to Paris where, being a beautiful blonde, ill-educated but musical and clever, she became a very fashionable courtesan. Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun painted her portrait in 1783, and it was one of at least ten portraits Le Brun submitted to the Parisian Salon of the same year. Catherine served as companion to Claude Antoine de Valdec de Lessart, Francois-August Faveau de Frenilly and others.

She fled to Britain in 1792 during the French Revolution, but returned to Paris before 1797. Catherine lived with Foreign Minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand as his mistress from 1798 until 1802, when they married under pressure from Napoleon Bonaparte. She had earlier divorced her estranged husband in 1798 in absentia. When Talleyrand was made Prince of Benevento in 1806, she became a princess of Napoleon's First French Empire. From 1808, when Napoleon placed the Spanish royal family in the custody of Talleyrand, the couple gradually drifted apart, and she was believed to have had a relationship with the Duke of San Carlos. Catherine was with Talleyrand when they welcomed Tsar Alexander I of Russia upon the downfall of Napoleon in 1814. From the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Talleyrand took the much younger Duchess of Dino as his mistress and Catherine was exiled to London. He eventually gave her enough money to live well and she returned to Paris. She died there on 10 December 1834, and is buried at Montparnasse Cemetery.