The Comte de Saint Germain

Saint Germain is the standing example of how an esoteric legend is built, because the historical man and the immortal adept can be separated cleanly and the seam is visible.

The historical man appears in the record from the 1740s: a courtier of unknown birth and excellent manners who moved through London, Paris, The Hague, St Petersburg and the German courts, spoke several languages well, played the violin and composed, dabbled in dyes and chemistry, and was employed by Louis XV on at least one diplomatic errand. He impressed Casanova and Horace Walpole, both of whom recorded that they could not work out where his money came from. He said things in company that implied great age. Whether he meant them seriously is not recoverable.

His death is documented as precisely as an eighteenth-century death can be. He died on 27 February 1784 at Eckernforde in Schleswig-Holstein, under the protection of Prince Charles of Hesse-Cassel; the burial on 2 March is entered in the register of St Nicolai church, the cost is entered in the church accounts, and on 3 April the town authorities advertised the auction of his effects for want of a claimant. The effects contained no gold, no jewels and no elixir, about eighty-two Reichsthalers and some clothes.

The immortal begins after that. He was reported alive at intervals through the nineteenth century, and the Theosophists then enrolled him permanently: Blavatsky counted him among the adepts, and the later Ascended Master teachings, particularly the "I AM" movement of the 1930s and its successors, made him a Master of the Violet Flame who directs a spiritual hierarchy and had previously been, among others, Francis Bacon. None of this has any evidential relationship to the man who was buried at Eckernforde. It is a religious development, and it should be described as one rather than as biography.

Set aside the elixir stories and a documentable man remains, visible in three archives. The first is diplomatic. In 1760, during the Seven Years War, Saint Germain appeared at The Hague conducting unofficial peace soundings with English contacts on behalf, he said, of Louis XV's private diplomacy; the foreign minister Choiseul, outside the secret and furious at the intrusion, demanded his arrest, and the count fled to England. The affair is preserved in the correspondence of the ministers and ambassadors concerned, and it fits what is known of the king's parallel foreign policy, whether or not the count's commission was real. The second is musical.

Under the name Saint Germain he published genuine compositions in London, songs and instrumental pieces issued by established printers in the 1740s, with further pieces later; the music survives and is occasionally performed, competent gallant writing that proves at least one of his accomplishments was exactly as advertised. The third is industrial. His last years were spent at Eckernfoerde in Schleswig under the protection of Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel, working on dye processes and other chemical schemes the prince funded and partly recorded; the parish register there notes his burial in February 1784. Diplomat without portfolio, published composer, projector of dyes: the verifiable career is odder, in its way, than the legend, because it required real abilities the legend never needed.