Count de Mauny

Maurice Talvande, Count de Mauny Talvande (self styled), (1866–1941) was a French-born naturalised British landscaper, furniture-maker, and self-inventor, who is best known as the owner and recreator of Taprobane Island, in Sri Lanka.

Born Maurice Talvande in Le Mans in 1866 to parents who were both commoners, de Mauny's father was Felix Talvande a middle-class bank official, and his mother Marguerite Adelaide Louise, née Froger de Mauny – a granddaughter of the genuine Count de Mauny, a title bestowed by Napoleon I on the French politician Dominique Clément de Ris.

He attended a Jesuit-run school in Canterbury, England. As a young man, described as "rather good looking", he travelled to America and England where, having assumed the more aristocratic-sounding name of Maurice de Mauny Talvande, he earned a little money giving drawingroom lectures on French château and château life. In 1897 he also gave an address in which he promoted the establishment of settlements for deprived and wayward young men.

In June 1898 de Mauny married Lady Mary Byng, daughter of the 4th Earl of Strafford, and a maid of honour to Queen Victoria, whom he may have met through her brother who had attended his school. There was talk that Lady Mary married de Mauny, who had no social position or fortune, due to her hostility to her father's second marriage to a wealthy American divorcee, Mrs Cora Colgate.

Shortly prior to his marriage de Mauny established a small boarding school for teenage boys from upper class English families seeking to polish their French. Situated at the rented Château Azay-le-Rideau in the Loire Valley, de Mauny relying on his wife's contacts to supply the dozen pupils. It was visited by Lord Lorne, and attended by the 2nd Duke of Westminster as a 19 year old. There were persistent rumours of sexual advances made to the pupils by de Mauny who, confronted by the Duke, admitted he was homosexual. Possibly due to this, but claiming he had never intended the château to be used as a school, in late 1898 the château's owner cancelled the lease. The Journal des Débats, considered the voice of the Gallic Establishment, called de Mauny a "vulgar marchand de soupe". The de Mauny Talvandes relocated to Cannes, where their first child Victor Alexander was born, then San Remo, before finally settling in England. They moved into a Queen Anne residence called "Terrick House", near Ellesbrough in Buckinghamshire. In 1900 their daughter Alexandra Mary was born.

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