Louis-Philippe and his family -- An unpublished theatrical skit
on his mania for shaking hands with every one -- His art of
governing, according to the same skit -- Louis-Philippe not the
ardent admirer of the bourgeoisie he professed to be -- The
Faubourg Saint-Germain deserts the Tuileries -- The English in
too great a majority -- Lord ----'s opinion of the dinners at the
Tuileries -- The attitude of the bourgeoisie towards
Louis-Philippe, according to the King himself -- Louis-Philippe's
wit -- His final words on the death of Talleyrand -- His love of
money -- He could be generous at times -- A story of the
Palais-Royal -- Louis-Philippe and the Marseillaise -- Two
curious stories connected with the Marseillaise -- Who was the
composer of it? -- Louis-Philippe's opinion of the throne, the
crown, and the sceptre of France as additions to one's comfort --
His children, and especially his sons, take things more easily --
Even the Bonapartists admired some of the latter -- A mot of an
Imperialist -- How the boys were brought up -- Their nocturnal
rambles later on -- The King himself does not seem to mind those
escapades, but is frightened at M. Guizot hearing of them --
Louis-Philippe did not understand Guizot -- The recollection of
his former misery frequently haunts the King -- He worries Queen
Victoria with his fear of becoming poor -- Louis-Philippe an
excellent husband and father -- He wants to write the libretto of
an opera on an English subject -- His religion -- The court
receptions ridiculous -- Even the proletariat sneer at them --
The _entree_ of the Duchesse d'Orleans into Paris -- The scene in
the Tuileries gardens -- A mot of Princesse Clementine on her
father's too paternal solicitude -- A practical joke of the
Prince de Joinville -- His caricatures and drawings -- The
children inherited their talent for drawing and modelling from
their mother -- The Duc de Nemours as a miniature and
water-colour painter -- Suspected of being a Legitimist -- All
Louis-Philippe's children great patrons of art -- How the
bourgeoisie looked upon their intercourse with artists -- The Duc
de Nemours' marvellous memory -- The studio of Eugene Lami -- His
neighbours, Paul Delaroche and Honore de Balzac -- The Duc de
Nemours' bravery called in question -- The Duc d'Aumale's
exploits in Algeria considered mere skirmishes -- A curious story
of spiritism -- The Duc d'Aumale a greater favourite with the
world than any of the other sons of Louis-Philippe -- His wit --
The Duc d'Orleans also a great favourite -- His visits to
Decamps' studio -- An indifferent classical scholar -- A curious
kind of black-mail -- His indifference to money -- There is no
money in a Republic -- His death -- A witty reply to the
Legitimists.
As will appear by-and-by, I was an eye-witness of a good many incidents
of the Revolution of '48, and a great many more have been related to me
by friends, whose veracity was and still is beyond suspicion. Neither
they nor I have ever been able to establish a sufficiently valid
political cause for that upheaval. Perhaps it was because we were free
from the prejudices engendered by what, for want of a better term, I
must call "dynastic sentiment." We were not blind to the faults of
Louis-Philippe, but we refused to look at them through the spectacles
supplied in turns by the Legitimists, the Imperialists, and Republicans.
How far these spectacles were calculated to improve people's vision, the
following specimen will show.
I have lying before me a few sheets of quarto paper, sewn together in a
primitive way. It is a manuscript skit, in the form of a theatrical
duologue, professing to deal with the king's well-known habit of shaking
hands with every one with whom he came in contact. The _dramatis
personae_ are King Fip I., Roi des Epiciers--read, King of the
Philistines or Shopkeepers, and his son and heir, Grand Poulot (Big
Spooney). The monarch is giving the heir-apparent a lesson in the art of
governing. "Do not be misled," he says, "by a parcel of theorists, who
will tell you that the citizen-monarchy is based upon the sovereign will
of the people, or upon the strict observance of the Charter; this is
merely so much drivel from the political Rights or Lefts. In reality, it
does not signify a jot whether France be free at home and feared and
respected abroad, whether the throne be hedged round with republican
institutions or supported by an hereditary peerage, whether the language
of her statesmen be weighty and the deeds of her soldiers heroic. The
citizen-monarchy and the art of governing consist of but one thing--the
capacity of the principal ruler for shaking hands with any and every
ragamuffin and out-of-elbows brute he meets." Thereupon King Fip shows
his son how to shake hands in every conceivable position--on foot, on
horseback, at a gallop, at a trot, leaning out of a carriage, and so
forth. Grand Poulot is not only eager to learn, but ambitious to improve
upon his sire's method. "How would it do, dad," he asks, "if, in
addition to shaking hands with them, one inquired after their health, in
the second person singular--'Comment vas tu, mon vieux cochon?' or,
better still, 'Comment vas tu, mon vieux citoyen?'" "It would do
admirably," says papa; "but it does not matter whether you say cochon or
citoyen, the terms are synonymous."
I am inclined to think that beneath this rather clever banter there was
a certain measure of truth. Louis-Philippe was by no means the ardent
admirer of the bourgeoisie he professed to be. He did not foster any
illusions with regard to their intellectual worth, and in his inmost
heart he resented their so-called admiration of him, which he knew to be
would-be patronage under another name. They had formed a hedge round him
which prevented any attempt on his part at conciliating his own caste,
the old noblesse. It is doubtful whether he would have been successful,
especially in the earlier years of his reign; but their ostracism of him
and his family rankled in his mind, and found vent now and again in an
epigram that stung the author as much as the party against which it was
directed. "There is more difficulty in getting people to my court
entertainments from across the Seine than from across the Channel," he
said.
The fact is, that the whole of the Faubourg St.-Germain was conspicuous
by its absence from the Tuileries in those days, and that the English
were in rather too great a majority. They were not always a
distinguished company. I was little more than a lad at this time, but I
remember Lord ----'s invariable answer when his friends asked him what
the dinner had been like, and whether he had enjoyed himself: "The
dinner was like that at a good table-d'hote, and I enjoyed myself as I
would enjoy myself at a good hotel in Switzerland or at Wiesbaden, where
the proprietor knew me personally, and had given orders to the head
waiter to look after my comforts. But," he added, "it is, after all,
more pleasant dining there, when the English are present. At any rate,
there is no want of respect. When the French sit round the table, it is
not like a king dining with his subjects, but like half a hundred kings
dining with one subject." Allowing for a certain amount of exaggeration,
there was a good deal of truth in the remarks, as I found out
afterwards. "The bourgeoisie in their attitude towards me," said
Louis-Philippe, one day, to the English nobleman I have just quoted,
"are always reminding me of Adalberon of Rheims with Hugues Capet: 'Qui
t'as fait roi?' asked the bishop. 'Qui t'as fait duc?' retorted the
king. I have made them dukes to a greater extent, though, than they have
made me king."
For Louis-Philippe was a witty king--wittier, perhaps, than any that had
sat on the throne of France since Henri IV. Some of his mots have become
historical, and even his most persistent detractors have been unable to
convict him of plagiarism with regard to them. What he specially
excelled in was the "mot de la fin" anglice--the clenching of an
argument, such as, for instance, his final remark on the death of
Talleyrand. He had paid him a visit the day before. When the news of the
prince's death was brought to him, he said, "Are you sure he is dead?"
"Very sure, sire," was the answer. "Why, did not your majesty himself
notice yesterday that he was dying?"
"I did, but there is no judging from appearances with Talleyrand, and I
have been asking myself for the last four and twenty hours what interest
he could possibly have in departing at this particular moment."
To those who knew Louis-Philippe personally, it was very patent that he
disliked those who had been instrumental in setting him on the throne,
and who, under the cloak of "liberty, fraternity, and equality," were
seeking their own interest only, namely, the bourgeoisie. He knew their
quasi-goodwill to him to be so much sheer hypocrisy, and perhaps he and
they were too much alike in some respects, in their love of money for
the sake of hoarding it. It was, perhaps, the only serious failing that
could be laid to the charge of the family, because none of its members,
with the exception of the Duc d'Orleans, were entirely free from it. It
must not be inferred, though, that Louis-Philippe kept his purse closed
to really deserving cases of distress. Far from it. I have the following
story from my old tutor, to whom I am, moreover, indebted for a great
many notes, dealing with events of which I could not possibly have had
any knowledge but for him.
In 1829 the greater part of the Galerie d'Orleans in the Palais-Royal
was completed. The unsightly wooden booths had been taken down, and the
timber must have been decidedly worth a small fortune. Several
contractors made very handsome offers for it, but Louis-Philippe (then
Duc d'Orleans) refused to sell it. It was to be distributed among the
poor of the neighbourhood for fuel for the ensuing winter, which
threatened to be a severe one. One day, when the duke was inspecting the
works in company of his steward, an individual, who was standing a
couple of yards away, began to shout at the top of his voice, "Vive
Louis-Philippe!" "Go and see what the fellow wants, for assuredly he
wants something," said the duke, who was a Voltairean in his way, and
had interpreted the man's enthusiasm aright. Papa Sournois was one of
those nondescripts for whom even now there appear to be more resources
in the French capital than elsewhere. At the period in question he
mainly got his living by selling contre-marques (checks) at the doors of
the theatre. He had heard of the duke's intention with regard to the
wood, hence his enthusiastic cry of "Vive Louis-Philippe!" A cartload of
wood was sent to his place; papa Sournois converted it into money, and
got drunk with the proceeds for a fortnight. When the steward, horribly
scandalized, told the duke of the results of his benevolence, the latter
merely laughed, and sent for the wife, who made her appearance
accompanied by a young brood of five. The duke gave her a five-franc
piece, and told her to apply to the concierge of the Palais-Royal for a
similar sum every day during the winter months. Of course, five francs a
day was not as much as a drop of water out of the sea when we consider
Louis-Philippe's stupendous income, and yet when the Tuileries were
sacked in 1848, documents upon documents were found, compiled with the
sole view of saving a few francs per diem out of the young princes'
"keep."
"I am so sick of the word 'fraternity,'" said Prince Metternich, after
his return from France, "that, if I had a brother, I should call him
cousin." Though it was to the strains of the Marseillaise that
Louis-Philippe had been conducted to the Hotel-de-Ville on the day when
Lafayette pointed to him as "the best of all republics," a time came
when Louis-Philippe got utterly sick of the Marseillaise.
But what was he to do, seeing that his attempt at introducing a new
national hymn had utterly failed? The mob refused to sing "La
Parisienne," composed by Casimir de la Vigne, after Alexandre Dumas had
refused to write a national hymn; and they, moreover, insisted on the
King joining in the chorus of the old hymn, as he had hitherto done on
all public occasions.[35] They had grumblingly resigned themselves to
his beating time no longer, but any further refusal of his co-operation
might have been resented in a less peaceful fashion. On the other hand,
there was the bourgeoisie who were of opinion that, now that the
monarchy had entered upon a more conservative period, the intoning of
the hymn, at any rate on the sovereign's part, was out of place, and
savoured too much of a republican manifestation. "It was Guizot who told
him so," said Lord ----, who had been standing on the balcony of the
Tuileries on the occasion of the king's "saint's day,"[36] and had heard
the minister make the remark.
[Footnote 35: When there was no public occasion, his political
antagonists or merely practical jokers who knew of his dislike
invented one, like Edouard d'Ourliac, a well-known journalist
and the author of several novels, who, whenever he had nothing
better to do, recruited a band of street arabs to go and sing
the Marseillaise under the king's windows. They kept on singing
until Louis-Philippe, in sheer self-defence, was obliged to
come out and join in the song.--EDITOR.]
[Footnote 36: In France it is the Patron Saint's day, not the
birthday, that is kept.]
"And what did the king reply?" was the question.
"Do not worry yourself, monsieur le ministre; I am only moving my lips;
I have ceased to pronounce the words for many a day."
These were the expedients to which Louis-Philippe was reduced before he
had been on the throne half a dozen years. "I am like the fool between
two stools," observed the king in English, afterwards, when speaking to
Lord ----, "only I happen to be between the comfortably stuffed
easy-chair of the bourgeois drawing-room and the piece of furniture
seated on which Louis XIV. is said to have received the Dutch
ambassadors."
While speaking of the Marseillaise, here are two stories in connection
with it which are not known to the general reader. The first was told to
me by the old tutor already mentioned; the second aroused a great deal
of literary curiosity in the year 1860, and bears the stamp of truth on
the face of it. It was, however, never fully investigated, or, at any
rate, the results of the investigation were never published.[37]
[Footnote 37: I have inserted them here in order not to fall
into repetitions on the same subject.--EDITOR.]
"We were all more or less aware," said my informant, "that Rouget de
l'Isle was not the author of the whole of the words of the Marseillaise.
But none of us in Lyons, where I was born, knew who had written the last
strophe, commonly called the 'strophe of the children,' and I doubt
whether they were any wiser in Paris. Some of my fellow-students--for I
was nearly eighteen at that time--credited Andre Chenier with the
authorship of the last strophe, others ascribed it to Louis-Francois
Dubois, the poet.[38] All this was, however, so much guess-work, when,
one day during the Reign of Terror, the report spread that a ci-devant
priest, or rather a priest who had refused to take the oath to the
Republic, had been caught solemnizing a religious marriage, and that he
was to be brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal that same afternoon.
Though you may not think so, merely going by what you have read, the
appearance of a priest before the Tribunal always aroused more than
common interest, nor have you any idea what more than common interest
meant in those days. A priest to the Revolutionaries and to the
Terrorists, they might hector and bully as they liked, was not an
ordinary being. They looked upon him either as something better than a
man or worse than a devil. They had thrown the religious compass they
had brought from home with them overboard, and they had not the
philosophical one to take its place. You may work out the thing for
yourself; at any rate, the place was crammed to suffocation when we
arrived at the Hotel de Ville. It was a large room, at the upper end of
which stood an oblong table, covered with a black cloth. Seated around
it were seven self-constituted judges. Besides their tricolour scarfs
round their waists, they wore, suspended by a ribbon from their necks, a
small silver axe.
[Footnote 38: Louis-Francois Dubois, the author of several
heroic poems, "Ankarstroem," "Genevieve et Siegfried," etc.,
which are utterly forgotten. His main title to the recollection
of posterity consists in his having saved, during the
Revolution, a great many literary works of value, which he
returned to the State afterwards.--EDITOR.]
"As a rule there was very little speechifying. 'La mort sans phrase,'
which had become the fashion since Louis XVI.'s execution, was strictly
adhered to. Half a dozen prisoners were brought in and taken away
without arousing the slightest excitement, either in the way of
commiseration or hatred. After having listened, the judges either
extended their hands on the table or put them to their foreheads. The
first movement meant acquittal and liberation, the second death; not
always by the guillotine though, for the instrument was not perfect as
yet, and did not work sufficiently quickly to please them. All at once
the priest was brought in, and a dead silence prevailed. He was not a
very old man, though his hair was snow-white.
"'Who art thou?' asked the president.
"The prisoner drew himself up to his full height. 'I am the Abbe
Pessoneaux, a former tutor at the college at Vienne, and the author of
the last strophe of the Marseillaise,' he said quietly.
"I cannot convey to you the impression produced by those simple words.
The silence became positively oppressive; you could hear the people
breathe. The president did not say another word; the priest's reply had
apparently stunned him also: he merely turned round to his
fellow-judges. Soldiers and gaolers stood as if turned into stone; every
eye was directed towards the table, watching for the movement of the
judges' hands. Slowly and deliberately they stretched them forth, and
then a deafening cheer rang through the room. The Abbe Pessoneaux owed
his life to his strophe, for, though his story was not questioned then,
it was proved true in every particular. On their way to Paris to be
present at the taking of the Tuileries on the 10th of August, the
Marseillais had stopped at Vienne to celebrate the Fete of the
Federation. On the eve of their arrival the Abbe Pessoneaux had composed
the strophe, and but for his seizure the authorship would have always
remained a matter of conjecture, for Rouget de l'Isle would have never
had the honesty to acknowledge it."
My tutor was right, and I owe him this tardy apology; it appears that,
after all, Rouget de l'Isle had not the honesty to acknowledge _openly_
his indebtedness to those who made his name immortal, and that his share
in the Marseillaise amounts to the first six strophes. He did not write
a single note of the music. The latter was composed by Alexandre
Boucher, the celebrated violinist, in 1790, in the drawing-room of
Madame de Mortaigne, at the request of a colonel whom the musician had
never met before, whom he never saw again. The soldier was starting next
morning with his regiment for Marseilles, and pressed Boucher to write
him a march there and then. Rouget de l'Isle, an officer of engineers,
having been imprisoned in 1791, for having refused to take a second oath
to the Constitution, heard the march from his cell, and, at the instance
of his gaoler, adapted the words of a patriotic hymn he was then writing
to it.
One may fancy the surprise of Alexandre Boucher, when he heard it sung
everywhere and recognized it as his own composition, though it had been
somewhat altered to suit the words. But the pith of the story is to
come. I give it in the very words of Boucher himself, as he told it to a
Paris journalist whom I knew well.
"A good many years afterwards, I was seated next to Rouget de l'Isle at
a dinner-party in Paris. We had never met before, and, as you may
easily imagine, I was rather interested in the gentleman, whom, with
many others at the same board, I complimented on his production; only I
confined myself to complimenting him on his _poem_.
"'You don't say a word about the music,' he replied; 'and yet, being a
celebrated musician, that ought to interest you. Do not you like it?'
"'Very much indeed,' I said, in a somewhat significant tone.
"'Well, let me be frank with you. The music is not mine. It was that of
a march which came, Heaven knows whence, and which they kept on playing
at Marseilles during the Terror, when I was a prisoner at the fortress
of St. Jean. I made a few alterations necessitated by the words, and
there it is.'
"Thereupon, to his great surprise, I hummed the march as I had
originally written it.
"'Wonderful!' he exclaimed; 'how did you come by it?' he asked.
"When I told him, he threw himself round my neck. But the next moment he
said--
"'I am very sorry, my dear Boucher, but I am afraid that you will be
despoiled for ever, do what you will; for your music and my words go so
well together, that they seem to have sprung simultaneously from the
same brain, and the world, even if I proclaimed my indebtedness to you,
would never believe it.'
"'Keep the loan,' I said, moved, in spite of myself, by his candour.
'Without your genius, my march would be forgotten by now. You have given
it a patent of nobility. It is yours for ever.'"
I return to Louis-Philippe, who, at the time of my tutor's story, and
for some years afterwards, I only knew from the reports that were
brought home to us. Of course, I saw him several times at a distance, at
reviews, and on popular holidays, and I was surprised that a king of
whom every one spoke so well in private, who seemed to have so much
cause for joy and happiness in his own family, should look so careworn
and depressed in public. For, young as I was, I did not fail to see
that, beneath the calm and smiling exterior, there was a great deal of
hidden grief. But I was too young to understand the deep irony of his
reply to one of my relatives, a few months before his accession to the
throne: "The crown of France is too cold in winter, too warm in summer;
the sceptre is too blunt as a weapon of defence or attack, it is too
short as a stick to lean upon: a good felt hat and a strong umbrella are
at all times more useful." Above all, I was too young to understand the
temper of the French where their rulers were concerned, and though, at
the time of my writing these notes, I have lived for fifty years amongst
them, I doubt whether I could give a succinct psychological account of
their mental attitude towards their succeeding regimes, except by
borrowing the words of one of their cleverest countrywomen, Madame Emile
de Girardin: "When Marshal Soult is in the Opposition, he is
acknowledged to have won the battle of Toulouse; when he belongs to the
Government, he is accused of having lost it." Since then the Americans
have coined a word for that state of mind--"cussedness."
Louis-Philippe's children, and especially his sons, some of whom I knew
personally before I had my first invitation to the Tuileries, seemed to
take matters more cheerfully. Save the partisans of the elder branch, no
one had a word to say against them. On the contrary, even the
Bonapartists admired their manly and straightforward bearing. I remember
being at Tortoni's one afternoon when the Duc d'Orleans and his brother,
the Duc de Nemours, rode by. Two of my neighbours, unmistakable
Imperialists, and old soldiers by their looks, stared very hard at them;
then one said, "Si le petit au lieu de filer le parfait amour partout,
avait mis tous ses oeufs dans le meme panier, il aurait eu des grands
comme cela et nous ne serions pas dans l'impasse ou nous sommes."
"Mon cher," replied the other, "des grands comme cela ne se font qu'a
loisir, pas entre deux campagnes."[39]
[Footnote 39: It reminds one of the answer of the younger Dumas
to a gentleman whose wife had been notorious for her conjugal
faithlessness, and whose sons were all weaklings. "Ah, Monsieur
Dumas, c'est un fils comme vous qu'il me fallait," he
exclaimed. "Mon cher monsieur," came the reply, "quand on veut
avoir un fils comme moi, il faut le faire soi-meme."--EDITOR.]
The admiration of these two veterans was perfectly justified: they were
very handsome young men, the sons of Louis-Philippe, and notably the two
elder ones, though the Duc d'Orleans was somewhat more delicate-looking
than his brother, De Nemours. The boys had all been brought up very
sensibly, perhaps somewhat too strict for their position. They all went
to a public school, to the College Henri IV., and I remember well,
about the year '38, when I had occasion of a morning to cross the
Pont-Neuf, where there were still stalls and all sorts of booths, seeing
the blue-and-yellow carriage with the royal livery. It contained the
Ducs d'Aumale and de Montpensier, who had not finished their studies at
that time.
But though strictly brought up, they were by no means milksops, and
what, for want of a better term, I may call "mother's babies:" quite the
reverse. It was never known how they managed it, but at night, when they
were supposed to be at home, if not in bed, they were to be met with at
all kinds of public places, notably at the smaller theatres, such as the
Vaudeville, the Varietes, and the Palais-Royal, one of which, at any
rate, was a goodly distance from the Tuileries. It was always understood
that the King knew nothing about these little escapades, but I am
inclined to doubt this: I fancy he connived at them; because, when Lord
---- told him casually one day that he had met his sons the night
before, Louis-Philippe seemed not in the least surprised, he only
anxiously asked, "Where?"
"At the Cafe de Paris, your majesty."
The king seemed relieved. "That's all right," he said, laughing. "As
long as they do not go into places where they are likely to meet with
Guizot, I don't mind; for if he saw them out in the evening, it might
cost me my throne. Guizot is so terribly respectable. I am afraid there
is a mistake either about his nationality or about his respectability;
they are badly matched."
The fact is, that though Louis-Philippe admired and respected Guizot, he
failed to understand him. To the most respectable of modern kings--not
even Charles I. and William III. excepted--if by respectability we mean
an unblemished private life--Guizot's respectability was an enigma. The
man who, in spite of his advice to others, "Enrichissez vous,
enrichissez vous," was as poor at the end of his ministerial career as
at the beginning, must have necessarily been a puzzle to a sovereign
who, with a civil list of L750,000, was haunted by the fear of poverty,
and haunted to such a degree as to harass his friends and counsellors
with his apprehensions. "My dear minister," he said one day to Guizot,
after he had recited a long list of his domestic charges--"My dear
minister, I am telling you that my children will be wanting for bread."
The recollection of his former misery uprose too frequently before him
like a horrible nightmare, and made him the first bourgeois instead of
the first gentilhomme of the kingdom, as his predecessors had been. When
a tradesman drops a shilling and does not stoop to pick it up, his
neglect becomes almost culpable improvidence; when a prince drops a
sovereign and looks for it, the deed may be justly qualified as mean.
The _leitmotif_ of Louis-Philippe's conversation, witty and charming as
it was, partook of the avaricious spirit of a Thomas Guy and a John
Overs rather than of that of the great adventurer John Law. The chinking
of the money-bags is audible through both, but in the one case the
orchestration is strident, disagreeable, depressing; in the other, it is
generous, overflowing with noble impulses, and cheering. I recollect
that during my stay at Treport and Eu, in 1843, when Queen Victoria paid
her visit to Louis-Philippe, the following story was told to me. Lord
---- and I were quartered in a little hostelry on the Place du Chateau.
One morning Lord ---- came home laughing till he could laugh no longer.
"What do you think the King has done now?" he asked. I professed my
inability to guess. "About an hour ago, he and Queen Victoria were
walking in the garden, when, with true French politeness, he offered her
a peach. The Queen seemed rather embarrassed how to skin it, when
Louis-Philippe took a large clasp-knife from his pocket. 'When a man has
been a poor devil like myself, obliged to live upon forty sous a day, he
always carries a knife. I might have dispensed with it for the last few
years; still, I do not wish to lose the habit--one does not know what
may happen,' he said. Of course, the tears stood in the Queen's eyes. He
really ought to know better than to obtrude his money worries upon every
one."
I must confess that I was not as much surprised as my interlocutor, who,
however, had known Louis-Philippe much longer than I. Not his worst
enemies could have accused the son of Philippe Egalite of being a
coward: the bulletins of Valmy, Jemmappes, and Neerwinden would have
proved the contrary. But the contempt of physical danger on the
battle-field does not necessarily constitute heroism in the most
elevated sense of the term, although the world in general frequently
accepts it as such. A man can die but once, and the semi-positivism,
semi-Voltaireanism of Louis-Philippe had undoubtedly steeled him against
the fear of death. His religion, throughout life, was not even
skin-deep; and when he accepted the last rites of the Church on his
death-bed, he only did so in deference to his wife. "Ma femme, es-tu
contente de moi?" were his words the moment the priests were gone.
Nevertheless, he was too good a husband to grieve his wife, who was
deeply religious, by any needless display of unbelief. He always
endeavoured, as far as possible, to find an excuse for staying away from
church. He, as well as the female members of his family, were very fond
of music; and Adam, the composer, was frequently invited to come and
play for them in the private apartments. In fact, after his abdication,
he seriously intended to write, in conjunction with Scribe, the libretto
of an opera on an English historical subject, the music of which should
be composed by Halevy. The composer of "La Juive" and the author of "Les
Hugenots" came over once to consult with the King, whose death, a few
months later, put an end to the scheme.
On the occasion of Adam's visits the princesses worked at their
embroidery, while the King often stood by the side of the performer.
Just about that period the chamber organ was introduced, and, on the
recommendation of Adam, one was ordered for the Tuileries. The first
time Louis-Philippe heard it played he was delighted: "This will be a
distinct gain to our rural congregations," he said. "There must be a
great many people who, like myself, stay away from church on account of
their objection to that horrible instrument, the serpent. Is it not so,
my wife?"
The ideal purpose of life, if ever he possessed it, had been crushed out
of him--first, by his governess, Madame de Genlis; secondly, by the dire
poverty he suffered during his exile: and, notwithstanding all that has
been said to the contrary, France wanted at that moment an ideal ruler,
not the rational father of a large family who looked upon his monarchy
as a suitable means of providing for them. He was an usurper without the
daring, the grandeur, the lawlessness of the usurper. The lesson of
Napoleon I.'s method had been thrown away upon him, as the lesson of
Napoleon III.'s has been thrown away upon his grandson. When I said
France, I made a mistake,--I should have said Paris; for since 1789
there was no longer a King of France, there was only a King of Paris.
Such a thing as a Manchester movement, as a Manchester school of
politics, would have been and is still an impossibility in France.
And, unfortunately, Paris, which had applauded the glorious
_mise-en-scene_ of the First Empire, which had even looked on
approvingly at some of the pomp and state of Louis XVIII. and Charles
X., jeered at Louis-Philippe and his court with its ridiculous
gatherings of tailors, drapers, and bootmakers, "ces gardes nationaux
d'un pays ou il n'y a plus rien de national a garder," and their
pretentious spouses "qui," according to the Duchesse de la Tremoille,
"ont plus de chemises que nos aieules avaient des robes."[40] She and
the Princesse Bagration were the only female representatives of the
Faubourg St. Germain who attended these gatherings; for the Countess Le
Hon, of whom I may have occasion to speak again, and who was the only
other woman at these receptions that could lay claim to any distinction,
was by no means an aristocrat. And be it remembered that in those days
ridicule had still the power to kill.
[Footnote 40: She had unconsciously borrowed the words from the
Duchesse de Coislin, who, under similar circumstances a few
years before, said to Madame de Chateaubriand, "Cela sent la
parvenue; nous autres, femmes de la cour, nous n'avions que
deux chemises; on les renouvelait quand elles etaient usees;
nous etions vetues de robes de soie et nous n'avions pas l'air
de grisettes comme ces demoiselles de maintenant."--EDITOR.]
Nor was the weapon wielded exclusively by the aristocracy; the lower
classes could be just as satirical against the new court element. I was
in the Tuileries gardens on that first Sunday in June, 1837, when the
Duchesse d'Orleans made her entree into Paris. The weather was
magnificent, and the set scene--as distinguished from some of the
properties, to use a theatrical expression--in keeping with the weather.
The crowd itself was a pleasure to look at, as it stood in serried
masses behind the National Guards and the regular infantry lining the
route of the procession from the Arc de Triomphe to the entrance of the
Chateau. All at once an outrider passes, covered with dust, and the
crowd presses forward to get a better view. A woman of the people, in
her nice white cap, comes into somewhat violent contact with an
elegantly dressed elderly lady, accompanied by her daughter. The woman,
instead of apologizing, says aloud that she wishes to see the princess:
"You will have the opportunity of seeing her at court, mesdames," she
adds. The elegant lady vouchsafes no reply, but turns to her daughter:
"The good woman," says the latter, shrugging her shoulders, "is
evidently not aware that she has got a much greater chance of going to
that court than we have. She has only got to marry some grocer or other
tradesman, and she will be considered a grande dame at once." Then the
procession passes--first the National Guards on horseback, then the King
and M. de Montalivet, followed by Princesse Helene, with her young
husband riding by the side of the carriage. So far so good: the first
three or four carriages were more or less handsome, but Heaven save us
from the rest, as well as from their occupants! They positively looked
like some of those wardrobe-dealers so admirably described by Balzac.
When all is over, the woman of the people turns to the elegant lady: "I
ask your pardon, madame; it was really not worth while hurting you. If
these are _grandes dames_, I prefer _les petites_ whom I see in my
neighbourhood, the Rue Notre-Dame de Lorette. Comme elles etaient
attifees!"--_Anglice_, "What a lot of frumps they looked!"
In fact, Louis-Philippe and his queen sinned most grievously by
overlooking the craving of the Parisians for pomp and display. No one
was better aware of this than his children, notably the Duc d'Orleans,
Princess Clementine,[41] and the Duc de Nemours. They called him
familiarly "le pere." "Il est trop pere," said the princess in private;
"il fait concurrence au Pere Eternel." She was a very clever
girl--perhaps a great deal cleverer than any of her brothers, the Solon
of the family, the Duc de Nemours, included--but very fond of mischief
and practical joking. She found her match, though, in her brother, the
Prince de Joinville, the son of Louis-Philippe of whom France heard most
and saw least, for he was a sailor. One day, his sister asked him to
bring her a complete dress of a Red-Skin chieftain's wife. His absence
was shorter than usual, and, a few days before his return, he told her
in a letter that he had the costume she wanted. "Here, Clementine, this
is for you," he said, at his arrival, putting a string of glass beads on
the table.
[Footnote 41: The mother of Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg,
the present ruler of Bulgaria. She was a particular favourite
of Queen Victoria, and Louis-Philippe himself not only
considered her the cleverest of his three daughters, but the
most likely successor to his sister Adelaide, as his private
adviser. That the estimate of her abilities was by no means
exaggerated, subsequent events have proved. The last time I saw
the princess was at the garden party at Sheen-House, on the
occasion of the silver wedding of the Count and Countess de
Paris. I did not remember her for the moment, for a score of
years had made a difference. I asked an Austrian attache who
she was. The answer came pat, "Alexander III.'s nightmare,
Francis-Joseph's bogy, and Bismarck's sleeping draught; one of
the three clever women in Europe; Bulgaria's mother."--EDITOR.]
"Very pretty," said Clementine, "but you promised me a complete dress."
"This is the complete dress. I never saw them wear any other."
I did not see the Prince de Joinville very often, perhaps two or three
times in all; once on the occasion of his marriage with Princess
Francoise de Bourbon, the daughter of Dom Pedro I. of Brazil, and sister
of the present emperor, when the prince brought his young bride to
Paris. He was a clever draughtsman and capital caricaturist; but if the
first of these talents proved an unfailing source of delight to his
parents, the second frequently inspired them with terror, especially his
father, who never knew which of his ministers might become the next butt
for his third son's pencil. I have seen innumerable sketches, ostensibly
done to delight his young wife and brothers, which, had they been
published, would have been much more telling against his father's
pictorial satirists than anything they produced against the sovereign.
For in those days, whatever wisdom or caution they may have learnt
afterwards, the sons of Louis-Philippe were by no means disposed to sit
down tamely under the insults levelled at the head of their house. In
fact, nearly the whole of Louis-Philippe's children had graphic talents
of no mean order. The trait came to them from their mother, who was a
very successful pupil of Angelica Kauffman. Princesse Marie, who died so
young, executed a statue of Jeanne d'Arc, which was considered by
competent judges, not at all likely to be influenced by the fact of the
artist's birth, a very creditable piece of work indeed. I never saw it,
so I cannot say, but I have seen some miniatures by the Duc de Nemours,
which might fairly rank with performances by the best masters of that
art, short of genius.
It is a curious, but nevertheless admitted fact that the world has never
done justice to the second son of Louis-Philippe. He was not half as
great a favourite with the Parisians as his elder brother, although in
virtue of his remarkable likeness to Henri IV., whom the Parisians still
worship--probably because he is dead,--he ought to have commanded their
sympathies. This lukewarmness towards the Duc de Nemours has generally
been ascribed by the partisans of the Orleanist dynasty to his somewhat
reticent disposition, which by many people was mistaken for _hauteur_.
I rather fancy it was because he was suspected of being his father's
adviser, and, what was worse, his father's adviser in a reactionary
sense. He was accused of being an anti-parliamentarian, and he never
took the trouble to refute the charge, probably because he was too
honest to tell a lie.[42] I met the Duc de Nemours for the first time in
the studio of a painter, Eugene Lami, just as I met his elder brother in
that of Decamps. In fact, all these young princes were sincere admirers
and patrons of art, and, if they had had their will, the soirees at the
Tuileries would have been graced by the presence of artists more
frequently than they were; but, preposterous and scarcely credible as it
may seem, the bourgeoisie looked upon this familiar intercourse of the
king's sons with artists, literary men, and the like, as so much
condescension, if not worse, of which they, the bourgeoisie, would not
be guilty if they could help it. It behoves me, however, to be careful
in this instance, for the English aristocracy at home was not much more
liberal in those days.
[Footnote 42: There was a similar divergence of dynastic
opinion during the Second Empire between the sovereign and
those placed very near him on the throne. When Alphonse Daudet
came to Paris to make a name in literature, the Duc de Morny
offered him a position as secretary. "Before I accept it,
monsieur le duc, I had better tell you that I am a Legitimist,"
replied the future novelist. "Don't let that trouble you,"
laughed De Morny; "so am I to a certain extent, and the Empress
is even more of a Legitimist than I am."--EDITOR.]
The first thing that struck one in the Duc de Nemours was the vast
extent of his general information and the marvellous power of memory.
Eugene Lami had just returned from London, and, in the exercise of his
profession, had come in contact with some members of the oldest
families. The mere mention of the name sufficed as the introduction to
the general and anecdotal history of such a family, and I doubt whether
the best official at Herald's College could have dissected a pedigree as
did the Duc de Nemours. Eugene Lami was at that time engaged upon
designing some new uniforms for the army, many of which disappeared only
after the war of 1870. He lived in the Rue des Marais, the greater part
of which was subsequently demolished to make room for the Boulevard de
Magenta, and in the same house with two men whose names have become
immortal, Honore de Balzac and Paul Delaroche. I have already spoken of
both, but I did not mention the incident that led to the painter's
acquaintance with the novelist, an incident so utterly fanciful that the
boldest farce-writer would think twice before utilizing it in a play. It
was told to me by Lami himself. One morning, as he and Paul Delaroche
were working, there was a knock at the door, and a stout individual,
dressed in a kind of monastic garb, appeared on the threshold. Delaroche
remembered that he had met him on the staircase, but neither knew who he
was, albeit that Balzac's fame was not altogether unknown to them.
"Gentlemen," said the visitor, "I am Honore Balzac, a neighbour and a
confrere to boot. My chattels are about to be seized, and I would ask
you to save a remnant of my library."
Of course, the request was granted. The books were stowed away behind
the pictures; and, after that, Balzac often dropped in to have a chat
with them, but neither Delaroche nor Lami, the latter least of all, ever
conceived a sincere liking for the great novelist. Their characters were
altogether dissimilar. I have seen a good many men whose names have
become household words among the refined, the educated, and the
art-loving all the world over; I have seen them at the commencement, in
the middle, and at the zenith of their career: I have seen none more
indifferent to the material benefits of their art than Eugene Lami and
Paul Delaroche, not even Eugene Delacroix and Decamps. Balzac was the
very reverse. To make a fortune was the sole ambition of his life.
To return for a moment to Louis-Philippe's sons. I have said that the
Duc de Nemours was essentially the grand seigneur of the family; truth
compels me to add, however, that there was a certain want of pliability
about him which his social inferiors could not have relished. It was
Henri IV. minus the bonhomie, also perhaps minus that indiscriminate
galanterie which endeared Ravaillac's victim to all classes, even when
he was no longer young. In the days of which I am treating just now, the
Duc de Nemours was very young. As for his courage, it was simply above
suspicion; albeit that it was called in question after the revolution of
'48, to his father's intense sorrow. No after-dinner encomium was ever
as absolutely true as that of Sir Robert Peel on the sons and daughters
of the last King of France, when he described them as respectively brave
and chaste. Nevertheless, had the Duc de Nemours and his brothers been a
thousand times as brave as they were, party spirit, than which there is
nothing more contemptible in France, would have found the opportunity of
denying that bravery.
If these notes are ever published, Englishmen will smile at what I am
about to write now, unless their disgust takes another form of
expression. The exploits of the Duc d'Aumale in Algeria are quoted by
independent military authorities as so many separate deeds of signal
heroism. They belong to history, and not a single historian has
endeavoured to impair their value. Will it be believed that the
Opposition journals of those days spoke of them with ill-disguised
contempt as mere skirmishes with a lot of semi-savages? And, during the
Second Republic, many of these papers returned to the charge because the
Duc d'Aumale, being the constitutionally-minded son of a
constitutionally-minded king, resigned the command of his army instead
of bringing it to France to coerce a nation into retaining a ruler whom,
ostensibly at least, she had voluntarily accepted, and whom, therefore,
she was as free to reject.
In connection with these Algerian campaigns of the Duc d'Aumale, I had a
story told to me by his brother, De Montpensier, which becomes
particularly interesting nowadays, when spiritualism or spiritism is so
much discussed. He had it from two unimpeachable sources, namely, from
his brother D'Aumale and from General Cousin-Montauban, afterwards Comte
de Palikao, the same who was so terribly afraid, after the expedition in
China, that the emperor would create him Comte de Pekin, and who sent an
aide-de-camp in advance to beg the sovereign not to do so.[43]
[Footnote 43: In order to understand this dread on Montauban's
part, the English reader should be told that the term _pekin_
is the contemptuous nickname for the civilian, with the French
soldier.--EDITOR.]
It was to General Montauban that Abdel-Kader surrendered after the
battles of Isly and Djemma-Gazhouat. It was in the latter engagement
that a Captain de Gereaux fell, and when the news of his death reached
his family they seemed almost prepared for it. It transpired that, on
the very day of the engagement, and at the very hour in which Captain de
Gereaux was struck down, his sister, a young and handsome but very
impressionable girl, started all of a sudden from her chair, exclaiming
that she had seen her brother, surrounded by Arabs, who were felling him
to the ground. Then she dropped to the floor in a dead swoon.
A few years elapsed, when General Montauban, who had become the
military Governor of the province of Oran, received a letter from the De
Gereaux family, requesting him to make some further inquiries respecting
the particulars of the captain's death. The letter was written at the
urgent prayer of Mdlle. de Gereaux, who had never ceased to think and
speak of her brother, and who, on one occasion, a month or so before the
despatch of the petition, had risen again from her chair, though in a
more composed manner than before, insisting that she had once more seen
her brother. This time he was dressed in the native garb, he seemed very
poor, and was delving the soil. These visions recurred at frequent
intervals, to the intense distress of the family, who could not but
ascribe them to the overstrung imagination of Mdlle. de Gereaux. A
little while after, she maintained having seen her brother in a white
robe and turban, and intoning hymns that sounded to her like Arabic. She
implored her parents to institute inquiries, and General Montauban was
communicated with to that effect. He did all he could; the country was
at peace, and, after a few months, tidings came that there was a
Frenchman held prisoner in one of the villages on the Morocco frontier,
who for the last two or three years had entirely lost his reason, but
that, previous to that calamity, he had been converted to Islamism. His
mental derangement being altogether harmless, he was an attendant at the
Mosque. As a matter of course, the information had been greatly
embellished in having passed through so many channels, nor was it of so
definite a character as I have noted it down, but that was the gist of
it.
Meanwhile, Montauban had been transferred to another command, and for a
twelvemonth after his successor's arrival the inquiry was allowed to
fall in abeyance. When it was finally resumed, the French prisoner had
died, but, from a document written in his native language found upon him
and brought to Oran, there remained little doubt that he was Captain de
Gereaux.
To return for a moment to the Duc d'Aumale, who, curiously enough,
exercised a greater influence on the outside world in general than any
of his other brethren--an influence due probably to his enormous wealth
rather than to his personal qualities, though the latter may, to some
people, have seemed remarkable. I met him but seldom during his father's
lifetime. He was the beau-ideal of the preux chevalier, according to the
French notion of the modern Bayard--that is, handsome, brave to a
fault, irresistibly fascinating with women, good-natured in his way,
and, above all, very witty. It was he who, after the confiscation of the
d'Orleans' property by Napoleon III., replied to the French Ambassador
at Turin, who inquired after his health, "I am all right; health is one
of the things that cannot be confiscated." Nevertheless, upon closer
acquaintance, I failed to see the justifying cause for the preference
manifested by public opinion, and, upon more minute inquiry, I found
that a great many people shared my views. I am at this moment convinced
that, but for his having been the heir of that ill-fated Prince de
Conde, and consequently the real defender in the various suits resulting
from the assassination of that prince by Madame de Feucheres, he would
have been in no way distinguished socially from the rest of the
D'Orleans.
The popularity of his eldest brother, the Duc d'Orleans, was, on the
contrary, due directly to the man himself. As far as one can judge of
him, he was the reverse of Charles II., in that he never said a wise
thing and never did a foolish one. He was probably not half so clever as
his father, nor, brave as he may have been, would he have ever made so
dashing a soldier as his brother D'Aumale, or so rollicking a sailor as
his brother De Joinville. He did not pretend to the wisdom of his
brother De Nemours, nor to the mystic tendencies of his youngest sister,
nor to the sprightly wit of Princesse Clementine, and yet withal he
understood the French nation better than any of them. Even his
prenuptial escapades, secrets to no one, were those of the grand
seigneur, though by no means affichees; they endeared him to the
majority of the people. "Chacun colon-ise a sa facon," was the lenient
verdict on his admiration for Jenny Colon, at a moment when colonization
in Algeria was the topic of the day. On the whole he liked artists
better, perhaps, than art itself, yet it did not prevent him from buying
masterpieces as far as his means would allow him. Though still young, in
the latter end of the thirties, I was already a frequent visitor to the
studios of the great French painters, and it was in that of Decamps'
that I became alive to his character for the first time. I was talking
to the great painter when the duke came in. We had met before, and shook
hands, as he had been taught to do by his father when he met with an
Englishman. But I could not make out why he was carrying a pair of
trousers over his arm. After we had been chatting for about ten
minutes, I wondering all the while what he was going to do with the
nether garment, he caught one of my side glances, and burst out
laughing. "I forgot," he said; "here, Decamps, here are your breeches."
Then he turned to me to explain. "I always bring them up with me when I
come in the morning. The concierge is very old, and it saves her
trudging up four flights of stairs." The fact was, that the concierge,
before she knew who he was, had once asked him to take up the painter's
clothes and boots. From that day forth he never failed to ask for them
when passing her lodge.
I can but repeat, the Duc d'Orleans was one of the most charming men I
have known. I always couple him in my mind with Benjamin Disraeli, and
Alexandre Dumas the elder. I knew the English statesman almost as well
during part of my life as the French novelist. Though intellectually
wide apart from them, the duke had one, if not two traits in common with
both; his utter contempt for money affairs and the personal charm he
wielded. I doubt whether this personal charm in the other two men was
due to their intellectual attainments; with the Duc d'Orleans it was
certainly not the case. He rarely, if ever, said anything worth
remembering; in fact, he frankly acknowledged his very modest
scholarship, and his inability either to remember the epigrams of others
or to condense his thoughts into one of his own. "I should not like to
admit as much to my father, who, it appears, is a very fine Greek and
Latin scholar," he said--"that is, if I am to believe my brothers, De
Nemours and D'Aumale, who ought to know; for, notwithstanding the prizes
they took at college, I believe they are very clever. Ah, you may well
look surprised at my saying, 'notwithstanding the prizes they took,'
because I took ever so many, although, for the life of me, I could not
construe a Greek sentence, and scarcely a Latin one. I have paid very
handsomely, however, for my ignorance." And then he told us an amusing
story of his having had to invent a secretaryship to the duchess for an
old schoolfellow. "You see, he came upon me unawares with a slip of
paper I had written him while at college, asking him to explain to me a
Greek passage. There was no denying it, I had signed it. What is worse
still, he is supposed to translate and to reply to the duchess's German
correspondence, and, when I gave him the appointment, he did not know a
single word of Schiller's language, so I had to pay a German tutor and
him too."
I have said that the Duc d'Orleans was absolutely indifferent with
regard to money, but he would not be fleeced with impunity. What he
disliked more than anything else, was the greed of the shopkeeping
bourgeois. One day, while travelling in Lorraine, he stopped at the
posting-house to have his breakfast, consisting of a couple of eggs, a
few slices of bread and butter, and a cup of coffee. Just before
proceeding on his journey, his valet came to tell him that mine host
wanted to charge him two hundred francs for the repast. The duke merely
sent for the mayor, handed him a thousand-franc note, gave him the
particulars of his bill of fare, told him to pay the landlord according
to the tariff, and to distribute the remainder of the money among the
poor. It is more than probable that mine host was among the first, in
'48, to hail the republic: princes and kings, according to him, were
made to be fleeced; if they objected, what was the good of having a
monarchy?
The popular idol in France must distribute largesse, and distribute it
individually, or be profitable in some other way. Greed, personal
interest, underlies most of the political strife in France. During one
of the riots, so common in the reign of Louis-Philippe, Mimi-Lepreuil, a
well-known clever pick-pocket, was shouting with all his might, "Vive
Louis-Philippe! a bas la Republique!" As a rule, gentlemen of his
profession are found on the plebeian side, and one of the
superintendents of police on duty, who had closely watched him, inquired
into the reason of his apostasy. "I am sick of your Republicans," was
the answer. "I come here morning after morning"--it happened on the
Place de la Bourse,--"and dip my hands into a score of pockets without
finding a red cent. During the Revolution of July, at the funeral of
General Lamarque, I did not make my expenses. Give me a royal procession
to make money." These were his politics.
It would be difficult to say what the Duc d'Orleans would have done, had
he lived to ascend the throne. One thing is certain, however, that on
the day of his death, genuine tears stood in the eyes of all classes,
except the Legitimists. As I have already said, they ascribed the fatal
accident to God's vengeance for the usurpation of his father. "If this
be the case," said an irreverent but witty journalist, "it argues but
very little providence on the part of _your Providence_, for now He will
have to keep the peace between the Duc de Berri, the Duc de Reichstadt,
and the Duc d'Orleans."