With the placing of Sophie dans ses meubles by the Duc de Bourbon there
began one of the most remarkable turns in her career. In 1811 he took a
house for her in Gloucester Street, Queen's Square, with her mother as
duenna, and arranged for the completion of her education.
As a light on her character hardly too much can be made of this stage in
her development. It is more than likely that the teaching was begun at
Sophie's own demand, and by the use she made of the opportunities given
her you may measure the strength of her ambition. Here was no rich
man's doxy lazily seeking a veneer of culture, enough to gloss the rough
patches of speech and idea betraying humble origin. This fisherman's
child, workhouse girl, ancilla of the bordels, with the thin smattering
of the three R's she had acquired in the poor institution, set herself,
with a wholehearted concentration which a Newnham 'swot' might envy,
to master modern languages, with Greek, Latin, and music. At the end of
three years she was a good linguist, could play and sing well enough to
entertain and not bore the most intelligent in the company the Duc
kept, and to pass in that company--the French emigre set in London--as
a person of equal education. If, as it is said, Sophie, while she could
read and write French faultlessly, never could speak it without an
English accent, it is to be remembered that the flexibility of tongue
and mind needed for native-sounding speech in French (or any other
language) is so exceptional as to be practically non-existent among her
compatriots to this day. The fault scarcely belittles her achievement.
As well blame a one-legged man for hopping when trying to run.
Consider the life Sophie had led, the sort of people with whom she had
associated, and that temptation towards laissez-faire which conquers all
but the rarest woman in the mode of life in which she was existing,
and judge of the constancy of purpose that kept that little nose so
steadfastly in Plutarch and Xenophon.
If in the year 1812 the Duc began to allow his little Sophie about
L800 a year in francs as pin-money he was no more generous than Sophie
deserved. The Duc was very rich, despite the fact that his father, the
old Prince de Conde, was still alive, and so, of course, was enjoying
the income from the family estates.
There is no room here to follow more than the barest outline of the Duc
de Bourbon's history. Fully stated, it would be the history of France.
He was a son of the Prince de Conde who collected that futile army
beyond the borders of France in the royalist cause in the Revolution.
Louis-Henri was wounded in the left arm while serving there, so badly
wounded that the hand was practically useless. He came to England,
where he lived until 1814, when he went back to France to make his
unsuccessful attempt to raise the Vendee. Then he went to Spain.
At this time he intended breaking with Sophie, but when he got back to
Paris in 1815 he found the lady waiting for him. It took Sophie some
eighteen months to bring his Highness up to scratch again. During this
time the Duc had another English fancy, a Miss Harris, whose reign in
favour, however, did not withstand the manoeuvring of Sophie.
Sophie as a mistress in England was one thing, but Sophie unattached as
a mistress in France was another. One wonders why the Duc should have
been squeamish on this point. Perhaps it was that he thought it would
look vulgar to take up a former mistress after so long. At all events,
he was ready enough to resume the old relationship with Sophie, provided
she could change her name by marriage. Sophie was nothing loth. The idea
fell in with her plans. She let it get about that she was the natural
daughter of the Duc, and soon had in tow one Adrien-Victor de Feucheres.
He was an officer of the Royal Guard. Without enlarging on the all-round
tawdriness of this contract it will suffice here to say that Sophie and
Adrien were married in London in August of 1818, the Duc presenting
the bride with a dowry of about L5600 in francs. Next year de Feucheres
became a baron, and was made aide-de-camp to the Duc.
Incredible as it may seem, de Feucheres took four years to realize what
was the real relationship between his wife and the Prince de Conde. The
aide-de-camp and his wife had a suite of rooms in the Prince's favourite
chateau at Chantilly, and the ambition which Sophie had foreseen would
be furthered by the marriage was realized. She was received as La
Baronne de Feucheres at the Court of Louis XVIII. She was happy--up to a
point. Some unpretty traits in her character began to develop: a violent
temper, a tendency to hysterics if crossed, and, it is said, a leaning
towards avaricious ways. At the end of four years the Baron de Feucheres
woke up to the fact that Sophie was deceiving him. It does not appear,
however, that he had seen through her main deception, because it was
Sophie herself, we are told, who informed him he was a fool--that she
was not the Prince's daughter, but his mistress.
Having waked up thus belatedly, or having been woken up by Sophie in her
ungoverned ill-temper, de Feucheres acted with considerable dignity. He
begged to resign his position as aide to the Prince, and returned his
wife's dowry. The departure of Sophie's hitherto complacent husband
rather embarrassed the Prince. He needed Sophie but felt he could not
keep her unattached under his roof and he sent her away--but only for a
few days. Sophie soon was back again in Chantilly.
The Prince made some attempt to get de Feucheres to return, but without
success. De Feucheres applied for a post in the Army of Spain, an
application which was granted at once. It took the poor man seven years
to secure a judicial separation from his wife.
The scandal of this change in the menage of Chantilly--it happened in
1822--reached the ears of the King, and the Baronne de Feucheres was
forbidden to appear at Court. All Sophie's energies from then on were
concentrated on getting the ban removed. She explored all possible
avenues of influence to this end, and, incidentally drove her old lover
nearly frantic with her complaints giving him no peace. Even a rebuff
from the Duchesse de Berry, widow of the son of that prince who was
afterwards Charles X, did not put her off. She turned up one day at the
Tuileries, to be informed by an usher that she could not be admitted.
This desire to be reinstated in royal favour is at the back of all
Sophie's subsequent actions--this and her intention of feathering her
own nest out of the estate of her protector. It explains why she worked
so hard to have the Prince de Conde assume friendly relations with a
family whose very name he hated: that of the Duc d'Orleans. It is a clue
to the mysterious death, eight years later, of the Prince de Conde, last
of the Condes, in circumstances which were made to pass as suicide, but
which in unhampered inquiry would almost certainly have been found to
indicate murder.