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'Orléans made her entrée 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 Château. 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 Hélène, 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 étaient attifées!"—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'Orléans, Princess Clémentine,[41] and the Duc de Nemours. They called him familiarly "le père." "Il est trop père," said the princess in private; "il fait concurrence au Père Éternel." 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, Clémentine, this is for you," he said, at his arrival, putting a string of glass beads on the table.
"Very pretty," said Clémentine, "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 Françoise 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, Eugène 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 soirées 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.
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. Eugène 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. Eugène 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, Honoré 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 Honoré Balzac, a neighbour and a confrère 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 Eugène Lami and Paul Delaroche, not even Eugène 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.