An Englishman in Paris: Notes and Recollections

by Albert D. Vandam

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 Pékin, and who sent an aide-de-camp in advance to beg the sovereign not to do so.[43]

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 Géreaux 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 Géreaux 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 Géreaux 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 Géreaux, 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 Géreaux. 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 Géreaux.

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'Orléans' property by Napoléon 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 Condé, and consequently the real defender in the various suits resulting from the assassination of that prince by Madame de Feuchères, he would have been in no way distinguished socially from the rest of the D'Orléans.

The popularity of his eldest brother, the Duc d'Orléans, 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 Clémentine, 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 affichées; they endeared him to the majority of the people. "Chacun colon-ise à sa façon," 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'Orléans 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'Orléans 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'Orléans 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! à bas la République!" 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.