I have told their story pretty often. I shall put it down here in my own way, for Aunt Theresa told a story rather disconnectedly.
The de Vandaleurs (we have dropped the de now) were an old French family. There was a Duke in it who was killed in the Revolution of ’92, and most of the family emigrated, and were very poor. The title was restored afterwards, and some of the property. It went to a cousin of the Duke who was murdered, he having no surviving children; but they say it went in the wrong line. The cousin who had remained in France, and always managed to keep the favour of the ruling powers, got the title, and remade his fortunes; the others remained in England, very poor and very proud. They would not have accepted any favours from the new royal family, but still they considered themselves deprived of their rights. One of these Vandaleur émigrés (the one who ought to have been the Duke) had married his cousin. They suffered great hardships in their escape, I fancy, and on the birth of their son, shortly after their arrival in England, the wife died.
There was an old woman, Aunt Theresa said, who used to be her nurse when she was a child, in London, who had lived, as a girl, in the wretched lodgings where these poor people were when they came over, and she used to tell her wonderful stories about them. How, in her delirium (she was insane for some little time before her son was born), Madame de Vandaleur fancied herself in her old home, “with all her finery about her,” as Nurse Brown used to say.
Nurse Brown seems to have had very little sympathy with nervous diseases. She could understand a broken leg, or a fever, “when folks kept their beds”; but the disordered fancies of a brain tried just too far, the mad whims of a lady who could “go about,” and who insisted upon going about, and changing her dress two or three times a day, and receiving imaginary visitors, and ordering her faithful nurse up and down under the names of half-a-dozen servants she no longer possessed, were beyond her comprehension.
Aunt Theresa said that she and her brothers and sisters had the deepest pity for the poor lady. They thought it so romantic that she should cry for fresh flowers and dress herself to meet the Queen in a dirty little lodging at the back of Leicester Square, and they were always begging to hear “what else she did.” But Nurse Brown seems to have been fondest of relating the smart speeches in which she endeavoured to “put sense into” the devoted French servant who toiled to humour every whim of her unhappy mistress, instead of being “sharp with her,” as Nurse Brown advised. Aunt Theresa had some doubts whether Mrs. Brown ever did make the speeches she reported; but when people say they said this or that, they often only mean that this or that is what they wish they had said.
“If she’s mad, I says, shave her head, instead of dressing her hair all day long. I’ve knowed mad people as foamed at the mouth and rolled their eyes, and would have done themselves a injury but for a strait-jacket; and I’ve knowed folks in fevers unreasonable enough, but they kept their beds in a dark room, and didn’t know their own mothers. Madame’s ways is beyond me, I says. You calls it madness: I calls it temper. Tem—per, and no—thing else.”
Aunt Theresa used to make us laugh by repeating Nurse Brown’s sayings, and the little shake of herself with which she emphasized the last sentence.
If she had no sympathy for Madame de Vandaleur, she had a double share for the poor lady’s husband: “a good soul,” as she used to call him. It was in vain that Jeanette spoke of the sweet temper and unselfishness of her mistress “before these terrible days”; her conduct towards her husband then was “enough for” Nurse Brown, so she said. No sooner had the poor gentleman gone off on some errand for her pleasure than she called for him to be with her, and was only to be pacified by a fable of Jeanette’s devising, who always said that “the King” had summoned Monsieur de Vandaleur. Jeanette was well aware that, the childless old Duke being dead, her master had succeeded to the title, and she often spoke of him as Monsieur le Duc to his wife, which seems to have pleased the poor lady. When he was absent, Jeanette’s ready excuse, “Eh, Madame! Pour Monsieur le Duc—le Roi l’a fait appeller,” was enough, and she waited patiently for his return.
Ever-changing as her whims and fancies were, the poor gentleman sacrificed everything to gratify them. His watch, his rings, his buckles, the lace from his shirt, and all the few trifles secured in their hasty flight, were sold one by one. His face was familiar to the keepers of certain stalls near to where Covent Garden Market now stands. He bought flowers for Madame when he could not afford himself food. He sold his waistcoat, and buttoned his coat across him—and looked thinner than ever.
Then the day came when Madame wished, and he could not gratify her wish. Everything was gone. He said, “This will kill me, Jeanette;” and Jeanette believed him.