France from Behind the Veil: Fifty Years of Social and Political Life

by Princess Catherine Radziwill

It must be owned that the Orleans Princes, at the time of which I am speaking, had far more adherents than the Comte de Chambord.

Whilst the latter kept aloof from the world in his haughty attitude, his cousins sought popularity by all means in their power, and wherever they could hope to find it. They had in their favour, first their number, the beauty of their women, their incontestable bravery, their unwearying energy, and their courting of the mob. Against them was their excessive avarice, and the eagerness with which they had hastened, as soon as the doors of their fatherland were opened to them once more, to claim their confiscated millions without allowing their thoughts to dwell for one moment on the sad state in which their country was finding itself, nor on the tremendous sacrifices it was voluntarily making in order to pay the enormous war contribution exacted by Germany, in accordance with the Treaty of Frankfurt. In the claim they had put forward they had been encouraged by M. Thiers, who, shrewd politician that he was, wanted to make them unpopular as pretenders, and to minimise the influence they might otherwise have acquired. The fact was that this hasty step, which would have passed unnoticed had they attempted it later on, made them lose considerable ground among people who would otherwise have looked up to them, because the idea of a Republic had not yet become familiar to the public mind, and because the Orleans dynasty was essentially a democratic and middle-class one, whose instincts did not clash with those of the governing and intellectual classes of France after the war that had driven the Bonapartes out of the country. The reign of Louis Philippe had not left bad memories; many even regretted it. The King as well as his family had known how to appeal to the mob, and France had reached an epoch in her history, where the mob held the first place and had to be reckoned with. The King’s sons had frequented public colleges, associated with other young men of their age, and thus had given satisfaction to the snobbish leanings which are perhaps more developed in Frenchmen than in any other nation, in spite of all their outcries for equality and the abolition of all the privileges enjoyed in former times by the upper classes.

The Duc d’Aumale had even made himself popular, with a low kind of popularity of which he never succeeded in getting rid during the whole course of his life; but still he was popular in his way. I shall talk of him later on, as he deserves a chapter to himself, and Chantilly, too, is worthy of a description not embodied in a few words. He was always considered to be the clever man of his family, and was the most respected by his numerous nephews and nieces, partly on account of his large fortune, the inheritance of the Princess de Condé, and bequeathed to him by the last of that name and race. He had become the master of the old home of the Condés, made illustrious by the Connétable de Montmorency, and the brave warrior known to his contemporaries by the name of Monsieur le Prince, and to history under that of the Great Condé. There was much of chivalry in the nature of the Duc d’Aumale, more so, perhaps, than in the character of his brothers, who were less princely in their manners and ways.

The head of this historic family, the Comte de Paris can be described in very few words: he was essentially an honest man, but devoid of initiative; timid in the manifestation of his opinions; an excellent soldier, as he proved himself to be during the American war in which he took part as a volunteer, but a mediocre officer—one born to obedience but not reared to command; weak in character, but firm in his convictions; an excellent father, a devoted husband, a dutiful son; a perfect King had he ever become one, so long as his country was prosperous, but an incapable one had it found itself in difficulties; a man always careful to fulfil his duties, but certainly not one who inspired love for those duties outside his own immediate family circle. He did not possess any of the qualities of a Pretender, except domestic virtues, which no one asked of him, and which even his best friends did not require. Though he was head of his house, he never could divest himself of an excess of deference to the advice of his uncles, and could rarely muster enough courage to speak or to act independently of them.

The only time he allowed himself to indulge in politics was at the period of the famous Boulangist agitation, when he made the rather naïve remark that he had been induced to take part in that intrigue because a great Christian like the Count de Mun, and a great lady like the Duchesse d’Uzès, were attracted to it. This attempt to restore the throne of Louis Philippe by the help of an adventurer with a white feather in his cap had, as is known, ended in a ridicule that had considerably shaken the personal position of the Comte de Paris, already made insecure through his own and his partisans’ many mistakes. The Comte had essentially a reasoning mind, but was always filled with abstract ideas; he could never put things on a practical ground. He had few illusions but a false look out, as well as a wrong point of view. Instead of adopting one of two lines of conduct which would have been equally dignified—submission to the Comte de Chambord, or brave adherence to the principles of his ancestors and those of that dynasty of July, “la monarchie de juillet,” as it was still called in France—he had taken a middle course, that of recognising the personality but not the rights of his cousin. This made him bow down before the universal suffrage that had proclaimed the Republic in the kingdom of which he would in any case have been the lawful heir. He thought that by his attitude of absolute submission to the wishes of the nation he would have inspired it with the desire to call him to its head. A false reasoning if ever there was one, that was to cause him to take many erratic and undignified steps, and which at last exiled him anew; an exile in which he remained until his death.

The only time that the Comte de Paris ventured openly upon a step which could be construed as a manifestation of his pretensions to the throne of France was on the occasion of the wedding of his eldest daughter, Queen Amélie of Portugal, when he gave in his Paris residence, the Hotel Galliera, a reception at which all the pomp that attended royalty in former days was displayed. It was as ill-timed as useless, and was the pretext for his expulsion from his country, an expulsion that had been asked for a long time since by the Republican leaders, who did not care for the nation to become used to the continued presence of the descendants of its former Kings. He did not attempt to resist, though it is said that some of his partisans begged him to allow them to make a manifestation in his favour; he embarked for British shores with a resignation that would have been admirable in a private person, but which was very near akin to cowardice in the representative of the Divine rights of Kings, those rights that Henri IV. knew how to impose, even on such great lords as the members of that powerful house of Lorraine, who also, at one time, aspired to the throne that belonged to him, and which he conquered at the point of his sword.

Philippe VII. was of a more pacific disposition than his illustrious ancestor. He bade good-bye to his lovely castle of Eu, and settled at Stowe House, the old residence of the Dukes of Buckingham, where he ended his life, after cruel sufferings, borne with the patience that was the distinctive feature of his honest, straightforward, and distinctly middle-class character. With the Comte de Chambord had disappeared a principle together with a man; when the Comte de Paris expired in his turn, there died a good and virtuous person but nothing else. He represented in the world his own estimable self, but not the royalty to which he had been born.

About his son, little need be said. Gifted with a more adventurous spirit than that of his father, the Duc d’Orleans began his career by risking imprisonment in France, when he appeared there to enrol himself in the ranks of her army. He has never made the least attempt to secure a crown which does not even tempt him. He has led the life of an idle man of means, travelling about, playing at science when it suited him, ignorant of the great aims of life; a man not even to be pitied, because misfortune has never touched him; one who has never known what society, his country, and the great name he bears required of him; who has laughed at what his forefathers have always respected; who calls himself the heir to all the Bourbons that have left their impress on history, but who would be very sorry had he ever to follow in their footsteps; the Republic can well afford to ignore him, because he would be the first to be embarrassed by its fall.

The Duc d’Orleans had no children by his marriage with an Austrian Archduchess, from whom he parted very soon after they had been united. His only brother, the Duke of Montpensier, is still unmarried, and at present the grandchildren of the Duc de Chartres constitute the hope of the partisans of the Orleans dynasty.

The Duc de Chartres was the one brilliant figure among the descendants of King Louis Philippe. There was something dashing about him that appealed to the imagination of people. When the Franco-German War broke out, he at once offered his services first to the Imperial, afterwards to the Republican, government, and when they had both refused them, he succeeded in entering a regiment of volunteers, under the assumed name of Robert Le Fort, only the Comtesse de Vallon and one or two other friends being aware of his identity.