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

by Princess Catherine Radziwill

Since the death of his wife and children all his affections had concentrated on his splendid Chantilly, the reconstruction of which had entirely absorbed him from the day of his return to France after the revolution that had overthrown the Bonaparte dynasty. In spite of all that has been said he had no political ambitions. He knew that he had no right to the crown of France, and that he could not pretend to it without foregoing all the principles which he did not possess, but which he was supposed to represent. Having been sounded as to whether he would accept the Presidency of the Republic, he had consented to do so, because he had been told that he had to do it, but he did not regret that, as events turned out, the candidature of Marshal MacMahon was preferred to his own. He returned to his country home, to his roses, his pictures, his works of art, his horses, and his dogs, and took up again his easy, happy, careless life as a grand seigneur of olden times, absorbed in his books and studies, able to gather his friends round him whenever he liked, and to do the honours of his stately domain. Fond of hunting the stag in his vast forests, he was not above coming to Paris whenever he wanted amusements that would have been incompatible with the grandeur of Chantilly—to kiss the hand of a Leonide Leblanc, or to enjoy an hour’s chat with the lovely Countess de Castiglione, whose beauty then was on the wane. He was an amiable talker, rather dry in his remarks, but always ready to make use of his many remembrances and his vast erudition to add to the enjoyment of those with whom he was conversing. He told an anecdote pleasantly, and related an historical fact with a grand eighteenth-century manner, without offending the Republican instincts of those who were listening to him.

His appearance was entirely that of a grand seigneur of old, no matter whether he was dressed in his uniform or evening clothes, with the red ribbon of the Legion of Honour across his chest, or whether he was met walking in his park in corduroy trousers, and gaiters rather the worse for wear. His thin, delicate features, with the white tuft on the chin, the long, soft, silken moustache, and eyes with a haunted look, reminded one of a picture by Velasquez or Van Dyck. The figure was slightly bent, but wiry and agile, and had kept much of the elasticity of its younger days.

He talked quickly, sometimes sharply, but always with extreme courtesy, and even when disagreeing did so in most measured tones, and with the utmost care not to wound the feelings of those with whom he was in discussion. He had a sympathetic manner, but not a kingly one by any means. There was nothing regal about him, but there was also nothing that was not gentlemanly in the fullest sense of the word. And sometimes, when one saw him leaning against the pedestal of the statue of the Connétable of Montmorency, which he had had erected in front of his palace of Chantilly, or handling with love and reverence the sword which the Great Condé had carried at Rocroy, for one short, flitting moment he gave one the impression that he was only the guardian of those historical relics of which he was master.

The Duc d’Aumale had never had the initiative to fight for the privileges to which he had been born. In 1848, he was in command of an important army in Algeria, with which he might have fought the insurrectional government with advantage. He either lacked courage, or didn’t think it worth while to risk his own personal position as a factor in the France of the future to do so. He resigned his command, with more alacrity than dignity, and accepting as the decision of his country the rebellion of the few, retired to England, and with occasional stays in his Sicilian domains, near Palermo, he awaited in retirement and silence for the dawn of another day which would allow him to return to the France he liked so much and to the Chantilly he loved so well.

When at last that moment came, his first care was to use his efforts to avoid the possibility of a new banishment. In order to do this he opened his doors wide to all political men and to all the literary celebrities of the day. His hospitality was unbounded; he flattered the middle classes, who had suddenly become the leading force in France, with consummate skill. He tried as much as he could to make others forget that he was a member of the ancient house of Bourbon, with whose destinies those of their country had been inseparably associated for centuries. He strove always to appear to those whom he welcomed under his roof as a private gentleman, the owner of an historical place, and as a member of that Academy to which he was so proud to belong, the membership of which was dearer to him than all the glories of his race. He democratised himself, if such an expression can be pardoned. He came down from the throne, on the steps of which he had been born, into the crowd with which he liked to mix himself, quite forgetting that this crowd could at any minute descend to the gutter, whither they would drag him too whether he liked it or not.

There came, however, a day in the career of the Duc d’Aumale when he felt constrained to assert himself, when for once the blood of Henri IV. spoke in him. It was when he wrote to the President, Jules Grévy, that famous letter which resulted in his being sent to join his nephew across the frontiers of France. This letter was penned after the government had sent the Comte de Paris into an exile whence he was never to return, and he himself had been deprived of his rank and command. The shock was terrible to him, and bitterly did he regret the attack of indignation that had made him speak when he should have remained silent. As he said himself many years later: “J’ai laissé parler mon cœeur, tandis que j’aurais dû écouter ma raison” (“I listened to my heart when I ought only to have heard my reason”).

He retired to Brussels, which was nearer than England to the royal home he had adorned with such loving care, in the hope to bequeath it to his race, a living memento of the glories of their ancestors. When he saw himself parted from Chantilly, especially when it became evident to him that he would remain in exile until death released him, he took a resolution which, better than anything else, proves that in his heart and mind his family held but a small place.

He made a will by which he left Chantilly, its collections, its treasures, its library, its historical documents, its park and forests to the French Academy. And he divulged his intention in the hope that, as a reward for the splendid gift he was making to her, France would once more admit him within her doors, and by restoring him to his home thank him for having given it to her.

This act of selfish generosity has been very differently commented upon. Whilst many have admired it, a few old men and women, born and bred in ideas of an age when traditions, love for one’s race, and desire to help it to keep its high position and its inheritance were uppermost, have bitterly reproached him for having thus transgressed traditions that ought to have been sacred to him.

This attack of “Christian generosity,” as someone wittily termed it, which made him not only forgive the injury that had been done to him, but even reward by a kingly gift the injustice of a country which had used him so mercilessly, not only estranged him from his family, which, though it said nothing, thought a great deal, but also made him lose the sympathies of many former partisans of the Orleans dynasty. This alienation of the home of the Condés, in favour of a Republican government, made all realise that whatever were the qualities of the Duc d’Aumale, they were obscured by his unlimited selfishness.