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

by Princess Catherine Radziwill

After the fall of the Empire, the Faubourg St. Germain began to come out from its seclusion, to live a little more in Paris, and a little less in its country castles. It participated in the gaieties, such as they were, that went on, and even appeared at the receptions of the Elysée, timidly at first, whilst M. and Mme. Thiers presided over them, and then more boldly after they had been replaced by Marshal MacMahon and his wife. Then the different members of the Orleans family opened their doors to a few select guests, and the salons of the Rothschilds became a neutral meeting ground, where in time people belonging to different political opinions saw each other and commingled, at least as regards social relations. Sport, which had hitherto been absolutely unknown among the better classes, became fashionable, and did more than anything else to break down the barriers that had divided the different social sets and coteries that had lived in solitary grandeur until then. The Embassies, too, contributed to bring together representatives of the various sections of fashionable France, because the supremacy of Paris somehow began to be less absolute than it had been under Napoleon III. The fact, also, that the government of the Republic had appealed to the patriotism of some members of the old nobility of the country to help it in its task of restoring the prestige of France abroad—as, for instance, in sending the Duc de Bisaccia to London as Ambassador, and the Vicomte de Gontaut Biron to Berlin in the same capacity—had done much to bring it partisans, and to procure it more sympathy than the Empire had won for itself at its start. People were feeling that the present state of things was but transitory, and that the existence of that Republic, which no one had expected or foreseen a few days, even, before it became an accomplished fact, was bound to come to an end very quickly, especially under the Marshal, who, it was firmly believed, would use all his influence to bring about a return of the Bourbon dynasty to the throne of France.

The Legitimists were also in possession of large financial means, which they had contrived to accumulate during all the years of their voluntary seclusion. This gave them a distinct advantage over the Imperialists, whose exchequer, which had largely depended on the liberality of the Emperor, found itself in a very low state indeed after it had lost that resource. Ladies who had presided over salons that gave the tone to Paris society, and whose doors had been thrown widely open to all who had cared to enter—such social leaders as the Countess Valevoska, the Princess Pauline Metternich, or the Marquise de Chasseloup Laubat, and the Countess Tascher de la Pagerie—had either left Paris, or retired from the world, or lost the means to entertain with their former splendour. Of the hostesses of olden days there remained but very few, such as the Comtesse Edmond de Pourtalès, the Baronesses Alphonse and Gustave de Rothschild, and the Princess de Sagan, and it was at their houses that the first entertainments after the horrors of the war and the Commune took place. It was under their patronage that Paris found out it still could enjoy itself, though the wild chase after gaiety, which had preceded them, no longer existed. And then a few salons, hermetically closed before, suddenly started a series of entertainments, at which the Comte and the Comtesse de Paris made frequent appearances, especially after their eldest daughter, the Princesse Amélie d’Orléans, who was later on to become Queen of Portugal, had begun to go out into the world. Among them may be mentioned those of the Duchesse de Galliera and of the Duchesse de la Rochefoucauld Bisaccia, after the latter’s return from London, and the retirement of the Duc from public life.

The Duchesse de Bisaccia, born Princesse Marie de Ligne, was a most important person in Paris society, over which she exercised a real influence owing to her husband’s enormous fortune, her beautiful house in the Rue de Varennes, and the luxury, the pomp and the grandeur that were displayed at her numerous receptions. A factor which also contributed to her popularity was the fact of the alliances that united the La Rochefoucaulds to all the oldest nobility of France, and the most powerful members of the coterie “du Faubourg St. Germain.” The eldest daughter of the Duc by his first wife, Mademoiselle de Polignac, was the Duchesse de Luynes, the widow of the Duc de Luynes, who had fallen bravely during the battle of Patay in 1870, whilst his second and third daughters were in time to become the Princesse de Ligne and the Duchesse d’Harcourt; his eldest son was to marry the only daughter of the Duc de la Trémouille, one of the richest heiresses in France.

Personally, the Duc de la Rochefoucauld Bisaccia was a pompous individual, with the manners of a courtly gentleman, as, indeed, he was, and with just enough wit about him to allow him to hold his own among the people with whom he lived. He had an excellent opinion of his personal capacities, felt himself born to great things, and destined to greater still. He had a despotic temperament, and his way of greeting those who called upon him, or whom he met at other people’s houses, was decidedly haughty. He believed himself to be as much above humanity as his worldly position and his fortune were above those of the generality of mankind. In a word, he carried his ducal coronet everywhere, and even when sleeping remembered that he had to take care of it, or rather that it had to take care of him. He did not admit that anybody could forget what was due to him, and when, long past middle age he took for his second wife the pretty and lively Marie de Ligne, he could not for one single instant think that he failed to represent for her an ideal husband in every way, or that her fancy might have led her to choose a younger and handsomer and merrier companion of her life.

The Duchesse, however, succeeded very soon in finding diversion in other directions than in the constant companionship of her pompous and solemn husband. She was one of those beings who always succeed in taking for themselves the good things of life. Secure in her position, and having very soon come to the conclusion that the Duc’s vanity would never allow him to think that his wife might look beyond him for the happiness to which every woman is entitled, she managed to arrange her existence in such a way that many roses helped her to bear its thorns. There was a time when almost every man of note in Paris society found himself one of the admirers of the Duchesse de Bisaccia, and also one of her friends. She was always pleasant, always kind, always good-tempered, always ready to make others happy. Pretty in her youth, she very quickly became stout, but this did not prevent her from going about or attending any of the entertainments at which it was deemed fashionable to be seen. She was fond of dress, but yet always appeared untidy, perhaps on account of her corpulence. She generally put on her tiara in such a way that five minutes after it had been fastened on to her head it got crooked and hung on one side, but though this gave her whole person an original appearance it did not make her ridiculous, as it would have made another woman. The Duchesse could not be ridiculous, no matter what she wore, nor what she did. She was essentially a great lady, even when not ladylike, which often occurred, because her manners were distinctly unceremonious, and had a dash of Bohemianism about them such as is not often met with in the circles in which she generally moved. I use the word “generally” on purpose, as there were times when the Duchesse did not object to visiting, with one or other of her numerous friends, places and people more or less unconventional. But, somehow, whatever she did or said no one seemed to mind, and she remained until the last the favourite of a society over which she reigned for nearly forty years, and by which she is missed to this very day.

Madame de Bisaccia was exceedingly fond of entertaining, and gave sumptuous receptions in her Hotel de la Rue de Varennes, which were considered landmarks in the horizon of fashionable Paris. These receptions were very stately; it would have been impossible for them to be otherwise in the presence of the Duc. During the septenary of Marshal MacMahon they were frequent, especially and always honoured by the presence of a royalty or two. The Duchesse had a grand way of receiving her guests, and when she stood on the top of her beautiful old staircase she appeared every inch of her to be one of those great ladies of the eighteenth century such as we see in the pictures of Latour or Largillière—a queen without a crown, but with courtiers, and surrounded by regal state.

It was rumoured that at these feasts, which took place in the Hotel de Bisaccia, many dark plots against the Republic were hatched. The Comte de Paris used to receive some of his adherents in a remote room there whilst his daughter was dancing in the ball-room, and the Comtesse gave audiences to ladies who craved to be presented to her, with the dignity she had learnt in the royal palace of Madrid, where she had been born. It was under the auspices of the Duc that the leaders of the Legitimist party persuaded the head of the House of Orleans that, in order to recover the throne which his grandfather had lost, a reconciliation had to be effected between him and the Comte de Chambord; it was also there that a plot was conceived to persuade Marshal MacMahon to lend himself to a restoration, which was not only desired but which had been in a certain sense already discounted among the majority of the people who were guests at the receptions of the Hotel de Bisaccia.

All this is now a thing of the past. Good-natured Duchesse Marie died a good many years since, and the pompous little Duc has followed her to the grave; their eldest son has also disappeared from this worldly scene, whilst his widow, Charlotte de la Trémouille, lives in retirement, and moves in quite a different set from the one which had frequented the salons of Madame de Bisaccia. The Hotel de la Rue de Varennes belongs to the second son of the Duchesse, who has inherited from an uncle the title of Duc de Doudeauville, and who has married the granddaughter of M. Blanc, of Monaco fame—a woman with more pride than charm, who knows the value of the millions which she brought as her dowry to her husband, and who will never play in Parisian society the part which her mother-in-law filled so well.

I have already said that the eldest daughter of the Duc de Bisaccia had been married to the Duc de Luynes. She became a widow at the age of twenty, and never married again, preferring to keep her great name and title, and understanding that this would not prevent her from living her own life in the way she liked best. She was a charming creature, this Duchesse de Luynes, gifted with great talents, and possessed of an engaging manner that was quite peculiar to her. People who knew her well used to say that she had an abominable temper, but of this last fact the general public was not made aware, and it is quite certain that she was greatly liked by nearly all those who knew her. She lived most of the year at her castle of Dampierre, which had been left to her for life by the Duc, and received in great state in that historical domain, made illustrious by the remembrance of all the famous people to whom it had previously belonged, or who had been visitors under its hospitable roof. Ill-natured gossips pretended that during her children’s minority she had managed to squander a good part of the fortune which they had inherited from their father, and which had been left under her personal control, and it is certain that her son, the present Duc, in spite of the large dowry which his wife, the daughter of the Duchesse d’Uzès, of Boulanger fame, had brought to him, had to exercise a rigorous economy in order to restore something of its past glories to the house of Luynes. But during the lifetime of the Duchesse Yolande no one dared to make any allusion to the carelessness with which she had attended to her children’s interests, and she exercised a despotic sway over them, and never allowed them to question anything she decided to do. Dark things were hinted about her, but we may be allowed to consider them as calumnies, and to remember her as one of the pleasantest women among the many who reigned over Paris society at the period of which I am writing.

The La Rochefoucauld was a very numerous family, divided into ever so many branches, and owing to the similarity of names a good deal of trouble ensued, until the identity of all of them was discovered, especially to persons not very well up in the mysteries of the Almanach de Gotha.