The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X Part 14

3. The Duke de Nemours (a king's page).

4. Lady Stuart de Rothsay (Marie de Lorraine). Daughter of Lord Hardwicke, she was the wife of Lord Stuart de Rothsay, amba.s.sador of England at Paris.

5. The Marquis of Douglas, since Duke of Hamilton (the Duke de Chatellerault), a finished type of the great Scotch lord; he married in 1843 the Princess Mary of Baden, and under the reign of Napoleon III.

added to his t.i.tles of Hamilton and of Brandon in Scotland and England, the t.i.tle of Duke de Chatellerault, in France, which had formerly belonged to the Hamilton family.

6. The Marchioness of Podenas, NEE Nadaillac (Catharine de' Medici).

Lady companion of the d.u.c.h.ess of Berry, she was one of the brightest women of the court.

7. The Count de Pastoret, married to a de Neufermeil (Duke of Ferrara).

8. The Marquis de Vogue (the Vidame de Chartres). Married to a Mademoiselle de Machault d'Arnouville; his son was the diplomat who was amba.s.sador under the presidency of Thiers and of Marshal Macmahon.

9. Count Ludovic de Rosanbo (Duke de Guise). He was one of the handsomest men of his time. He had married the daughter of the Count de Mesnard, lady companion to the d.u.c.h.ess of Berry.

10. The Countess de La Rochejaquelein, daughter of the Duke de Duras (a lady of honor to the Queen). She was honorary lady companion to the d.u.c.h.ess of Berry.

11. Miss Louise Stuart (a page to the Queen-Mother of Scotland).

12. Miss Pole Carew (Mary Seaton, maid of honor to the same queen).

13. The Count de Mailly (Rene de Mailly, officer of the guard to Mary Stuart). The Count was the son of the Marshal de Mailly, defender of the Tuileries on August 10, who paid for his devotion on the scaffold of the Revolution. Aide-de-camp of the Duke of Bordeaux, and lieutenant-colonel; he was a brilliant officer who had received glorious wounds in the Russian campaign. He was married to a Mademoiselle de Lonlay de Villepail.

14. The Countess d'Orglandes, NEE Montblin, one of the prettiest women of the court (Louise de Clermont-Tonnerre, Countess of Crussol).

15. The d.u.c.h.ess de Caylus, NEE La Grange, a great beauty, remarried afterwards to the Count de Rochemure (Diane de Poitiers).

16. Mademoiselle de Bearn, a charming young girl, married afterwards to the Duke of Vallombrosa, and dying so young and so regretted (a maid of honor to Mary Stuart).

17. Count de Mesnard, peer of France, field marshal, first equerry of the d.u.c.h.ess of Berry, aide-de-camp of the Duke of Bordeaux (Admiral de Coligny).

18. Marquis de Louvois, peer of France, married to Mademoiselle de Monaco (Count Gondi de Ritz).

19. The Duke of Richelieu, nephew of the President of the Council of Ministers of Louis XVIII. (Jacques d'Albon, Marshal of Saint Andre).

20. The Baron de Charette (Francois de Lorraine). He had married a daughter of the Duke of Berry and of Miss Brown. His son was the general of the Papal Zouaves.

21. Countess de Pastoret, NEE Neufermeil (the d.u.c.h.ess of Montpensier).

22. The Countess Auguste de Juigne, NEE Durfort de Civrac (Jeanne d'Albret).

Among the pages were the Duke de Maille, who carried the banner of France, and Count Maxence de Damas.

Eugene Lamy, at the age of eighty-seven, exhibited in 1887 a charming water-color, of which the subject was "A Ball under Henry III." He has the same talent, the same brightness, the same freshness of coloring as when, fifty-eight years before, he painted the water colors of the Mary Stuart ball. The Duke de Nemours, one of the last survivors of the guests of this ball, could recount its splendors. Even in the time of the old regime no more elegant ball was ever seen. If such a fete had been given in our time, the detailed accounts of it would fill the papers; but under the Restoration the press was very sober in the matter of "society news," and the dazzling ball of 1829 was hardly mentioned. On the morrow, the Journal des Debats said:--

"PARIS, 2d of March.

"The ball given at the Pavilion Marsan, in the apartments of the Children of France, was honored by the presence of the King, M. the Dauphin and Madame the Dauphiness. Mgr. the Duke of Orleans and his family arrived at eight o'clock.

"Tomorrow there will be a play at the Court Theatre; the actors of the opera will play La Muette de Portici."

Beside the persons who figure in the alb.u.m of M. Eugene Lamy many others were to be noted. Let us mention the Countess Hemi de Biron, the Marchionness Oudinot, the Countess de Noailles, who represented Margaret of Savoy, Claude d.u.c.h.ess of Lorraine, the Princess de Conde, the Princess of Ferrara; the Count A. de Damas, as Lanoue Bras-de-Fer; Monsieur de San Giacomo, as Francois de' Medici; the Countess de Montault, as Countess de Coligny; the Marchioness de Montcalm, as the d.u.c.h.ess de Bouillon; the flower of the English aristocracy,--Lady Aldborough, Lady Rendlesham, Lady Cambermere, Lady Vernon, Lord Ramlagh, Captain Drummond, Lord Forwich, Lord Abayne, Miss Caulfuld, Miss Thelusson, Miss Baring, Miss Acton, and, lastly, the Counts de Cosse de Biron, and de Brissac, representing the three marshals of France whose names they bore.

In donning the costume of the unfortunate queen whose sorrows could only be compared to those of Marie Antoinette, the d.u.c.h.ess of Berry proved how free her mind was from all gloomy presentiments, forgetting that the family of the Bourbons had already had its Charles I., and not foreseeing that it was soon to have its James II., the amiable Princess hardly suspected that in the course of next year, she would be an exile in Scotland in the castle of Mary Stuart.

XXV

THE FINE ARTS

From 1824 to the end of the Restoration, the department of the Fine Arts, connected with the ministry of the King's household, was confided to the Viscount Sosthenes de la Rochefoucauld, son of the Duke de Doudeauville. He was then at the head of the museums, the royal manufactures, the Conservatory and the five royal theatres,--the Opera, the Francois, the Odeon, the Opera-Comique, and the Italiens.

From the point of view of arts and letters the reign of Charles X. was ill.u.s.trious. The King encouraged, protected, pensioned the greater number of the great writers and artists who honored France. What is sometimes called in literature the generation of 1830 would be more exactly described as the generation of the Restoration. This regime can claim the glory of Lamartine, as poet. A body-guard of Louis XVIII., he was the singer of royalty. He published, in 1820, the first volume of his Meditations Poetiques, in 1823 the second, and in 1829 the Harmonies. His literary success opened to him the doors of diplomacy.

He was successively attache of the Legation at Florence, Secretary of Emba.s.sy at Naples and at London, Charge d'Affaires in Tuscany. When the Revolution of 1830 broke out, he had just been named Minister Plenipotentiary to Greece.

Victor Hugo published his Odes et Ballades from 1822 to 1828. "La Vendee," "Les Vierges de Verdun," "Quiberon," "Louis XVII," "Le Retabliss.e.m.e.nt de la Statue de Henri IV.," "La Mort du due de Berry,"

"La Naissance du duc de Bordeaux," "Les Funerailles de Louis XVIII.,"

"Le Sacre de Charles X.," are true royalist songs. Alexandre Dumas, FILS, in receiving M. Leconte de Lisle at the French Academy, recalled "the light of that little lamp, seen burning every night in the mansard of the Rue Dragon, at the window of the boy poet, poor, solitary, indefatigable, enamoured of the ideal, hungry for glory, of that little lamp, the silent and friendly confidant of his first works and his first hopes so miraculously realized." Who knows? without the support of the government of the Restoration the light of that little lamp might less easily have developed into the resplendent star that the author of La Dame aux Camelias indicated in the firmament.

The author of Meditations Poetiques and the author of the Odes et Ballades were sincere in the expression of their political and religious enthusiasm. These two lyric apostles of the throne and the altar, these two bards of the coronation, obeyed the double inspiration of their imagination and their conscience. Party spirit should not be too severe for a regime that suggested such admirable verses to the two greatest French poets of the nineteenth century--to Lamartine and to Victor Hugo.

Let us recall also that in Victor Hugo it was not only the royalist poet that Charles X. protected, it was also the chief of the romantic school; for the government, despite all the efforts of the cla.s.sicists, caused Hernani to be represented at the Francais, a subsidized theatre.

When the Academy pressed its complaint to the very throne to prevent the acceptance of the play, the King replied wittily that he claimed no right in the matter beyond his place in the parterre. The first representation of Hernani took place the 25th of February, 1830, and the author, decorated, pensioned, encouraged by Charles X., did not lose the royal favor, when, on the 9th of March following, he wrote in the preface of his work: "Romanticism, so often ill-defined, is nothing, taking it all in all--and this is its true definition, if only its militant side be regarded--but liberalism in literature. The principle of literary liberty, already understood by the thinking and reading world, is not less completely adopted by that immense crowd, eager for the pure emotions of art, that throngs the theatres of Paris every night. That lofty and puissant voice of the people, which is like that of G.o.d, writes that poetry henceforth shall have the same matter as politics! Toleration and liberty!"

The first representation of a work that was a great step forward for the romantic school, Henri III et sa Cour, by Alexandre Dumas, had already taken place at the Francais, February 11, 1829. The 30th of March, 1830, the Odeon gave Christine de Suede, by the same author.

In 1829, Alfred de Vigny had represented at the Francais his translation in verse of Oth.e.l.lo. It was from 1824 to 1826 that the poet published his princ.i.p.al poems. It was in 1826 that his romance of Cinq-Mars appeared. Victor Hugo published Les Orientates in 1829; Alfred de Musset, Les Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie in 1830. It may be said then that before the Revolution of 1830, romanticism had reached its complete expansion.

Note, also, that the government of Charles X. always respected the independence of writers and artists, and never asked for eulogies in exchange for the pensions and encouragement it accorded them with generous delicacy. It named Michelet Maitre de Conferences at the Ecole Normale in 1826. It pensioned Casimir Delavigne, so well known for his liberal opinions, and Augustin Thierry, a writer of the Opposition, when that great historian, having lost his eyesight, was without resources. It ordered of Horace Vernet the portraits of the King, the Duke of Berry, and the Duke of Angouleme, as well as a picture representing a "Review by Charles X. at the Champ-de-Mars," and named the painter of the battles of the Revolution and the Empire director of the School of Rome.

From the point of view of painting as well as of letters, the Eestoration was a grand epoch. Official encouragement was not wanting to the painters. Gros and Gerard received the t.i.tle of Baron. There may be seen to-day in one of the new halls of the French School at the Louvre, the pretty picture by Heim, which represents Charles X.

distributing the prizes for the Exposition of 1824, where Le Vaeu de Louis XIII. by Ingres had figured, and where the talent of Paul Delaroche had been disclosed. In the Salon Carre of the Louvre, the King, in the uniform of general-in-chief of the National Guards, blue coat with plaits of silver, with the cordon of the Saint Esprit, and in high boots, himself hands the cross of the Legion of Honor to the decorated artists, among whom is seen Heim, the author of the picture.

Ingres, chief of the Cla.s.sic School, and Delacroix, chief of the Romantic School, shone at the same time. In 1827, the first submitted to general admiration l'Apotheose d'Homere and Le Martyre de Saint Symphorien. The same year Delacroix, who had already given in 1824 Le Ma.s.sacre de Scio, in 1826 La Mort du Doge Mariano Faliero, exhibited LE Christ au Jardin des Oliviers, acquired for the Church of Saint Paul; Justinien,--for the Council of State; and La Mort de Sardanapale.

When the Musee Charles X. (the Egyptian Museum) was opened at the Louvre, the government ordered the frescoes and ceilings from Gros, Gerard, Ingres, Schnetz, Abel de Pujol. M. Jules Mareschal says:--

"The right-royal munificence of Charles X. was not marked by n.i.g.g.ardliness in the appreciation of works of art any more than in the appreciation of the works of science and letters. But, as is known, it is not by interest alone that the heart of the artist is gained and his zeal stimulated. They are far more sensitive to the esteem shown them, to the respect with which their art is surrounded, and to the taste manifested in the judgment of their productions. Now, who more than Louis XVIII. and Charles X. possessed the secret of awakening lively sympathy in the world of artists and men of letters? Who better than their worthy counsellor seconded them in the impulses of generous courtesy so common with them? Thus from this n.o.ble and gracious manner of treating men devoted to art and letters, which marked the royal administration of the Fine Arts under the Restoration, sprang an emulation and a good will which on all sides gave an impetus to genius, and brought forth the new talents."

In theatrical matters, the Viscount Sosthenes de La Rochefoucauld exercised a salutary influence. He loved artists, and wishing to raise their situation, moral and social, he deplored the excommunication that had been laid on the players.

Speaking of the stage, he wrote in a report addressed to Charles X., June 20,1825: "I perceive that I have forgotten the most essential side,--the moral, I will even say the religious side. What glory it would be for a king to raise this considerable cla.s.s of society from the abject situation in which it is compelled to live! Sacrificed to our pleasures, it has been condemned to eternal death, and a king believes his conscience quiet! For a long time I have cherished this thought; we must begin by elevating these people, as regards their art, by reforming, little by little, the swarming abuses that awaken horror, and end by treating with Rome in order to obtain some just concessions that would have important results."

In another report to the King, dated October 21, 1826, M. de La Rochefoucauld wrote, apropos of the obsequies of Talma:--

"A profound regret for me is the manner of the great tragedian's death.