My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876 to 1879 - Mary King Waddington
The marshal received at the Elysee every Thursday evening--he and his
staff in uniform, also all the officers who came, which made a brilliant
gathering. Their big dinners and receptions were always extremely well
done. Except a few of their personal friends, not many people of society
were present--the diplomatic corps usually very well represented, the
Government and their wives, and a certain number of liberal deputies--a
great many officers. We received every fifteen days, beginning with a
big dinner. It was an open reception, announced in the papers. The
diplomats always mustered very strong, also the Parliament--not many
women. Many of the deputies remained in the country, taking rooms merely
while the Chambers were sitting, and their wives never appeared in
Paris. "Society" didn't come to us much either, except on certain
occasions when we had a royal prince or some very distinguished
foreigners. Besides the big official receptions, we often had small
dinners up-stairs during the week. Some of these I look back to with
much pleasure. I was generally the only lady with eight or ten men, and
the talk was often brilliant. Some of our habitues were the late Lord
Houghton, a delightful talker; Lord Dufferin, then ambassador in St.
Petersburg; Sir Henry Layard, British ambassador in Spain, an
interesting man who had been everywhere and seen and known everybody
worth knowing in the world; Count Schouvaloff, Russian ambassador in
London, a polished courtier, extremely intelligent; he and W. were
colleagues afterward at the Congres de Berlin, and W. has often told me
how brilliantly he defended his cause; General Ignatieff, Prince Orloff,
the nunzio Monsignor Czascki, quite charming, the type of the prelat
mondain, very large (though very Catholic) in his ideas, but never
aggressive or disagreeable about the Republic, as so many of the clergy
were. He was very fond of music, and went with me sometimes to the
Conservatoire on Sunday; he had a great admiration for the way they
played classical music; used to lean back in his chair in a corner
(would never sit in front of the box) and drink in every sound.
We sometimes had informal music in my little blue salon. Baron de
Zuylen, Dutch minister, was an excellent musician, also Comte de Beust,
the Austrian ambassador. He was a composer. I remember his playing me
one day a wedding march he had composed for the marriage of one of the
archdukes. It was very descriptive, with bells, cannon, hurrahs, and a
nuptial hymn--rather difficult to render on a piano--but there was a
certain amount of imagination in the composition. The two came often
with me to the Conservatoire. Comte de Beust brought Liszt to me one
day. I wanted so much to see that complex character, made up of
enthusiasms of all kinds, patriotic, religious, musical. He was dressed
in the ordinary black priestly garb, looked like an ascetic with pale,
thin face, which lighted up very much when discussing any subject that
interested him. He didn't say a word about music, either then or on a
subsequent occasion when I lunched with him at the house of a great
friend and admirer, who was a beautiful musician. I hoped he would play
after luncheon. He was a very old man, and played rarely in those days,
but one would have liked to hear him. Madame M. thought he would perhaps
for her, if the party were not too large, and the guests "sympathetic"
to him. I have heard so many artists say it made all the difference to
them when they felt the public was with them--if there were one
unsympathetic or criticising face in the mass of people, it was the only
face they could distinguish, and it affected them very much. The piano
was engagingly open and music littered about, but he apparently didn't
see it. He talked politics, and a good deal about pictures with some
artists who were present.
[Illustration: Franz Liszt.]
I did hear him play many years later in London. We were again lunching
together, at the house of a mutual friend, who was not at all musical.
There wasn't even a piano in the house, but she had one brought in for
the occasion. When I arrived rather early, the day of the party, I found
the mistress of the house, aided by Count Hatzfeldt, then German
ambassador to England, busily engaged in transforming her drawing-room.
The grand piano, which had been standing well out toward the middle of
the room, open, with music on it (I dare say some of Liszt's own--but I
didn't have time to examine), was being pushed back into a corner, all
the music hidden away, and the instrument covered with photographs,
vases of flowers, statuettes, heavy books, all the things one doesn't
habitually put on pianos. I was quite puzzled, but Hatzfeldt, who was a
great friend of Liszt's and knew all his peculiarities, when consulted
by Madame A. as to what she could do to induce Liszt to play, had
answered: "Begin by putting the piano in the furthest, darkest corner of
the room, and put all sorts of heavy things on it. Then he won't think
you have asked him in the hope of hearing him play, and perhaps we can
persuade him." The arrangements were just finished as the rest of the
company arrived. We were not a large party, and the talk was pleasant
enough. Liszt looked much older, so colourless, his skin like ivory,
but he seemed just as animated and interested in everything. After
luncheon, when they were smoking (all of us together, no one went into
the smoking-room), he and Hatzfeldt began talking about the Empire and
the beautiful fetes at Compiegne, where anybody of any distinction in
any branch of art or literature was invited. Hatzfeldt led the
conversation to some evenings when Strauss played his waltzes with an
entrain, a sentiment that no one else has ever attained, and to
Offenbach and his melodies--one evening particularly when he had
improvised a song for the Empress--he couldn't quite remember it. If
there were a piano--he looked about. There was none apparently. "Oh,
yes, in a corner, but so many things upon it, it was evidently never
meant to be opened." He moved toward it, Liszt following, asking
Comtesse A. if it could be opened. The things were quickly removed.
Hatzfeldt sat down and played a few bars in rather a halting fashion.
After a moment Liszt said: "No, no, it is not quite that." Hatzfeldt got
up. Liszt seated himself at the piano, played two or three bits of
songs, or waltzes, then, always talking to Hatzfeldt, let his fingers
wander over the keys and by degrees broke into a nocturne and a wild
Hungarian march. It was very curious; his fingers looked as if they
were made of yellow ivory, so thin and long, and of course there wasn't
any strength or execution in his playing--it was the touch of an old
man, but a master--quite unlike anything I have ever heard. When he got
up, he said: "Oh, well, I didn't think the old fingers had any music
left in them." We tried to thank him, but he wouldn't listen to us,
immediately talked about something else. When he had gone we
complimented the ambassador on the way in which he had managed the
thing. Hatzfeldt was a charming colleague, very clever, very musical, a
thorough man of the world. I was always pleased when he was next to me
at dinner--I was sure of a pleasant hour. He had been many years in
Paris during the brilliant days of the Empire, knew everybody there
worth knowing. He had the reputation, notwithstanding his long stay in
Paris, of being very anti-French. I could hardly judge of that, as he
never talked politics to me. It may very likely have been true, but not
more marked with him than with the generality of Anglo-Saxons and
Northern races, who rather look down upon the Latins, hardly giving them
credit for their splendid dash and pluck--to say nothing of their
brains. I have lived in a great many countries, and always think that as
a people, I mean the uneducated mass, the French are the most
intelligent nation in the world. I have never been thrown with the
Japanese--am told they are extraordinarily intelligent.
We had a dinner one night for Mr. Gladstone, his wife, and a daughter.
Mr. Gladstone made himself quite charming, spoke French fairly well, and
knew more about every subject discussed than any one else in the room.
He was certainly a wonderful man, such extraordinary versatility and
such a memory. It was rather pretty to see Mrs. Gladstone when her
husband was talking. She was quite absorbed by him, couldn't talk to her
neighbours. They wanted very much to go to the Conciergerie to see the
prison where the unfortunate Marie Antoinette passed the last days of
her unhappy life, and Mr. Gladstone, inspired by the subject, made us a
sort of conference on the French Revolution and the causes which led up
to it, culminating in the Terror and the execution of the King and
Queen. He spoke in English (we were a little group standing at the
door--they were just going), in beautiful academic language, and it was
most interesting, graphic, and exact. Even W., who knew him well and
admired him immensely, was struck by his brilliant improvisation.
[Illustration: William E. Gladstone. From a photograph by Samuel A.
Walker, London.]
We were often asked for permits by our English and American friends to
see all the places of historical interest in Paris, and the two places
which all wanted to see were the Conciergerie and Napoleon's tomb at the
Invalides. When we first came to Paris in 1866, just after the end of
the long struggle between the North and South in America, our first
visits too were for the Conciergerie, Invalides, and Notre Dame, where
my father had not been since he had gone as a very young man with all
Paris to see the flags that had been brought back from Austerlitz. They
were interesting days, those first ones in Paris, so full of memories
for father, who had been there a great deal in his young days, first as
an eleve in the Ecole Polytechnique, later when the Allies were in
Paris. He took us one day to the Luxembourg Gardens, to see if he could
find any trace of the spot where in 1815 during the Restoration Marshal
Ney had been shot. He was in Paris at the time, and was in the garden a
few hours after the execution--remembered quite well the wall against
which the marshal stood--and the comments of the crowd, not very
flattering for the Government in executing one of France's bravest and
most brilliant soldiers.
All the Americans who came to see us at the Quai d'Orsay were much
interested in everything relating to General Marquis de Lafayette, who
left an undying memory in America, and many pilgrimages were made to the
Chateau de la Grange, where the Marquis de Lafayette spent the last
years of his life and extended a large and gracious hospitality to all
his friends. It is an interesting old place, with a moat all around it
and high solid stone walls, where one still sees the hole that was made
in the wall by a cannon-ball sent by Marechal de Turenne as he was
passing with his troops, as a friendly souvenir to the owner, with whom
he was not on good terms. So many Americans and English too are imbued
with the idea that there are no chateaux, no country life in France,
that I am delighted when they can see that there are just as many as in
any other country. A very clever American writer, whose books have been
much read and admired, says that when travelling in France in the
country, he never saw any signs of wealth or gentlemen's property. I
think he didn't want to admire anything French, but I wonder in what
part of France he has travelled. Besides the well-known historic
chateaux of Chaumont, Chenonceaux, Azay-le-Rideau, Maintenon, Dampierre,
Josselin, Valencay, and scores of others, there are quantities of small
Louis XV chateaux and manoirs, half hidden in a corner of a forest,
which the stranger never sees. They are quite charming, built of red
brick with white copings, with stiff old-fashioned gardens, and trees
cut into all sorts of fantastic shapes. Sometimes the parish church
touches the castle on one side, and there is a private entrance for the
seigneurs. The interior arrangements in some of the old ones leave much
to be desired in the way of comfort and modern improvements,--lighting
very bad, neither gas nor electricity, and I should think no baths
anywhere, hardly a tub. On the banks of the Seine and the Loire, near
the great forests, in all the departments near Paris there are
quantities of chateaux--some just on the border of the highroad,
separated from it by high iron gates, through which one sees long
winding alleys with stone benches and vases with red geraniums planted
in them, a sun-dial and stiff formal rows of trees--some less
pretentious with merely an ordinary wooden gate, generally open, and
always flowers of the simplest kind, geraniums, sunflowers, pinks,
dahlias, and chrysanthemums--what we call a jardin de cure, (curate's
garden)--but in great abundance. With very rare exceptions the lawns are
not well kept--one never sees in this country the smooth green turf that
one does in England.
Some of the old chateaux are very stately--sometimes one enters by a
large quadrangle, quite surrounded by low arcades covered with ivy, a
fountain and good-sized basin in the middle of the courtyard, and a big
clock over the door--sometimes they stand in a moat, one goes over a
drawbridge with massive doors, studded with iron nails and strong iron
bolts and chains which defend the entrance, making one think of old
feudal days, when might was right, and if a man wanted his neighbours
property, he simply took it. Even some of the smaller chateaux have
moats. I think they are more picturesque than comfortable--an
ivy-covered house with a moat around it is a nest for mosquitoes and
insects of all kinds, and I fancy the damp from the water must finish by
pervading the house. French people of all classes love the country and a
garden with bright flowers, and if the poorer ones can combine a rabbit
hutch with the flowers they are quite happy.
I have heard W. speak sometimes of a fine old chateau in our
department--(Aisne) belonging to a deputy, who invited his friends to
shoot and breakfast. The cuisine and shooting were excellent, but the
accommodations fantastic. The neighbours said nothing had been renewed
or cleaned since the chateau was occupied by the Cossacks under the
first Napoleon.
We got very little country life during those years at the Foreign
Office. Twice a year, in April and August, W. went to Laon for his
Conseil-General, over which he presided, but he was rarely able to stay
all through the session. He was always present on the opening day, and
at the prefet's dinner, and took that opportunity to make a short
speech, explaining the foreign policy of the Government. I don't think
it interested his colleagues as much as all the local questions--roads,
schools, etc. It is astonishing how much time is wasted and how much
letter-writing is necessitated by the simplest change in a road or
railway crossing in France. We had rather a short narrow turning to get
into our gate at Bourneville, and W. wanted to have the road enlarged
just a little, so as to avoid the sharp angle. It didn't interfere with
any one, as we were several yards from the highroad, but it was months,
more than a year, before the thing was done. Any one of the workmen on
the farm would have finished it in a day's work.
At one of our small dinners I had such a characteristic answer from an
English diplomatist, who had been ambassador at St. Petersburg. He was
really a charming talker, but wouldn't speak French. That was of no
consequence as long as he only talked to me, but naturally all the
people at the table wanted to talk to him, and when the general
conversation languished, at last, I said to him: "I wish you would speak
French; none of these gentlemen speak any other language." (It was quite
true, the men of my husband's age spoke very rarely any other language
but their own; now almost all the younger generation speak German or
English or both. Almost all my son's friends speak English perfectly.)
"Oh no, I can't," he said; "I haven't enough the habit of speaking
French. I don't say the things I want to say, only the things I can say,
which is very different." "But what did you do in Russia?" "All the
women speak English." "But for affairs, diplomatic negotiations?" "All
the women speak English." I have often heard it said that the Russian
women were much more clever than the men. He evidently had found
it true.
VI
THE EXPOSITION YEAR
The big political dinners were always interesting. On one occasion we
had a banquet on the 2d of December. My left-hand neighbour, a senator,
said to me casually: "This room looks very different from what it did
the last time I was in it." "Does it? I should have thought a big
official dinner at the Foreign Office would have been precisely the same
under any regime." "A dinner perhaps, but on that occasion we were not
precisely dining. I and a number of my friends had just been arrested,
and we were waiting here in this room strictly guarded, until it was
decided what should be done with us." Then I remembered that it was the
2d of December, the anniversary of Louis Napoleon's coup d'etat. He said
they were quite unprepared for it, in spite of warnings. He was sent out
of the country for a little while, but I don't think his exile was a
very terrible one.
I got my first lesson in diplomatic politeness from Lord Lyons, then
British ambassador in Paris. He was in Paris during the Franco-German
War, knew everybody, and had a great position. He gave very handsome
dinners, liked his guests to be punctual, was very punctual himself,
always arrived on the stroke of eight when he dined with us. We had an
Annamite mission to dine one night and had invited almost all the
ambassadors and ministers to meet them. There had been a stormy sitting
at the Chamber and W. was late. As soon as I was ready I went to his
library and waited for him; I couldn't go down and receive a foreign
mission without him. We were quite seven or eight minutes late and found
all the company assembled (except the Annamites, who were waiting with
their interpreter in another room to make their entry in proper style).
As I shook hands with Lord Lyons (who was doyen of the diplomatic corps)
he said to me: "Ah, Madame Waddington, I see the Republic is becoming
very royal; you don't receive your guests any more, merely come into the
room when all the company is assembled." He said it quite smilingly, but
I understood very well, and of course we ought to have been there when
the first guests arrived. He was very amiable all the same and told me a
great many useful things--for instance, that I must never invite a
cardinal and an ambassador together, as neither of them would yield the
precedence and I would find myself in a very awkward position.
[Illustration: Lord Lyons.]
The Annamites were something awful to see. In their country all the men
of a certain standing blacken their teeth, and I suppose the dye makes
their teeth fall out, as they hadn't any apparently, and when they
opened their mouths the black caverns one saw were terrifying. I had
been warned, but notwithstanding it made a most disagreeable impression
on me. They were very richly attired, particularly the first three, who
were tres grands seigneurs in Annam,--heavily embroidered silk robes,
feathers, and jewels, and when they didn't open their mouths they were
rather a decorative group,--were tall, powerfully built men. They knew
no French nor English--spoke through the interpreter. My intercourse
with them was very limited. They were not near me at dinner, but
afterward I tried to talk to them a little. They all stood in a group at
one end of the room, flanked by an interpreter--the three principal
chiefs well in front. I don't know what the interpreter said to them
from me, probably embellished my very banal remarks with flowers of
rhetoric, but they were very smiling, opening wide their black mouths
and made me very low bows--evidently appreciated my intention and effort
to be amiable.
They brought us presents, carpets, carved and inlaid mother-of-pearl
boxes, cabinets, and some curious saddles, also gold-embroidered
cushions and slippers. Some Arab horses were announced with great pomp
from the Sultan's stables. I was rather interested in them, thought it
would be amusing to drive a long-tailed Arab pony in a little cart in
the morning. They were brought one morning to the Quai d'Orsay, and W.
gave rendezvous to Comte de Pontecoulant and some of the sporting men of
the cabinet, in the courtyard. There were also several stablemen, all
much interested in the idea of taming the fiery steeds of the desert.
The first look was disappointing. They were thin, scraggy animals,
apparently all legs and manes. Long tails they had, and small heads, but
anything so tame and sluggish in their movements could hardly be
imagined. One could scarcely get them to canter around the courtyard. We
were all rather disgusted, as sometimes one sees pretty little Arab
horses in Paris. I don't know what became of them; I fancy they were
sent to the cavalry stables.
Our first great function that winter was the service at the Madeleine
for the King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel, who died suddenly in the
beginning of January, 1878. France sent a special mission to the
funeral--the old Marshal Canrobert, who took with him the marshal's son,
Fabrice de MacMahon. The Church of the Madeleine was filled with people
of all kinds--the diplomatic corps in uniform, a very large
representation of senators and deputies. There was a slight hesitation
among some of the Left--who were ardent sympathisers with young
Italy--but who didn't care to compromise themselves by taking part in a
religious ceremony. However, as a rule they went. Some of the ladies of
the Right were rather put out at having to go in deep mourning to the
service. I said to one of them: "But you are not correct; you have a
black dress certainly, but I don't think pearl-grey gloves are proper
for such an occasion." "Oh, they express quite sufficiently the grief I
feel on this occasion."
It was curious that the King should have gone before the old Pope, who
had been failing for some time. Every day we expected to hear of his
death. There were many speculations over the new King of Italy, the
Prince Humbert of our day. As we had lived so many years in Rome, I was
often asked what he was like, but I really had no opinion. One saw him
very little. I remember one day in the hunting-field he got a nasty
fall. His horse put his foot in a hole and fell with him. It looked a
bad accident, as if the horse were going to roll over on him. I, with
one of my friends, was near, and seeing an accident (I didn't know who
it was) naturally stopped to see if our groom could do anything, but an
officer rode hurriedly up and begged us to go on, that the Prince would
be very much annoyed if any one, particularly a woman, should notice his
fall. I saw him later in the day, looking all right on another horse,
and no one made any allusion to the accident.
About a month after Victor Emmanuel's death the old Pope died, the 8th
of February, 1878, quite suddenly at the end. He was buried of course in
Rome, and it was very difficult to arrange for his funeral in the Rome
of the King of Italy. However, he did lie in state at St. Peter's, the
noble garde in their splendid uniforms standing close around the
catafalque--long lines of Italian soldiers, the bersaglieri with their
waving plumes, on each side of the great aisle. There was a magnificent
service for him at Notre Dame. The Chambers raised their sitting as a
mark of respect to the head of the church, and again there was a great
attendance at the cathedral. There were many discussions in the monde
(society not official) "as to whether one should wear mourning for the
Saint Pere." I believe the correct thing is not to wear mourning, but
almost all the ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain went about in black
garments for some time. One of my friends put it rather graphically: "Si
on a un ruban rose dans les cheveux on a tout de suite l'air d'etre la
maitresse de Rochefort."
All Europe was engrossed with the question of the Pope's successor.
Intrigues and undercurrents were going on hard in Rome, and the issue of
the conclave was impatiently awaited. No one could predict any result.
The election of Cardinal Pecci, future Leo XIII, seemed satisfactory, at
least in the beginning.
My winter passed pleasantly enough; I began to feel more at home in my
new quarters, and saw many interesting people of all kinds. Every now
and then there would be a very lively debate in the Parliament. W. would
come home very late, saying things couldn't go on like that, and we
would surely be out of office in a few weeks. We always kept our house
in the rue Dumont d'Urville, and I went over every week, often thinking
that in a few days we should be back there again.