The Bourbon Kings of France (34 page)

One reason for the survival of Richelieu’s ministry was the fact that its Minister of the Interior was M Elie Decazes. This dark-haired, fine-featured Gascon lawyer in his early thirties, the son of a little notary in the Gironde, had replaced Blacas as the King’s dear friend. Of his appearance Talleyrand said—knowing that his words would be reported to Louis—‘He resembles a moderately good-looking hairdresser’s assistant.’ Minister of Police during the First Restoration, Decazes had won his master’s confidence by following him to Ghent, and then endeared himself by retailing malicious gossip about the country’s leading figures, which he gleaned from police files. He never bored the King with tiresome detail but took care that he was informed of anything of genuine importance. In addition he was of a literary turn of mind, and an excellent listener who enjoyed Louis’s stories. Soon the King was infatuated, addressing him as
‘mon fils’
and writing to him three times a day—‘Come to receive the tenderest embraces of thy friend, thy father, thy Louis.’ He even gave his adorable minister English lessons, and was amazed by his progress; in fact Decazes was discreetly visiting the best tutor in Paris after each lesson. The King said of ‘his darling child’ that, ‘I will raise him so high that the greatest lords will envy him.’ Again, one’s mind goes back to Louis XIII.

The new favourite described his policy as ‘to nationalize royalism and to royalize nationalism’. It was Decazes who persuaded the King to dissolve the
Chambre Introuvable
in autumn 1816, obtaining a much more workable majority, and who was responsible for relaxing the press laws in 1817. The same year Louis approved a revision of the electoral laws, which gave the government more control of the
Chambre des Députés
. They were able to bring in the famous ‘law’ of Marshal Gouvion Saint-Cyr, which decided the structure of the French army until the Third Republic. Gouvion believed that while the monarchy could not trust the old Imperial army, it must none the less have reliable troops if France was to be a great power again. Henceforward the French army was recruited by a limited method of conscription which was infinitely less onerous than the universal conscription of Napoleon. Not only were many Imperial officers reinstated, but a third of all commissions were reserved for promotions from the ranks.

For all his moderate policies, there was almost excessive pomp and ceremony at the court of Louis XVIII. Balzac jokes that the King’s drawing-rooms were so full of powdered heads ‘that seen from above they gave the impression of a carpet of snow’. So conscious was Louis of protocol that when one day he fell over and lay helpless on the floor of the Tuileries and a junior officer named Nogent tried to help him to his feet, the King cried out,
‘Non, O non, M de Nogent!’
and insisted on remaining on the ground till the Captain of the Guard arrived. Duchesses still sat on
tabourets
(stools) while lesser ladies stood. There were still royal cup-bearers and the Hundred Swiss still mounted guard. Louis observed a monotonous routine, rising at seven o’clock, when he was wakened by the First Gentleman of the Bedchamber. The King’s daily council lasted from nine until he breakfasted at ten with his household—he retained the English hours of eating which he had known at Hartwell. From eleven till midday he gave audiences; the usual place for these in the Tuileries was a small study with an arched window, which had been Napoleon’s favourite room; here Louis worked at an English walnut table from Hartwell. At midday the old Voltairean attended Mass, despite certain suspicions as to his sincerity—Guizot speaks of ‘the freethinker’s imagination which his grandfather had bequeathed him’—after which he received his ministers or held a weekly
Conseil du Roi
. He was too unfit to hunt, so instead he was taken for carriage exercise every afternoon, always at full gallop as he loved speed; sometimes 300 horses were used in relays.

Another relaxation was conversation; Louis XVIII was a most amusing
raconteur
with a choice collection of anecdotes and dirty jokes; even Talleyrand admitted that, ‘His conversation never flags and is always interesting.’ The King sometimes gave delightful little dinner parties where he was the most convivial of hosts. He could disarm critics with his wit and seeming friendliness; one gambit, when communicating something known to the entire court, was to begin, ‘Let me tell you in the strictest confidence …’

Usually, however, Louis dined at six with the royal family, a meal which was probably the chief pleasure of his life, for he remained a gourmet until the very end (Lady Morgan was told that he ate enough for four, though, added her devoutly royalist informant,
‘C’est un appétit charmant, charmant’
). Finally, he received a few privileged friends before retiring to bed shortly after nine o’clock.

One long-forgotten pleasure was the French theatre. At the end of 1814 the King attended Racine’s
Britannicus
at the Comédie Française, and the great Talma’s performance reduced him to tears, bringing him to his feet in homage. He told the actor, ‘I have a right to consider myself a critic, M Talma, as I saw Lekain’ (the French Garrick, who had died in 1778). Soon Louis was going to the play once a week, either to the Comédie, or to his own theatre in the Tuileries. Although Talma was a protégé of Napoleon—royalists joked that the tyrant had taken lessons in deportment from the tragedian—and always remained a declared Bonapartist, the King none the less confirmed his pension. Nor did he blame him for performing before the Emperor during the Hundred Days, and later awarded him an additional pension of 30,000 francs (£ 1,200) from his own privy purse. He never lost his love of Talma’s acting, for all its innovations, and particularly enjoyed his interpretation of Corneille’s
Cid
. Talma was not the only actor whom Louis helped. He gave the equally great Mme Mars an annual pension of 20,000 francs, and when a priest refused to bury Mme Raucourt, an earlier ornament of the Comédie Française, sent one of his own chaplains to conduct the service.

Louis eventually acquired a certain popularity. His oddities amused the French. The arrival of his wheel-chair at the theatre caused a hilarity which verged on affection. Wits called him
‘Louis deux fois neuf’
, referring to his two restorations, and joked that ‘The King is one part old woman, one part capon, one part Son of France and one part bookworm.’

Indeed, superficially Louis XVIII may seem a rather endearing figure. In reality he was the least likeable of his dynasty, cold, calculating and selfish, with little kindness or sympathy. Chateaubriand thought that, ‘Without being cruel, the King was hardly human, so insensitive was he to other people’s misfortunes.’ Talleyrand (of all people) once observed, ‘Egotistical, insensitive, epicurean and ungrateful, that is what I have always found Louis XVIII.’

Louis’s curious character intrigued contemporary novelists. Dumas has a peculiarly convincing portrait of him in
The Count of Monte Cristo
, hearing the news of Napoleon’s return ‘while making a note in a volume of Horace, Gryphius’s edition, which was much indebted to the sagacious philosophical observations of His Majesty.’ Balzac’s picture of Louis in
Le Bal de Sceaux
carries no less conviction. The
‘auguste littérateur’
relishes a polished turn of phrase or a
bon mot
; his own conversation—he has ‘a sharp, thin little voice’—is full of puns, epigrams and allusions to the classics, and he is invariably mocking and malicious. That vulgar but perceptive woman, Lady Morgan, wrote in her travel diary in 1816, ‘The King’s character and constitution, his tastes and his habits, all tend to repose. He is false, not ferocious, and having permitted Ultra vengeance to glut itself during the first period of his Restoration, he now resumes habitudes nourished in his long exile. A fine gentleman, an elegant scholar; graceful (if not grateful), as the Bourbons always are; gracious, as the French princes always have been, even when their courtesies meant nothing—he owes much to the privacy and privation of Hartwell…. Sensual and sentimental, he applies the
bonhommie
of the old court to the courtiers of the present. He has his
petit mot galant
for the ladies.’ However, the lady novelist is a little confused by his attitude towards Decazes. ‘He
affiches
his innocent passion for the sister of the Duc de Decazes, and his friendship for her brother (his Prime Minister), by throwing his arms around his neck
en bon Papa
.’ None the less, Lady Morgan knew enough to recognize Louis’s ‘inherent falseness’.

The Restoration is not a popular period with French historians. It seems tame compared to the Revolution and the Empire; even at the time Chateaubriand grumbled, ‘I have seen Louis XVI and Bonaparte die; after that it is a bad joke to live longer.’ Furthermore, feelings of social inferiority and resentment engendered during that Indian summer of the French aristocracy may well have bequeathed an atavistic distaste for the Restoration. Yet it was in many ways a French equivalent of the English Regency, with a noticeably full-blooded style. It was very much a young man’s world, the world of Balzac’s heroes, Eugène de Rastignac and Lucien de Rubempré, and of Stendhal’s Julien Sorel, trying to make their fortunes in a Paris which, although still without boulevards, had many of its modern landmarks, like the Bourse and the Madeleine, the Place Vendôme and the rue de Rivoli. It was gas-lit and by the end of the period it even had omnibuses. Nor was it merely the world of the rich dandies and adventurers who thronged the Opéra and the casinos, Tortoni’s restaurant, the hôtels of the Faubourg Saint-Germain and the bankers’ palaces in the Chaussée d’Antin. This was the time when Paris first became Bohemian and when the Latin Quarter became famous; the Left Bank was full of young writers, painters and law students of the sort depicted in Murger’s
Scenes de la Vie de Bohème
, with their weird clothes and hand-to-mouth existence.

Culturally, it was a wonderful time. Freed from the censorship of the Napoleonic police state, Paris became the literary, artistic and musical centre of the world, full of enthusiasm and new ideas. In 1819 Lamartine published his
Méditations
, and Vigny brought out his first poems in 1822. Prosper Merimée, Dumas, Balzac, Stendhal, Sainte-Beuve and Alfred de Musset all published their first works during the Restoration. Few regimes have enjoyed such gratifying support from contemporary writers. Victor Hugo produced his own first book of verse in 1822, and its inspiration was so profoundly royalist that Louis XVIII awarded him a pension of 1,000 francs. And if the classical tradition of French painting was majestically continued by Ingres, such Romantic giants emerged as Delacroix and Géricault. As for music, Berlioz performed his first Mass in 1825 and composed his
Romeo et Juliette
three years later; while everyone enjoyed Ahber’s cheerful operas. Even if French Romanticism did not reach its full bloom until the 1830s, its beginnings must unquestionably be sought under the Restoration.

The government took a laudably constructive part in the nation’s intellectual life. The Academie Française was given back the predominance of which it had been deprived by Napoleon. The Ecole des Chartes was founded in 1821, the Ecole des Arts et Manufactures in 1828 and the Ecole des Beaux Arts in 1830.

The Restoration tried hard to fill the vacuum left by the departure of Emperor-worship, with a cult of Henri IV, who was officially elevated to ‘best and favourite King’ (Nancy Mitford’s words). His statue was re-erected on the Pont Neuf—Victor Hugo wrote an ecstatic ode to celebrate the event—and other statues were set up all over France, while his bust or his portrait presided in every town hall. The
Vert Galant
’s head also replaced that of Napoleon on the cross of the Légion d’Honneur. Instead of the Imperialist
Chant du Départ
, the national anthem became
Vive Henri Quatre
; its cheerful tune was supported by other royalist airs associated with Henri, notably
Charmante Gabrielle
. There were even free performances for the poor of Collé’s
La Partie de Chasse de Henri IV
, a play which glorified the monarch. The official court painter, Baron Gérard, constantly produced ‘scenes’ from the great King’s life. Rather touchingly, Louis wore a little white heron’s feather in his hat in imitation of his ancestor’s famous white plume. Nothing could have shown more plainly how effete and worn out was the dynasty than these reminders of Henri IV.

A cult of the martyred Louis XVI and his Queen and of Louis XVII was also encouraged. Their remains were discovered and identified—Chateaubriand could still recognize Marie Antoinette’s features—and then reburied at Saint-Denis. All the other bones thrown out of the abbey in 1793 were dug up and re-interred in two vaults. One vault bore the inscription, ‘Here lie the mortal remains of eighteen Kings, from Dagobert to Henri III; ten Queens, from Nantilde, wife of Dagobert, to Marguerite de Valois, first wife of Henri IV; twenty-four Dauphins, Princes and Princesses, Children and Grandchildren of France.’ The inscription on the other vault read, ‘Here lie the mortal remains of seven Kings, from Charles V to Louis XV; seven Queens, from Jeanne de Bourbon, wife of Charles V, to Marie Leszczynska, wife of Louis XV; Dauphins and Dauphinesses, Princes and Princesses, Children and Grandchildren of France, to the number of forty-seven, from the second son of Henri IV to the Dauphin, eldest son of Louis XVI’. But the magic had gone for ever. As the twentieth-century Royalist Bernanos made his curé say, despairingly, ‘What force could have been capable of re-imposing the yoke?’

Despite a furious outcry from Artois and the Ultras, when Richelieu resigned in December 1818 after quarrelling with Decazes, Louis appointed a still more moderate Prime Minister, General Augustin Dessoles, though the new government’s real leader was Decazes. The King cried all day at not being able to keep Richelieu; even if he was not particularly attached to him as a man, he recognized his worth. Decazes introduced new and surprisingly tolerant press laws, which were blocked by the upper Chamber, so Louis created nearly seventy new Peers, enabling the government virtually to abolish censorship. Even Liberals began to applaud the King. The Charter had become a kind of Edict of Nantes, which both protected liberties and strengthened the monarchy. The bourgeoisie and the peasants began to accept the regime, soothed by its conciliatory attitude and by the return of peace and prosperity.