The Glitter and the Gold

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by Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan


  It seemed almost as if fate had decreed that he should re-enter my life. But even after my civil and religious marriage we were, as I was to find, not considered married by the Catholic Church.

  In France divorce is practically nonexistent and Catholics who wish to remarry have to apply to the Roman Rota for the dissolution of previous ties. Orthodox Catholics are therefore forbidden to recognize the marriage of a Catholic to a divorced person unless the latter's marriage has been dissolved by the Church. The Balsans, as devout Catholics, could not receive me, and sensing the rift in the family that my marriage to Jacques had made I begged him not to break with them, for I knew the deep affection they bore one another. Coming from England where Catholics are subjected to religious bias, I found the reverse to be the case in France, and was surprised when in Protestant circles 1 was acclaimed for refusing to change my religion as many had done before me.

  Looking back on these first years of my second marriage I realized the essentially self-contained life we led. In our close companionship the outer world meant little to us and if certain families refused to recognize our marriage, we were happily not dependent on the pleasures they could offer.

  Sanctified as our marriage had been in an Episcopal Church, it was to me completely valid; and I would have been content to ignore the ultra-religious views that prevented the orthodox Catholics from recognizing it. But in 1926, when Marlborough decided he wanted his first marriage annulled, the pressure brought by my French family and my desire to see Jacques at peace with them determined my decision to approach the Rota.

  On consulting my English lawyer. Sir Charles Russell, a Catholic and a devoted friend, I found that my only valid claim to an annulment was the fact that I had been married against my will. It pained me to approach my mother for her consent, but on learning that the proceedings were entirely private we agreed to take the necessary steps. The evidence once collected, I appeared with other witnesses before an English tribunal of Catholic priests versed in canonical law. My former governess. Miss Harper, gave valuable testimony, since she had personally witnessed the coercion to which I had been subjected. The application was then sent to the Rota, which granted the annulment.

  All would have been well had not Marlborough gone to Rome to be received in audience by the Pope. News of the annulment then got about and promptly unloosed a blast of Protestant wrath aimed at the Rota for annulling an Episcopal marriage. Alas, gone were our privacy and peace of mind as once again die press exposed my story. My mother, with her usual courage, remained undaunted, but I suffered to see her in so unfavorable a light, knowing that she had hoped to ensure my happiness with the marriage she had forced upon me. Religious controversies are apt to be bitter; but there was no truth in the accusation that the Rota had been bribed. Counsels' fees and the cost of collecting evidence were the only disbursements and were much less than the charges of a legal divorce. It was, however, with some bitterness that I reflected that it had required three legal interventions to obtain my freedom, and then a fourth in the form of the Rota, each accompanied by unpleasant and unnecessary publicity.

  After the annulment was granted, I was married to Jacques in a Catholic ceremony and joined the family circle. The Balsans lived at Châteauroux in the center of France. Their cloth factories had been founded by the Prince de Conde at the instigation of the Minister Colbert, who in the reign of Louis XIV reconstituted the commerce and industries of France. The family lived in the château and its dependencies, which were surrounded by parklike grounds; the factories were near by.

  On this, my first visit, the doors of the salon opened on a typical family scene. There were at least twenty people assembled in various groups—Jacques's brothers—sisters—cousins—his nephews and nieces. In a hergere near the hearth sat a lovely old lady dressed in black with a touch of lace. She was Madame Charles Balsan, Jacques's aunt and head of the family, who with masterful authority ensured the traditional discipline of the Catholic Church. Greeting me with affection, she then called her children by name and presented them with a word of kindly appraisal for each. That she also had humor and wit I realized as soon as she spoke, and later when she wrote to me I marveled at her lovely penmanship and the beauty and elegance of her style. When, handing me a golden box—a family heirloom—she welcomed me to the family circle, I sensed her unspoken question: "Can you appreciate and understand why for so long against our love and personal desires you have been ostracized?" And later when I wrote to her and expressed my understanding she, in a generous gesture, read my letter to the assembled family. It is in truth a memory of gracious authority I have of her.

  The day after my meeting with her, Jacques and I returned to our house in Paris where so many happy years had been spent even before this family reunion. It overlooked the Champs de Mars, that big garden that stretches its green swards from the banks of the Seine to the fine old buildings of the £cole de Guerre. In the mornings I awoke to the gay gallop of cavalry officers as they rode past our windows on the bridle path that encircles the Gardens. Later little children came to play there with their buckets and spades. At midday, workmen ate their luncheon on the benches that lined the paths, engaging in those heated discussions Latins find so stimulating. Men and women sat reading their papers under the trees. They each had their special chair placed in a favorite spot. In time I came to know the papers they read and the children who answered their call. We used to nod and smile at each other—"Bonjour, Madame"— as I passed. How lovely were those spring and early summer days. The gay flowers in the parterres, the green velvet of the lawns, the golden rivulets of sand that enclosed them, the scent of lilacs and laburnum, the acacias stretching the stiff bouquets of their blooms to the sky, the birds singing, the swans on the gay little pond and beyond, the clear gray waters of the Seine lapping against the stone embankments where fishermen fished or read die news. At night the lights from the Eiffel Tower flashed above our roof and the stars seemed to answer from high above. Oh, the heartbreaking beauty of Paris in springtime! Our house had been built by Sargent, a French architect, whose chief merit lay in his faithful reproduction of eighteenth-century proportions. We paneled the spacious high-ceilinged rooms with old boiseries and found furniture and bibelots to complete them. There were exciting days hunting the right thing for the right place. We used to wander up and down the quays and streets with eyes glued to shop windows for a find. Then would follow a strategic approach as with a casual look we would inquire the price of an object. Later, but still casually, we would draw near to our find, and the inevitable bargaining would begin. I will never forget the excitement with which we first came upon Renoir's "La Baigneuse," or the pride of possession that pearl-tinted nude gave us when, like a luminous jewel, it adorned our salon. When the war came we greatly feared that it was lost to us, but eventually "La Baigneuse" came to America with our other possessions. In 1946 we gave it to "American Aid to France" to provide food for French children. When it was sold for $115,000 I thought of Renoir who, poor and hungry, had obtained only a few hundred francs for his pictures; and I wished he could have lived to know the sum his masterpiece had brought and how it had provided food for starving French children.

  Our house was finally redecorated. Boiseries of the eighteenth century gave elegance and charm to the walls and a beautiful Boucher tapestry that my father had owned and which my brothers had kindly given me adorned the dining room. The collection of furniture, pictures and bibelots which it had given us such pleasure to select was completed. The moment had come when the result of so much careful research must be submitted to the judgment of others.

  The French like meeting foreigners, but seldom invite them. It seemed appropriate that we should give cosmopolitan parties. Luncheons centered round a literary or political personality became our spécialité. In a country where general conversation is brilliant a party of eight or at the most ten is advisable, and it requires care to secure a successful blend. I found, alas—perhaps because of their innate polit
eness—that when foreigners are present the French rarely wage those controversial discussions at which they excel. I was struck by the pertinacity of the Latin mind, by its critical tenacity, by its dislike of vague verbiage, and by the thoroughness of a knowledge that, if sometimes less extensive, is more often precise. It seemed to me that the French seldom indulge in the flights of fantasy the English are prone to. Sentimental journeys are not to their taste, but realism often holds a deeper sentiment.

  Our cosmopolitan parties were gay and the house with its objects of art provoked interesting discussions, for nearly everyone in France "collects" or has a hobby. How gratifying it proved to have a guest admire a recent acquisition and how rare it was to have an iced cocktail glass placed upon a marquetry table.

  Among the parties we preferred were those given at the British Embassy, the fine house and garden that had once belonged to Pauline Borghese. French society divided into three quite separate castes—the ancien régime, comprising the great names of French history under the kings; the noblesse d'Empire created by Napoleon I and III; and the Corps Diplomatique with the ministers of the Republic. It created a problem for hostesses. To reconcile these various elements, so jealous of their special prerogatives, was a thankless task no one would willingly undertake, and only a foreign ambassador could successfully overcome the problem posed by the etiquette of seating them. At the Embassy dinners given in honor of the President of the Republic there appeared to be complete harmony among these inimical elements; even the dukes of France and those of the short-lived Empires, for the time being at least, reconciled their differences. On the table which seated sixty guests gleamed the famous gilt service made for Napoleon's beautiful sister. It had been acquired by the British government, together with the house and gardens, for a sum rumor had it the service alone would now fetch. These dinners were invariably agreeable, and were sometimes enlivened by an amusing incident. There was the Ambassador's wife with a reputation for vagueness who, while leading the procession into dinner on the arm of the President of the French Republic, forgot which of the numerous rooms we were dining in, and had to be recalled by an intimidated and harassed butler. Another, who was perhaps more addicted to art than to diplomacy would, after dinner, quite oblivious of her other guests, retire to her studio with a sitter. And still further back in the annals of time there was one who loved playing poker and dragged unwilling victims to a game. But such eccentrics only added fuel to the fire British idiosyncrasies kept alight, and delighted the French, who are always ready to condone a type! Receptions at the British Embassy, especially during the Marquess of Crewe's time, were done in the grand manner, and yet with the ease and informality perfectly trained English servants make possible. Even though the butler, as I once heard him do, announced the Duchesse de Noailles as the Duchesse d'Uzès and a flustered attaché later presented her as the Duchesse de la Trémouille, what did it matter since she remained a Duchess of France and, who knows, had perhaps risen a rung in the ladder.

  Among the parties given by our French acquaintances, I recall a most delightful evening in a beautiful hotel entre cour et jardin in the Rue de Varennes. It had been spared from looting during the Revolution and its eighteenth-century boiseries, furniture and objects of art remained intact. A ball to be perfect in such a scene needed period dress, and the Duchesse de Doudeauville had bid us come in costumes worn in Louis the XVth's time. I copied mine from a Nattier portrait—a white taffeta dress with a pink sash slung across one shoulder and in my powdered hair a tuft of roses. When I entered the ballroom a spontaneous burst of applause greeted my appearance, a compliment which for me enhanced an already enchanted evening. The musicians, dressed in eighteenth-century de La Rochefoucauld liveries, played soft nostalgic music. The lovely room alight with candles, the assembled company in costumes of an elegant fashion, seemed to reconstitute a past I had at some time lived. The fan I had found in my mother's possessions moved in my hand with a rhythm of its own, and in the mirror a reflection like a ghost of myself brought me the illusion of a glamorous past. It is an evening I love to recall because of its exquisite distinction.

  There is still another scene suggestive of past grandeur which I witnessed at the Polish Embassy. Countess Chlapowska had invited their Eminences the Papal Nuncio and the Archbishops of Paris and of Warsaw; and when they swept up the grand stairway in all their pontifical splendor preceded by liveried pages bearing lighted candelabra, as befitted "Princes of the Church," it was a sight worth remembering. Men bowed and women fell on their knees to kiss the Pontifical ring. I was amused by the maneuvers of those who would have deemed the evening lost had they not been spoken to by the guests of honor. How cleverly they managed to edge ever closer and closer until without positive rudeness they could no longer be ignored. I knew that for days after we would hear what their Eminences had told them.

  In Paris, an entertainment owed much of its distinction to the beauty of the old houses, arranged with discriminating taste, and to the excellence of the dinner. One had also the impression that the company had been chosen with a view to an exchange of ideas. The long interval, so apt to break the continuity of talk, when after dinner men smoke in the dining room, does not exist in France; a clever hostess knows how to stimulate general conversation successfully—no one person is permitted to dominate it and at the right moment the proper person is given the sign to intervene. French women have this art but I have never seen it successfully done in any other country.

  It was not only aristocratic parties that pleased us. A luncheon in a bourgeois home stands out with equal charm. We had been invited by Monsieur Justin Godart, who then was Minister of Public Health, to a luncheon in honor of the Titular Head of the Knights of Malta from whom our host was to receive a decoration. President Albert Lebrun, Madame Lebrun, Monsieur Edouard Herriot, and the Dowager Duchesse d’Uzès, who at an advanced age still took a prominent part in politics and sport, were fellow guests. As I entered the small apartment on the Quai Voltaire my hostess, a typical French housewife whose practical knowledge embraced every secret of the culinary art, drew me aside to confess anxiety about the ability of her new cook to attain the perfection she desired her luncheon to achieve, and inquired whether I would consider it out of place if she repaired to the kitchen. "On the contrary," I assured her, "it is better to risk the protocol than the excellence of a meal such a chosen company must be looking forward to." When a little later she returned to us, flushed but triumphant, I realized that my advice had been good. Indeed my neighbor, the veteran Minister Herriot, who with our hostess claimed Lyons as their birthplace, declared that she had fittingly upheld that city's claim to the best French cooking and what greater praise could she desire!

  I recall still another but very different occasion while Léon Blum was Prime Minister and we had a Socialist government whose sympathies were further to the left than any we had had before. Sinister reports, leaking through the lesser ministerial ranks, were casting depression over the most determined optimist, and at a luncheon at the Yugoslav Embassy I gleaned an inkling of the fears that foreshadowed an earlier Revolution. I had a French deputy as my neighbor, an aristocrat who viewed the trend of politics under the Socialist government with horror and indignation. It was my invariable habit to defend the other side in any argument and I maintained that France would never become Communist.

  "Do you not realize," he said, "that Blum has ordered the Préfet de Police to remove every policeman from the streets for the next twenty-four hours and that by tomorrow we may all be strung à la lanterne."

  I gasped, "But how dare you, a French deputy, cast fear amongst us when courage and above all cool heads are required?"

  He did not answer and I walked home across the Champs de Mars where workmen were repairing roads wondering if the paving stones they were amassing would be used as barricades or weapons. Only a few days before I had seen Blum and his Minister Coste sitting on the open back of a taxi driving down the Champs Élysées with extended, upraised
fists, and had barely found safety from a charging crowd in a forte cochere the concierge barricaded behind me.

  Communist demonstrations were becoming fairly common occurrences and a feeling of insecurity harried one's dreams with echoes of the tumbrels; and there were nightmares when the Nazi invasion seemed very close and we felt like pawns in a fateful game of chess.

  One day my secretary complained that she had been jeered at by a workman as she passed. "We are not cruel like the Russians," he had said, "and we will not kill you, but you are pretty and tomorrow you will be 'ma poule,' " meaning his girl. I consoled her by saying he was paying her a compliment, and that no threat was implied. For weeks we had been awakened every night by the singing of the "Internationale" in a neighboring factory where workmen were on a sit-down strike. They used to pass our house to sun themselves in the Champs de Mars, but they never caused the slightest disturbance, even when our well-dressed guests drove up to attend a charity concert I had organized. For my part, I had complete faith in their good sense, whatever others might say. It is a faith I have never lost.

  Throughout all those years, I was blissfully happy in my life with Jacques and with our wide circle of friends; but at first I missed the work I was accustomed to in England. I was therefore glad when in 1926 a group of social workers asked me to help them to build and equip a hospital for the professional classes. The middle classes (so called in France) had no hospital of their own; either they had to take a room in a clinic, often beyond their means, or else resign themselves to beds in a ward.

  A beautiful site and garden on the hill of Vincennes dominated by the guns of the old fortress was to be bought. It belonged to Jean Worth, who had been the leading dressmaker of his day. Dr. Du Bouchet of the American Hospital at Neuilly and Mr. Bernard Flurscheim planned a hospital of 360 private rooms together with a home and school for nurses. It was an ambitious scheme for a group of private individuals to undertake, and it was only after numerous conferences with the Minister of Health and a promise from the French government to supplement any funds raised in voluntary donations that we felt justified in buying the premises and starting building operations.

 

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