The Duke Abroad, or, The Commerce of Titles
From “A Gentleman’s Gentlemen”—1854
The Paris Moniteur (whose pages habitually tremble between envy and admiration, like an opera singer before a high note) reports that M. le Duc de Mallard—known, in less ascendant times, as the Marquis de Canard—has brought his plumage to the Court of Napoleon III. The story, all ribbons and rumour, flutters across the Channel as swiftly as a modiste’s sigh, and naturally arrives perfumed. One imagines the correspondent writing with a hand still gloved, tapping ash away from the column with a flick more studied than his syntax.
It is said—though no two voices agree upon where the first syllable of “said” begins—that the Duke’s presence in France is an embellishment to diplomacy: an English feather in an imperial bonnet, a gesture of that peculiarly European courtship which no one admits exists. Whether the Emperor receives him as emissary or as entertainment is an ambiguity suited to every age and none.
Lady Isabella Ermingarde Felicity Fitzartur (the name alone is an aria!) attends her husband, drawn across the Channel, pale and replete with ancestral consequence, though the accent of her fortune, one learns, is distinctly American. One may imagine her fortune itself travelling steerage, seasick yet inexhaustible. “A dollar princess,” sigh the Parisian feuilletons, ever eager to measure affection by exchange value, and to mistrust both when the arithmetic proves too careful.
Her father, a baron of steel or sugar (sources differ; I prefer to think both, for refinement has always depended upon metallurgy and sweetness in equal measure), has secured by marriage what titled celibacy could never earn: a seat among those who dine without asking the price of the cutlery. It is not precisely a scandal; merely an experiment in social chemistry. And yet, there is talk—whispered at the thresholds of the Tuileries—that the lady’s diamond train and the Duke’s temper run on the same perilous fuel: inherited combustion.
Historically, alliances between English titles and American ledgers have followed a kind of natural law—the attraction between debt and desire, obligation and ornament. A correspondent in The Illustrated Court Clarion (January, 1853) remarked, “Every duchess from the New World is a transatlantic compromise, neither purchased nor free.” The observation was immediately retracted the following week, which only reinforced its truth.
Rumour says Lady Isabella’s trousseau reached a million guineas—a figure so prodigious that even francs begin to blush in its vicinity. The sum includes purchases at Cartier, Vuitton, and—most curiously—Chanel, whom nobody expected to exist until well into the next century. That detail, among others, suggests that time in Paris behaves not as it does in England. I submit the theory (which I make no effort to prove) that the French exist one epoch ahead, suffering the fatigue of tomorrow while we perfect yesterday’s mistakes.
The Mallards’ retinue numbers, by one count, sixty-two servants, three hairdressers, two chaplains, one mechanical bird, and a boy reputed to cry only when paid. I admire the efficiency: every temperament delegated, every appetite rehearsed. Power to, not power over—the mark of civilisation, if civilisation even now survives in the household inventory.
Of the Duke himself: he is a man perpetually turning towards his reputation as though to see whether it follows him in proper deference. Years ago, at a luncheon in Kent, he informed me that wealth is “useful chiefly as evidence of what one has dared to destroy.” The remark impressed me by its candour and by the fact that he had, at that moment, just overturned his port upon the lap of a bishop. One must, I suppose, live one’s philosophy—like a relic glowing faintly in the dark.
The Parisian writer hints that the Fitzartur women are destined to expire young—financially or otherwise—which may explain the Duke’s melancholy gallantry. A continental wag remarked (in the Gazette du Jour): “English husbands are widowers waiting for credentials.” Cruel, naturally, but cruelty is Paris’s native tongue.
As for the suggestion that our Duke contemplates another bride—a Scheherazade, perhaps—what man of his means has not already married the idea of escape? To long in earnest for mystery is the surest sign of satiety. Still, for the sake of national pride, one hopes he postpones his next nuptials until the present wife has finished purchasing a second wardrobe. Extravagance, like history, ought never to be rushed.
There is, beneath such spectacle, the faintest theology of exchange. We sell our truths for the flavour of secrecy, our virtue for the luxury of disclosure. The Duke displays what the rest of us conceal; in this, he is a moralist of the rarest order. What is reputation but expenditure, and expenditure the only honest proof of desire? Even saints, I imagine, are measured by the collateral they abandon.
A word, too, on her complexion—our pallid Isabella. One French note describes her as “translucent”; another, “illuminated from within, like an English lamp prized for being unnecessary.” A more diplomatic view: she suffers from the excess of visibility to which all new fortunes are subject. The body grows faint when it must represent so much.
From the Imperial perspective, the couple’s arrival is an event of economic theatre. ‘The British aristocracy,’ writes the sardonic economist M. d’Aubigny (whose pamphlets few read but many quote), ‘exports no goods, only titles—each a vessel for importing gold.’ France thus receives her luxuries disguised as visitors; we, in turn, receive the illusion of honour uncontaminated by labour. Everyone profits, though none would dare list the transactions.
At this point, the reader expects a moral. I have none to offer. The matter resists closure like silk refusing a straight crease. Perhaps that is its lesson—if we permit ourselves so vulgar a word—that the great families of Europe now behave like reflections in a mirror-room, each bowing to the distortion of another.
Meanwhile I, a mere observer, record what I am not supposed to see: that perfection in appearance requires perpetual subtraction from what is real. The Duchess will return home poorer, lovelier; the Duke, richer in scandal; France, entertained; and England, once more reassured that her decadence remains unmistakably her own.
History, as the Germans insist, moves in four-four time—but always with an extra dissonant chord. I find the measure infinitely consoling.
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