Louis Philippe in a Wigwam

— Pupil of Madame de Genlis, doorkeeper at the Jacobin Club, republican officer patronized by Danton, exile, teacher in a Swiss school, recognized prince of the blood, king, again in exile, in which he spent altogether twentyone of his seventy-seven years, Louis Philippe had an adventurous life ; but not the least romantic and a hitherto unknown episode in it was his doctoring a Cherokee Indian and passing a night in his wigwam. The story has just been told by the Marquis de Flers, the first biographer who has been allowed access to family papers.

Louis Philippe, then Duke of Orleans, left Hamburg on the 24th of September, 1796, for Philadelphia. The French Directory had made his departure from Europe a condition of the release of his brothers, the Duke of Montpensier and the Count of Beaujolais, who had had three and a half years of captivity, amid privations and dangers which doomed them to an early grave. They had attempted, indeed, to escape, but Montpensier, the rope breaking with him, fractured his ankle and was recaptured, whereupon Beaujolais, who had been more fortunate, gave himself up rather than be parted from his brother. After enjoying for a few days the hospitality of Mr. Cathalan, the American consul at Marseilles, they embarked, as guests of the United States government, in the Jupiter, a small Swedish vessel which had been chartered for the transport of eighty Americans redeemed from Algerian slavery. Contrary winds forced the Jupiter to put in at Gibraltar, where the princes received attentions from General O’Hara, who, captured at Toulon, had had, like themselves, experience of French prisons. After a ninety-three days’ passage they were welcomed by Louis Philippe, who had been waiting for them since the 21st of October.

The three princes heard Washington’s valedictory address, and were invited to pass a few days at Mount Vernon. After conversing with their host till late into the night, the yonng men, twenty-three, twenty-one, and eighteen years of age, were not a little surprised, on opening the bedroom window at half past six the next morning, to see him, then sixty-five, returning from an evidently long ride over his plantation.

“ Do you manage without sleep ? ” asked Louis Philippe at breakfast.

“ No, monseigneur, I sleep soundly ; and do you know why ? Because I have never written a letter, nor even a word, which would not bear being published. Consequently, as soon as I lie down I fall asleep.”

Washington planned a tour for his guests, and gave them letters of introduction. They went through Georgia and Alabama, and spent two days with the Cherokees, who had a special liking for Frenchmen. Louis Philippe, having fallen from his horse in the forest, and feeling a little unwell, thought it prudent to bleed himself, which operation he performed in the presence of the astonished Cherokees, to whom he explained by signs the virtues of phlebotomy. Thereupon they led him to a sick veteran, and asked him to bleed him. Louis Philippe, after inquiring as to the malady, made a slight incision, and in a few hours the old Indian felt much relieved. The Cherokees considered the paleface a great medicine man, were profuse in their thanks, and resolved on awarding him the highest mark of respect in their power. The whole family slept in the wigwam on mats, ranged in order of age and dignity. Louis Philippe was invited, and could not in politeness refuse, to pass the night on a mat between the grandmother and the great-aunt. Next day the princes took leave of their hosts, who would fain have detained them, and resumed their journey to Niagara, where Montpensier made a sketch of the falls for his album. This, with other of his productions, figured forty years afterwards on the walls of the Palais Royal at Paris, but probably disappeared in the revolution of 1848.

At Pittsburg Beaujolais was seriously ill, and at Buffalo the travelers experienced extreme cold. In July they were back at Philadelphia. Yellow fever was raging there, but want of funds obliged them to remain till September. A remittance from their mother, who, after undergoing imprisonment, had recovered part of her property, enabled them to go to New York, and to visit New Hampshire, Maine, and Massachusetts. At Boston they learned that their mother had been banished to Spain. They were anxious to join her, but, England and Spain being at war the only course was to descend the Ohio and Mississippi, and sail from New Orleans to Havana. There, however, they were not allowed to embark for Europe ; so, returning to New York, they took passage in an English vessel for Falmouth, where they arrived in January, 1800. Poor young Montpensier died of consumption at Twickenham, in 1807, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. A milder climate was the only chance of saving Beaujolais, and Louis Philippe took him to Malta ; but there, while awaiting permission to repair to Sicily, he breathed his last, scarcely eighteen months after his brother. Louis Philippe also was destined to die in exile, but in 1876 his remains were removed from England to the Orleans mortuary chapel at Dreux. The Comte de Paris and the Duc de Chartres, when they joined McClellan’s army in 1861, cannot have failed to reflect that their grandfather, with his brothers, had visited in its infancy the republic which they beheld in the throes of civil war.