Duke Louis de Nemours, and his family

I just received Mon Album de Famille by Prince Michael of Greece and the Comte de Paris (finally!) and it has a picture of Victoire in her coffin. It's a very distressing photo as her mouth is open as if she had suffered some during her death. 

I just received Mon Album de Famille by Prince Michael of Greece and the Comte de Paris (finally!) and it has a picture of Victoire in her coffin. It's a very distressing photo as her mouth is open as if she had suffered some during her death. 

I've seen this picture, too - and I wish I hadn't seen it ... 

[http://erhj.blogspot.com]

I recently saw a death bed photo of the first Count of Paris (1838-1894), nephew of Victoire Coburg, and he looked terrible as well.  He was onlyu fifty-six years old but his cancer ravaged body looked like that of an 80+ year old, very sad indeed.

This is a custom that has passed now and most royal funerals are closed casket and for our sakes death bed photos are n longer "kosher!"

Arturo Beéche

It's rather morbid but I've collected a lot of deathbed photos--I guess for awhile they were quite popular to issue as postcards and cabinet cards. None of them are particularly horrible but Frederick III of Germany did look so very thin.  The British royals didn't put out very many--mostly artistic renderings of the scenes, except for EVII.

Last year a topic on Sophe d'Alençon featured a couple of pictures of Marguerite of Orléans (1846-93). They are no longer there. Does anyone have a copy of them? She is so difficult to find!

Hello...
I´ve found this picture of Marguerite and Blanche, daughters of Victoria, duchess of Nemours, and I wish to know more about the two girls...

The church crypt temporarily housed the tombs of the exiled French  King Louis-Philippe (died 1850), who was the Duchess of Nemours’ father-in-law, and twelve other members of the French royal family, who died in England between 1856 and 1876. Louis-Philippe and the Orléans family had fled into exile from the Paris revolution of 1848 and had been housed by Queen Victoria on the nearby royal estate of Claremont, near Esher, Surrey. Queen Victoria, despite the political dangers, of which she was warned by her Prime Minister, was very supportive of the exiled King and his family, whom she had first met in France in 1843. This event was celebrated as the first meeting between French and English monarchs since 1520. As well as offering
shelter she encouraged courtiers to write letters to 'The Times' sympathising with the plight of “these poor exiles”  and often invited the Duchess of Nemours in particular, of whom she was very fond, to stay privately at Osborne House on the Isle of White3.

The Orléans family tombs remained in the Weybridge chapel until the French royal family were allowed to return to France in 1876 and all the royal remains, excepting those of the Duchess of Nemours, were removed and re-interred at the royal chapel of the Orléans family at Dreux in Normandy. Her remains stayed at Weybridge until 1979 when her body, but not her tomb effigy, was transferred to Dreux to join that of her husband. In letters to Queen Victoria in 1876 the Duke of Nemours explained that he and his children wished for the Duchess’s body to remain in its ‘modest and respectable retreat’ and was greatly satisfied to hear from the Queen that she shared these feelings, because of her great affection for his family. He turned down, however, the Queen’s offer of arranging to place a commemorative effigy on the bare tomb slab, although he was happy to accept her advice on the matter4.

The Duchess was a close and beloved cousin of both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. She was a childhood playmate of the Prince’s at Rosenau, his German home, and considered by the Queen to be a bosom friend  “like a dear sister to us” and called “my beloved Vic”5. As well as sharing first names both the Queen and the younger Duchess had married in the same year, 1840. In 1852 the Queen commissioned the painter Franz Xavier Winterhalter (1805-1873) to portray the namesake cousins holding hands as a birthday present for the Duchess’s other cousin Prince Albert6. Five years later, after the Duchess’s death, the Queen wrote that she had been: “so dear, so good, one of those pure, virtuous unobtrusive characters who make a home peaceful, cheerful and happy”7. Charlotte Canning, the Queen’s Lady-in-Waiting, didn’t share her royal mistress’s enthusiasm, agreeing that though she was very pretty and nice to look at: “besides having a tiresome voice she has nothing to say.8” Her fame was spread further when in 1856 a finely scented double white variety of the Peony flower (Paonia lactiflora ‘Duchesse de Nemours’) was named after her in France9.

Watercolour (enlarge)
Watercolour, The Royal Collection (enlarge)

When the Duchess died suddenly on 10 November 1857, only ten days after she had given birth to her fourth child, Blanche, both the Queen and her husband were ‘deeply afflicted’ and ‘completely upset’, and rushed to visit the family on the following day. The Queen provided a highly melodramatic account of the death to Lord Clarendon:

    “We visited the house of mourning yesterday and no words can describe the scene of woe. …There was the broken-hearted, almost distracted widower … and lastly, there was in one room the lifeless, but oh! even in its ghostliness, most beautiful form of his young, lovely, and angelic wife, lying in her bed with her splendid hair covering her shoulders, and a heavenly expression of peace; and in the next room, the dear little pink infant sleeping in its cradle. … The dear Duchess’s death must have been caused by some affection of the heart, for she was perfectly well, having her hair combed, suddenly exclaimed to the Nurse, “Oh! mon Dieu, Madame” – her head fell on one side – and before the Duke could run upstairs her hand was cold!” 10.

Prince Albert wrote equally emotionally to his brother on November 11 and described her as looking “like an angel of beauty, her glorious hair falling over her bosom”. To commemorate her cousin the Queen also compiled an album which included a watercolour of the 'Duchesse de Nemours on her deathbed, after death, 10 November 1857'. This shows her in a similar pose to that adopted by the sculptor Chapu for the tomb effigy11.

Chapu would never have seen the Duchess alive as his effigy was carved some 24 years after her sudden death, nor is he known to have visited England. His serene evocation of the youthful but dead princess must have derived from portraits of her. There is some evidence that he was sent a plaster cast of a portrait bust of the Duchess. On 12 June 1880 Princess Beatrice wrote, on behalf of her mother the Queen, to the Duke of Nemours, that: “the cast of the bust of dear Aunt Victoire that you would like to have is ready and Mother will send it to you. She is very happy for you to have it. I will put you in contact with a sculptor for the monument at Weybridge.”12 The bust from which Queen Victoria had a cast made may have been that by Carlo Marochetti (1805-1867), whose portrait bust of the 'Duchess of Nemours' of about 1857 is still in the Royal Collection13. Despite the Duke’s polite rebuff of Queen Victoria’s offer in 1876 to make arrangements for a tomb effigy she had not been easily deterred. On 7 January 1880 she wrote to him asking whether he had yet decided about the monument, and a year later on 4 January 1881 she wanted to know why he hadn’t discussed further with her the monument that she so wanted to have placed at Weybridge14. She monitored the progress of the monument closely, requesting and receiving photographs of the plaster model, presumably the model now in the Musée Chapu, and the finished marble15. The plaster model for the effigy was finished in July 1881 and by 5 October 1883 the finished marble was in place in a specially constructed alcove on the south of the nave of the recently built extension16. Finally on 29 July 1884 the Queen paid a visit to the Weybridge chapel, as recorded in the Court Circular, and a month later expressed herself “greatly satisfied with the monument and all the other arrangements” in the chapel17. (article continues on:)

http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/walker/collections/foreign/duchesse_nemours_chapu.asp

I hope you don't mind if I posted a little about the Duchess of Nemours and now for the Daughters:

daughters:
# Margaret (1846-1893),

    * Married Prince Ladislaus Czartoryski

On January 15, 1872 Prince Władysław married his second wife, Princess Marguerite Adelaide d'Orleans, daughter of the Duke of Nemours and granddaughter of King Louis-Philippe of France, with whom he had two more sons in 1872 and 1876.

with Marguerite Adelaide
*Adam Ludwik Czartoryski
*Witold Kazimierz Czartoryski

# Blanche (1857-1932).

I think the Duke of Nemours only married once, to Victoria of Saxe Coburg. After she died, he wanted to marry to Princess Helene Sangusko, but his children were against. Any info or pictures of this Princess Helene Sangusko?

I think the Duke of Nemours only married once, to Victoria of Saxe Coburg. After she died, he wanted to marry to Princess Helene Sangusko, but his children were against. Any info or pictures of this Princess Helene Sangusko?

I think you speak about Helena Sanguszko (1836-1890), who died umarried, she was 2nd daughter of Prince Wladislaw Sanguszko  and Princess Isabella Lubomirskaya. She was buried in the family mausoleum in Tarnow, near her parents and some of her siblings.

Thanks Svetabel.

Perhaps you can tell us the tale of this romance...;-) I believe he was the last knight of the Order of the Holy Ghost.

Could you tell me more about Victoria, Duchesse de Nemours?

Somebody posted some facts about Victoria - I guess something that Queen Victoria wrote about her. But I can't find it anymore.

Is there something else known about her short life?

Thanks, Marie

Dear Marie-Charlotte

Here is an articlr about her:

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoire_de_Saxe-Cobourg-Kohary

certainly no knowledge of a child called Claes....strange name

Could you tell me more about Victoria, Duchesse de Nemours?

Duchess of Nemours p. 137-139

http://books.google.com/books?id=glkRAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA137&dq=Duchess+of+Nemours.+1822&ei=atIOSZ63BIy4yATYyYyvBw