Louis-Philippe, sixteen at the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789, joined the left-wing jacobin Club and the freethinking Masons. He entered the army as a colonel, and as lieutenant general fought well in battles against the coalition of European powers. But the excesses of the Paris terrorists and the guillotining of King Louis XVI revolted him; in April, 1793, he Hed to the Austrian lines. He was universally distrusted, by the republicans as a renegade, by the royalists as an ex-Jacobin and son of the infamous Philippe Egalité. He was in danger. Hc was also nearly penniless, though the son of once the richest man in France. He took refuge in Switzerland under an assumed name, and with a loyal manservant, Baudoin, made a walking tour, sleeping often in barns and eating what country food the two could afford. He found a post teaching French and mathematics in a Catholic school at Reichenau. He also busied himself getting the cook with child and was discharged, not so much for his ollense against morality as for causing the breakdown of the school kitchen.

He had to wander on. Collecting some of his father’s funds from London, in 1795 he made with the devoted Baudoin a journey to Lapland and the North Cape, a very unusual tourist trip in his time. He was sheltered briefly by a missionary and left his host’s sister-in-law with a royal souvenir, male.

He spent the winter in Germany, under various aliases, while his mother negotiated a deal with the French Directory. His younger brothers, the Duc de Montpensier and the Duc de Beaujolais, were imprisoned in Marseilles. The Directory wanted them out of the way, but not necessarily dead; the vogue of the guillotine had passed. The Directory engaged to release the brothers if they would intern themselves, with Louis Philippe, in America. The arrangement was made, though there was a little money difficulty. Gouverneur Morris, who had been American minister to France, came to the rescue with an advance of $4,000 to Louis Philippe, and later increased his loan to $13,000. (The debts were repaid with interest in 1816 and 1818, when the Orleans fortunes had turned.)

Passing as a German merchant, Louis Philippe and the faithful Baudoin—the two younger brothers were to follow later—sailed from Hamburg on the America and arrived in Philadelphia on October 23, 1796). The shipowner, David Conyngham, learned the passenger’s identity and offered him temporary hospitality. He did not lose a moment in informing Philadelphia society of his distinguished guest. Hearing the report, Miss Lucy Breck informed her diary that a real prince had arrived in the republican city! She immediately commanded a new dress. And on the twenty-eighth she wrote: “ I have seen him and yet I live! He is rather tall, and pretty well formed: but none of that commanding dignity,

On the other hand, his easy, friendly manners commended him to the merchant aristocracy of Philadelphia. Lucy’s father, Samuel Breck, said: “Amiable and unpretending in conversation and general conduct, ever cheerful and apparently forgetful of his lost rank, he conformed his demeanor to that of our own manners in our best-bred Circles, and was everywhere treated with distinguished regard.” John Pickcring called him a “plain but intelligent man of good person and deportment.” Others spoke of his maturity, good sense, good nature, modesty, and simplicity of manners. He lodged in a single room. Baudoin did the shopping; his hard bargains were remembered for years by the market women. Louis Philippe was unabashed. He gave a dinner for some distinguished guests, among them John Singleton Copley, Jr., son of the painter and the future Lord Chancellor of England. He sat half his guests on the bed, remarking that he had himself occupied less comfortable places without the consolation of such an agreeable company. In short, he put on the democratic character of his companions, as he could put on the character of a schoolmaster or a frontiersman. This adaptability was to serve him later, when he became le roi bourgeois , going shopping with his queen in the Paris stores and taking his purchases home in the omnibus, and carrying an umbrella instead of a sword.

There was one quality the Philadelphia merchants could read- ily appreciate. He was extremely close, if not stingy, and had been so from childhood despite Mme. de Genlis’ correction. The Comte de Neuilly, who knew him as a boy, recalled that he would ask the price of everything, meditate, and end by saying: “C’est cher! C’est trop cher!” His parsimoniousness had developed in his years of near-destitution in Switzerland and Lapland. During his American travels he kept close account of all his expenditures. The habit persisted when he sat on the French throne. It is said that he checked grocer’s bills, sold his candle ends, had the royal table supplied by a restaurateur at four francs a plate. The leftovers were served in a cheap eating house in the Palais-Royal.

In Philadelphia, of course, he was entertained by all the great families: the Binghams, the Robert Morrises, the Willings, the Cadwaladers, the Chews. He painted a miniature of Miss Abby Willing, and is said to have offered her his hand; and her father is said to have pronounced sententiously: “As an exile, destitute of means, you are not a suitable match for my daughter. Should you recover your rights, she will not be a suitable match for you.” He attended the inauguration of President Adams. He watched Gilbert

They came at length on February 8, 1797, after a long crossing on a dirty Swedish ship, the Jupiter , chartered by the American government to bring home eighty Americans redeemed from slavery in Algiers. The reunion, Louis Philippe said later, was the happiest day of his life. The Duc de Montpensier, now twenty-one, was thin, wispy, and melancholy, yellowhaired, dark-eyed, with a sensitive face. He was delicate and fastidious; he detested wine and, much more, American whiskey. His great love and solace was art. He was an excellent painter by any reckoning, and would have some standing in art history today had he not been a prince and had not most of his works been destroyed in the sack of the royal palaces in 1848. The second brother, the Duc de Beaujolais, was only seventeen. He was undersized, “almost a dwarf,” said one scornful observer. But after all, he had just spent in prison four years proper for growth. Others thought him strongly built, bright, witty, very good-natured, and even “a beautiful youth.” The brothers brought their faithful dog, companion of their prison life. His race and name have not been recorded.

Though Louis Philippe took for the brothers a house at the northwest corner of Fourth and Prune streets, they did not linger long in Philadelphia. Louis Philippe, that earnest tourist, was eager to explore the backwoods of America, to confront the virtuous uncorrupted savages, to inspect such natural wonders as Niagara Falls. He may also have thought that a little toughening, àla Mme. de Genlis, was just what his brothers needed. He may even have wished to demonstrate to Miss Abby Willing, by a plunge into the wilderness, the romantic consequence of a broken heart.

The brothers rode away late in March, 1797, accompanied by good Baudoin and the nameless dog. Louis Philippe noted that the four horses cost $130, the gear $70. Samuel Breck (and Miss Lucy?) saw them off, and observed that they had adopted the style and dress of western traders, that is, deerskin breeches and long, loose frocks of linsey-woolsey or deerskin, belted to make a pouch at the breast for provisions. But in their saddlebags they carried white satin suits with lace ruffles, in which to appear, at need, with decency.

They took the Baltimore road through “a swampy and dreary country.” They stopped at roadside inns, registering as Mr. Orleans, Mr. Montpensier, and Mr. Beaujolais. In Baltimore they broke out their satin suits to dine with Richard Caton, General Samuel Smith, and the rich merchant Robert Gilmor, who kindly presented them with a letter of credit.

On April 3 the party reached Washington, “a city laid out on paper, staked out in swamp-land.” One wing of the new Capitol rose in the midst of desolation. Louis Philippe was not impressed. He found the

Two days later the travellers, delayed by the necessity of having their laundry done, presented themselves at Mount Vernon. The flustered Negro doorman reported to General Washington: “Your Excellency, there are three Equalities at the door!” The General received them with his usual courtly grace. They talked late that evening, chiefly about the institution of slavery, a subject that fascinated Louis Philippe. He was inclined to foresee a bloody slave rebellion, like that of Santo Domingo. Mount Vernon, to be sure, presented an example of a model plantation, with the slaves apparently contented. But Baudoin, who gained the confidence of the house servants, reported that they longed for freedom, even without contentment, and envied fugitives to the North.

The following morning the brothers rose at six thirty and, looking out the window, perceived their host returning from an inspection of his lands. “Do you get along without sleep?” Louis Philippe asked at breakfast. “I always sleep well,” he replied, “for I never wrote a word in my life which I had afterwards cause to regret.”

They announced to the General their purpose of exploring the mysterious interior of America. He was much interested; he took a copy of Abraham Bradley’s recent map of the United States and on it traced in red ink a recommended itinerary. Years later King Louis Philippe liked to impress American visitors by unfolding his map and pointing to the red line drawn by the hand of the great Washington.

After four happy days at Mount Vernon, the party set out to follow Washington’s guideline. At Leesburg they were interrupted at dinner by Colonel Burgess Ball, Washington’s cousin, who insisted on carrying them off to his plantation and boring them through a long evening. “Boredom and wasted time,” Louis Philippe noted in his journal. “The only thing I am interested in is the aspect of the country, the state of agriculture and that of the houses and inhabitants.”

The travellers entered the rich valley of the Shanadore, or Shenandoah. At Winchester they stopped at the inn of Mr. Bush, originally from Mannheim. Louis Philippe conversed familiarly with him in German, then requested that they be served in their room, since one of the brothers was indisposed. But Mr. Bush exclaimed in outrage: “If you are too good to eat at the same table with my other guests, you are too good to eat in my house! Begone!” And, indeed, they were driven forth in a storm of rain and hail, to push on eighteen miles to Strasburg and to meditate on the peculiarities of democracy.

The brothers followed the “Great Indian Warpath,” now placid Route 11, through Harrisonburg, Staunton, Lexington, Salem, and so southwest into Tennessee. The well-travelled road was tolerable enough, the food—salt pork and hoecake—revolting,

To Louis Philippe most of the land seemed monotonous, endless forests wherein even the birds were mute. But wild turkeys, partridges, blue pigeons, and deer abounded. Although the travellers were well received in the rare homes of gentry, they found most of the human inhabitants unwelcoming.

Nothing can equal the shiftlessness and disobligingness of the workers here. When a horse needs shoeing one must sometimes travel twenty-five miles before getting aid, and one must call on five or six farriers before finding one who is willing to work. If anything happens to a saddle, a coat, or a boot, one finds no one to repair it. The other day a cobbler said to us: “Yes, I’m a cobbler. I work sometimes, but now I don’t feel like it.”

The brothers crossed into the new state of Tennessee and arrived on April 30 at its capital, Knoxville, consisting of about a hundred houses. Though their inn was a good five years old, the bedroom walls still gaped where the builders had withdrawn the beams support- ing the scaffolding. Modern research identifies their stopping place as Chisholm’s Tavern, still standing, and records a tradition that Louis Philippe, assailed by bedbugs, greased himself vainly with hog’s lard and finally ran out screaming to plunge into the Tennessee River.

Here the travellers made a digression to visit the Cherokee reserve in the Great Smokies, around TeIlico Plains, sixty miles south of Knoxville. The Indian agents and a small garrison occupied a fort, or blockhouse, which commonly stood wide open. Indians strolled in, picked up pipes lying about, squatted, and smoked. The fort contained a store where white men’s goods—but no whiskey—were for sale at nominal prices. Indian produce was similarly cheap. Louis Philippe, always delighted with a bargain, bought a pig, a wild turkey, and a gallon of strawberries for a quarter-dollar. The commander, Major John Strother, was proud of his peaceable kingdom. He explained that the famous Indian atrocities were usually reprisals for the atrocities of aggressive whites trying to provoke government intervention and the confiscation of Indian hunting grounds.

The princes visited the Indian village, of which the chief feature was the maison de ville , town hall, a large hexagonal structure, log-framed, roofed with cornstalks, and resembling an enormous haystack. It was used for meetings and for ritual dance. Three pillars supported tribal totems—snake, tortoise, lizard…painted in black on

Louis Philippe, ever curious, inquired into the Indians’ religion (they seemed to do without), legal system (they made laws readily and as readily forgot them), division of labor between the sexes, status of women, sexual morality (it barely existed). He noted that the promiscuity of the women deprived them of male respect. He drew a lesson for France: the new laws permitting freedom of divorce will bring in something like Indian concubinage. Women, he wrote, can rise out of their present dependence “only by the sentiments they inspire in men, not at all by the pleasures they may offer. To avoid debasement these pleasures should be reserved, as a means of augmenting the emotions of the lover who thinks himself beloved. But if the pleasures are lavished on many, the magic of emotion disappears, and women fall into debasement and thence into dependence.”

With the commandant’s permission, Louis Philippe offered a prize of two kegs of whiskey to induce the Indians to stage a ball game, beside what is still known as Ball Play Creek. The contestants, their bodies oiled, tried to drive a deerskin ball between the opponents’ goal posts. All means of propulsion were permissible: feet, hands, and short lacrosse sticks. The spectators admired the players’ agility and ferocity.

The next day, disregarding an Indian deputation that presented the empty whiskey kegs and asked for a refill, the travellers returned north and headed west for Nashville. They now entered a difficult, debatable land, where the Indians were still unpacified. They were adjured by white settlers to join an armed party, but they were too impatient and reckless to delay. The road was a mere track through the wilderness. There was not a settler for a hundred miles; and when at length the wayfarers found one, he had no food for sale except a little smoked bear’s grease and corn. The track is followed by modern Route 70 and 7oN, across Crab Orchard Gap, through the present Crossville and Cookeville to Carthage on the Cumberland River. The river was then bordered by nearly impenetrable canebrakes. Cabins and tilled fields began to appear. At Major Dickson’s in Castalian Springs the Frenchmen had their first coffee in many a day.

On May 10 they arrived in Nashville, a town of some eighty houses, with pretensions toward elegance. An English visitor in this year was astonished to see there two coaches “fitted up in all the style of Philadelphia or New York.” The princes stopped at Captain Jesse Maxwell’s house, now the Maxwell House Hotel. They had envisioned relative comfort, after their nights under the stars or the rain. But court was in session and the inn crowded; they were forced to sleep three in a bed. (Later King Louis Philippe liked to ask Americans: “Do they still sleep three in a bed at Nashville?”) They met some of the town’s celebrities, including Captain Timothée de Montbrun, a

Now the party turned north, on a track or “trace” that has become Route 31E, through Gallatin and Glasgow. They passed through the “Barrens,” a wild, hungry, treeless land, almost empty of settlers. They stopped one night at a Captain Chapman’s; he greeted them with suspicion, presuming their purpose to be the rousing of the Indians against the Americans. The Captain was an angry man; he asserted that all the West hated the American government, the worst conceivable. Night fell; the Captain and his wife took a “puncheon” bed of trimmed timber at one side of the room; “that seemed to us very natural.” The Frenchmen disposed themselves on the floor, with their feet toward the fire. Another bed stood beyond them.

A rather pretty girl, whom we knew to be unmarried, got into it; that also seemed very natural. A stalwart young man of twenty or twenty-two arrived soon afterward, as we were rolling up in our blankets, and without ceremony got into the girl’s bed. Although this was certainly very natural, it caused us some surprise. It had no such effect on the captain, who, to repose himself from his day’s labors, began a conversation of which we were the subject. He thought we were very queer folk, to leave our home and endure all the fatigues of a hard journey in order to see wildernesses, savages and a thousand other things which he had good reason to find unworthy of such efforts. The familiar behavior of the young man with the girl did not seem to upset him. His other daughter blew out the candle and got into the young people’s bed, so that the youth was between the two girls. That seemed fairly extraordinary to us, but the matrimonial conversation went on without a pause.

Riding through pouring rain, fording swollen rivers, suffering often from hunger, the princes reached Hodgenville, Kentucky, and according to local tradition were well entertained by the proprietor, Mr. Hodgen. (In a cabin a few miles away Abraham Lincoln would be born twelve years later.)

Thus they came to Bardstown, a metropolis of a hundred and fifty houses. Louis Philippe was ill; he asked the landlady for some special attentions. These were refused, for an Irishman in a clown costume was parading the town and announcing a puppet show. There had never before been any public amusement in Bardstown, and the entire staff of the inn would attend the show. The hostess took all her children, “so that when they are old they will be able to say they have seen it.”

The Bardstown Catholic church, once a cathedral, still proudly displays a collection of paintings, allegedly by Murillo, Rubens, van Eyck, Van Dyck, etc., said to have been given later by King Louis

It was in Bardstown that he wrote (on May 21) the last entry in his journal, summing up his impression of the Kentuckians:

What makes a journey in this region absolutely unendurable is the character of the new settlers. They are the lowest sort of men I have ever seen. In general they are the scum of Ireland and the United States. They are coarse, idle, and inhospitable to the utmost degree. Nothing is more disgusting than to see such people continually. I must admit that, despite my prejudice against the Irish settlers, I have always found them more hospitable and less disagreeable than the American settlers. Altogether, I don’t think that in any corner of Europe one could find such a degraded lot.

This opinion is supported by the Englishman Thomas Ashe, who visited Bardstown in 1806. “Of the inhabitants I have already said enough to make humanity shudder. They trample on all the advantages spread before them by nature, and live in a brutal ignorance of the charms and luxuries which surround them.” Poor Mr. Ashe was particularly revolted by the Kentuckians’ diet. “They eat salt meat three times a day, seldom or never have any vegetable, and drink ardent spirits from morning till night. They have not only an aversion to fresh meat, but a vulgar prejudice that it is unwholesome. The truth is, their stomachs are depraved by burning liquors, and they have no appetite for anything but what is highly flavored and strongly impregnated with salt.”

(In our glorification of the bold pioneers we forget that they were commonly regarded as outcasts of civilization, too indolent and incompetent to survive in the settled country. O pioneers! There were heroes among you; there were also derelicts and outlaws.)

Now the road turned east, to Lexington, the trading center of the Kentucky country. Somewhere on the way Louis Philippe must have paused to tend his illness, for the stage of the journey from Bardstown to Pittsburgh, something over three hundred miles, occupied a month. The road was the main access to the Kentucky country from the northeastern states and was relatively good. The princes crossed the Ohio River at Maysville. In Chillicothe, Ohio, Louis Philippe intervened in a barroom brawl and rescued the landlord. His role was always to be that of a peacemaker. In Zanesville he lodged in the cabin of John Mclntire, who is remembered in Muskingum County as “of a pleasant disposition except when insulted, when he would instantly knock the offender down, and go off about his business.” Thence the travellers headed east, through Wheeling, and arrived in Pittsburgh on June 20.