Antoine Alfred Agénor de Gramont, 11th Duke of Gramont (22 September 1851 – 30 January 1925), known as the Duke of Guiche from 1855 to 1880, was a French aristocrat, soldier and landowner.
Early life
Gramont was born in Paris on 22 September 1851. He was the eldest son of Agénor de Gramont, 10th Duke of Gramont, and Emma Mary Mackinnon (1811–1891), a member of the Scottish nobility. His younger brothers were Armand de Gramont, Duke of Lesparre (who married Hélène Louise Eugénie Duchesne de Gillevoisin),[1] and Antoine Albert de Gramont (who married Jeanne Marie Sabatier).[2]
After becoming Duke, he resided at the Château de Mangé, in Verneil-le-Chétif in Sarthe, bequeathed by his father-in-law, the Prince of Beauvau, to his granddaughter, Élisabeth.[10]
Upon marrying his second wife, who had inherited substantial property after the death of her father in 1886, the newly wealthy Duke decided to restore his family's former seat, the Château de Bidach. First, however, he bought the Château de Crénille in Chaumes-en-Brie in 1880, before having the Château de Vallière built in Mortefontaine in 1894 in the Grand Parc of the former the Mortefontaine estate.[11][12]
The Duke was married three times during his lifetime. His first marriage, when he was styled Duke of Guiche, was on 20 April 1874 in Paris to Princess Isabelle Marie Blanche Charlotte Victurnienne de Beauvau-Craon (1852–1875), who reportedly gave up marrying the very rich Count de Gramont d'Aster to marry Agénor. Princess Isabelle was a daughter of Marc de Beauvau, 5th Prince of Beauvau (son of Charles Just de Beauvau, 4th Prince of Beauvau) and, his first wife, Marie d'Aubusson de La Feuillade. While married, they lived apart as the Duke was stationed in Melun and his Duchess lived with her parents in Nancy. She died of puerperal fever a few days after the birth of their only daughter:[14]
The Duke remarried on 9 December 1878 in Paris to Marguerite, Countess de Liedekerke (née Baroness Marguerite de Rothschild) (1855–1905), a daughter of Louise von Rothschild and, her cousin, Baron Mayer Carl von Rothschild, founder of the "Naples" branch of the Rothschild Family.[17] Marguerite had been disinherited by her father for converting to Catholicism to marry the Belgian Count de Liedekerke, a Catholic who died shortly thereafter in a hunting accident, but the disinheritance was annulled after her father's death in 1886. Before her death in 1905,[17] they were the parents of three children:[8]
Louis-René Alexandre de Gramont (1883–1963), styled Count of Gramont, who married Countess Marie Antoinette de Rochechouart de Mortemart, a daughter of Count René Marie Louis de Rochechouart de Mortemart and Elisabeth-Anne Marie Victorine de Riquet de Caraman (a daughter of Maurice de Riquet, 4th Duke of Caraman), in 1916.[21][22]
Widowed a second time, he remarried in Paris on 31 July 1907 to Princess Maria Ruspoli (1888–1976), a daughter of Don Luigi, Prince Ruspoli, and Donna Clelia Balboni.[24][25] Before his death in 1925, they were the parents of two children:[8]
Gabriel Antoine Armand de Gramont (1908–1943), styled Count of Gramont, a diplomat who married Marie-Hélène Negroponte, a daughter of Ioannis Negroponte and Eleni Stathatou and sister to Dimitri Negroponte, in 1931.[26][27]
Gratien Louis Antoine de Gramont (b. 1909), styled Count of Gramont.[8]
The Duke died in Paris on 30 January 1925. After his death, his widow married François-Victor Hugo, a great-grandson of writer Victor Hugo, with whom she had a son, Giorgio Hugo (b. c. 1935).[28] She died in Aix-en-Provence on 6 August 1976.[29]
Descendants
Through his eldest daughter, he was a grandfather of Béatrix de Clermont Tonnerre (who married André Gault) and Diane de Clermont Tonnerre (who married Count Guy de Berlaymont).[30]
Through his son Gabriel, he was a grandfather of Pulitzer Prize winning writer Ted Morgan (1932–2023), who was born Count Sanche Charles Armand Gabriel de Gramont. He became an American citizen in 1977, renouncing his titles of nobility, and adopting the name, "Ted Morgan", as a U.S. citizen, which is an anagram of "de Gramont".[32]
Gallery
The Duke commissioned a number of portraits by Philip de László, the Anglo-Hungarian painter known for his portraits of royal and aristocratic personages. The Gramont family was considered de László's "greatest friends and patrons in Europe".[14]
^L. Thouvenel, Le Secret de l'empereur, correspondance ... échangée entre M. Thouvenel, le duc de Gramont, et le général comte de Flahaut 1860-1863 (2nd ed., 2 vols., 1889). A small pamphlet containing his Souvenirs 1848–1850 was published in 1901 by his brother Antoine Léon Philibert Auguste de Gramont, duc de Lesparre.
^Almanach de Gotha (in French). Johann Paul Mevius sel. Witwe und Johann Christian Dieterich. 1908. p. 330.
^Jaurgain, Jean de (1968). La Maison de Gramont, 1040-1967 ... (in French). les Amis du Musée pyrénéen, [place de l'Église,]. Retrieved 18 September 2024.
