Recollections of the Empress Eugénie

Front matter

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THE EMPRESS EUGENIE IN ROYAL ROBES

From the picture by Winterhalter

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

1. First Impressions: Memories OF THE Past .... i

2. The Romance of Louis-Napoleon and Eugenie de

Chapter I First Impressions: Memories Of The Past

I WAS first presented to the Empress Eugenie on September 5, 1867, and the day before General Frossard had Instructed me in my duties as tutor, or, to be more correct, as assistant-tutor, to the Prince Imperial. The Prince, convalescent after an Illness, was then staying at Saint Cloud with a small entourage of three or four people who seemed lost in the immense deserted chateau, where I had spent the last twenty-four hours, marveling at the magical change In my humble existence, and abandoning myself to the fascination of this royal solitude.

I wandered undisturbed through galleries crowded with art treasures and peopled with memories of the past. Through the half-open windows I listened to the murmuring music of the fountains which "ceased not day nor night," and I watched the sunshine gild the sward once trodden by Marie Antoinette and Marie-Louise.

We smoked an after-dinner cigar in the great Cour d'Honneur, whilst over Paris, so vague and distant, the reflection of many lights gradually spread in the evening sky. Suddenly the sound of wheels and lights moving in regular file directed our attention towards the Avenue.

I

"It is the Emperor and the Empress ! " exclaimed my companions, who were apparently accustomed to these surprise visits, and they rushed off to receive Their Majesties. I followed, and the next instant I found myself in the midst of a number of strangers, none of whom took the smallest notice of me. These gentlemen and ladies followed the sovereigns up the great staircase; I did the same, and by the time we reached the first salon, which was situated between the Prince's study and the aide-de-camp's room, I was so completely hidden that I was greatly surprized when the Empress said to the Emperor:

"I think I notice a new face!"

At once, as if by magic, the crowd parted, and those next to me, who until then had seemed unconscious of my existence, stood aside.

"Let me introduce Louis' new tutor to you," said the Emperor, to whom I had been presented by General Frossard on the preceding Friday; and in these words the Emperor dispensed with the title of assistant-tutor deliberately chosen by the Governor, but never mentioned again.

I bowed so low that I almost missed the smile with which the Empress greeted me. Thereupon the Emperor and the Empress went into their son's room and I saw nothing more of them that evening.

The following day the Court dined at Saint Cloud, and the Empress went with her attendants on a torchlight excursion to Versailles and Trianon. She invited "the young Court," as we were called, to accompany her, and "the young Court" was nothing loath to enjoy itself. Personally I should have loved to revisit the scenes of my childhood in such distinguished company and under

Meeting with the Empress such picturesque conditions, but etiquet obliged us to decline, with a great show of respect, any amusement in which our Prince was unable to participate.

At dinner I sat between Louise Stuart — a niece of the Empress — and the charming Count of Cosse Brissac, who afterwards became one of my friends. I was placed rather prominently, and I felt instinctively that I was being closely observed by the mother of my pupil, who was doubtless curious to know what manner of man M. Duruy and M. Frossard had chosen to instruct her son. I have always been near-sighted, and, as I dared not use my eyeglass, the Empress that night was for me merely a voice!

On September 7 we left for Biarritz. The Empress spoke to me very kindly several times during the journey, but I was too nervous even to glance at her; I only answered in monosyllables, although everyone else seemed wonderfully at ease with her.

We arrived at the Villa Eugenie on Sunday, September 8, and in the afternoon the Empress honored me with a long interview — an interview which banished all my fears and marked the commencement of a succession of surprizes.

I found the Empress entirely different, physically, mentally and morally, from the woman I had imagined her to be. As I had passed the fourteen years of her reign first at a boarding school, then at college, and later in a provincial town, I only knew her by her portraits. Two especially had always struck me: one was the lovely profile by Winterhalter, so often reproduced as an engraving, the original of which I was destined to convey to Camden Place after its rescue by the Registrar of Fontainebleau; the other was an official painting,

Recollections of the Empress Eug6nie

copies of which hung in all the important provincial town halls, and which even the color printers of Epinal had failed to spoil entirely.

In it the Empress is shown standing, wearing a magnificent crown of precious stones, with her Imperial mantle sweeping the steps of the throne. Winterhalter had given her the look of a dreamer, a look of mingled sweetness and veiled melancholy, which seemed to search among the shadows of the future or of the past for some unspoken hope or regret. But in the official picture she appears young, dazzling, almost childishly happy, the artist insisting on her face expressing a sort of enraptured wonder at her exalted fortune.

Neither of these pictures conveys any idea of the character or intellect of their subject. When afterwards I saw the Empress, majestic in her imperial splendor, I often noticed in her expression that sweet and dreamy sadness which Winterhalter had sensed and exprest. But when I saw her at close quarters for the first time she recalled neither of these two pictures. There was no posing, no striving after effect; she was far simpler and more natural in her movements and in her speech than any of the ladies who surrounded her, and she seemed to think no more of playing the part of a pretty woman than of assuming the role of an Empress.

Many years have passed since that Sunday afternoon at Biarritz, but I can still see her standing on the terrace of the Villa. She had neither hat nor parasol, and, shading her eyes with her tiny gloved hand, she gave little thought to the ravages of a sun almost Spanish in its intensity, a glare which did not spare a complexion already a little faded. It would have been easy for her to have hidden certain marks and lines — hardly visible, perhaps —

The Prince Imperial's Studies

left on her face by physical and mental suffering. But she never resorted to artificial aids to beauty, and, beyond using a little harmless rice powder, her only weakness was a penciled line under the eyelashes. She had come to consider that this black line was an essential part of her appearance, and she would not have recognized herself without the artificial shadow which changed the expression of her eyes. I might almost say that her insistence upon it was an expression of her truthfulness. She felt that to be seen without this would have the effect of a disguise, and she once stubbornly refused to do away with the black line when its omission might have been her salvation.

But I must return to the terrace at Biarritz and to our interview. The Empress first asked me to allow her nieces to share some of the Prince Imperial's studies until their governess,* whose arrival was daily expected, joined them. Then our conversation turned on the Prince's education. She spoke freely, with a warmth and frankness that alike astonished and charmed me, and from that day she seemed to repose entire confidence in me. She spoke kindly, almost affectionately, of my teacher, Victor Duruy, who was, I had always thought, her pet aversion, and exprest her opinions unsparingly about various persons who were popularly supposed to enjoy her favor.

Her views, far in advance of those propounded for the last thirty years by the best educational authorities, were sound, new and daring. The Empress laid stress upon the development of character above all things. She wanted instilled into her son independent judgment

^ This governess, chosen from the most distinguished ladies at Saint Denis, was Mile. Redel, who married Victor Duruy some years later.

combined with proper respect for the rights of others, Initiative, and "the courage to think," which, she said, "must precede the courage to act."

Her words made a deep impression on me and dissipated my former idea of her as the flawless beauty who reigned like a fairy queen In the midst of theatrical splendor. Instead, here was a woman who possest both brains and heart, and who inspired me with passionate loyalty.

This first impression might perhaps have faded had It not been subsequently confirmed during the days following. On September 19 I wrote to my mother:

"It is impossible to Imagine anyone so fascinating and at the same time so regal as the Empress, and one is naturally impelled to try to please her and to deserve her gracious regard. She combines a chivalrous and impulsive nature with a mind whose practical knowledge and accuracy continually astonishes even the expert. She argues with a brilliance which absolutely dumbfounds me, and she possesses that wonderful gift, rarely found in a woman — the gift of eloquence." ^

As the Empress showed herself to me, so she showed herself to others. The Emperor was constantly asking people questions, and he received their replies v/ith a vague mutter which might have been Interpreted In many ways, but as he also Inclined his head and smiled with his eyes and with his lips, the person interrogated fully

^ Yet the Empress often used to amuse herself by telling us how, during certain State functions, she never spoke a word, and once practically ran away in the middle of the ceremony when she was presiding at the Societe du Prince Imperial. Personally, I regard these anecdotes merely as harmless jokes at her own expense, because I never once found her at a loss for the right word to suit the occasion, no matter whether it called for tact, energy, or picturesque effect. It was no good believing all she said about herself. She once told me she was a coward on a certain day when she showed extraordinary courage.

An Autobiographical Interest

believed that his listener was charmed with his conversation. The Empress was an ardent debater, and it seemed to me that she liked best those who contradicted her most boldly. Among these at Biarritz In 1867 I remember Admiral Jurien de la Graviere and Baron Corvisart. The others grumbled against them and accused them of "overexciting the Empress," as if it were the greatest crime to make her talk! I soon became guilty of the same offense. The Empress knew that I was wholly devoted to her, although I never looked as If I were dying of love for her! My attitude pleased her and was the primary cause of the regard which she always showed me — a regard which suffered occasional eclipses, but which ever returned, and which has been the pride of my life. This regard earned for me very precious confidences. I noted these down at the time, almost in the Empress's own words, and I shall relate them in the order of the times at which they were made, and add such further details as I have gathered from unpublished letters which have been communicated to me or from the statements of entirely trustworthy eye-witnesses.

I shall eliminate the innumerable second-hand anecdotes, no matter how interesting they may be or from what "authentic" source they are supposed to emanate. The pages of this book will not, therefore, constitute a consecutive narrative, and they must not be looked upon in the smallest degree as a life of the Empress, but, on the other hand, they possess a kind of autobiographical interest, because the Empress speaks through me; and failing those recollections which we should have been so thrilled to read, and which she would never consent to write, there will be found some trace of her personal impressions in much which I have set down.

"I was born," said the Empress to me, "during an earthquake. . . . My mother's accouchement took place beneath a tent in our garden. What would the ancients have thought of such an omen ? Surely they would have said I was destined to unsettle the world."

The Empress often spoke of her father and mother. She had a sort of religious veneration for her father's memory, and mentioned his eccentricities in the most tender and touching manner, even when she was obliged to smile at the recollection of them! All those who knew her intimately will remember that Count Cyprien de Montijo's miniature never left her possession, and from the first day of our exile I found it on her table, exactly as I had seen it so often at the Tuileries. Part of the Count's face was hidden by a black bandage which spoke of a glorious wound received in the service of France, and his fine pale features were not unlike those of his daughter. Eugenie was, body and soul, a true Montijo, but a little infusion of Flemish and Scotch blood endowed her with the common sense which was so apparent in her at certain times and which counterbalanced the heroic follies of her Spanish ancestry.

The Empress's father assumed the title of Count of Montijo on the death of his eldest brother Eugenio, uncle and godfather to his child. These two men would be objects of general admiration were their record better known. Eugenio made a magnificent and despairing eifort to overthrow the infamous Manuel Godoi*, and as a recompense he received the insults of a dull and commonplace world which grovels in the mud before success :

Comtesse Montijo

In 1845 M. Thiers begged Merimee to use his influence with Mme.de Montijo and ask her to give him some particulars about her brother-in-law's character and adventures. This information he distorted with that cynical contempt for the truth which was characteristic of the man.

The younger brother, Colonel Portocarrero, was a liberal-minded philosopher who loved France because to him she represented the hom^e of philosophy and liberty. But he also admired genius and glory, and for that reason he served France and Napoleon. It was he who, in 1 8 14, at the head of the young pupils of the Ecole Polytechnique, fired the last shots on the advancing Allies from the cannons of Montmartre. He was thus a fit object of persecution for Ferdinand VII, and was treated by him accordingly. As for his wife, the Comtesse de Montijo, I never saw her. I knew her by an exquisite portrait by Goya, by what the Empress told me, and above all by the unpublished letters of Merimee, which cover a period of thirty-one years with the exception of a few breaks and some slackening towards the end of the correspondence. The personality of the Comtesse de Montijo lives in these letters addrest to her by Merimee, which enlighten us as to her tastes, her occupations, her character, and her attitude towards her friends and her daughters. It is impossible to deny her rare and understanding knowledge of literature, history and politics. I have already told in my book, Merimee et ses amis, how the Comtesse de Montijo assisted the famous writer in his philological and archeological researches, and even supplied him with plots for novels. "My mother," said the Empress to me, "wished to make everybody happy, but in her own way, not in theirs. . . ."

The Comtesse de Montijo placed on a pinnacle all persons or things in which she took a personal interest — first and foremost her own daughters, whom she praised in their hearing in a somewhat disconcerting way. Even her stunted Httle trees at Carabanchel loomed larger in her eyes than the majestic chestnuts at the Tuileries! Her sublime optimism enabled her to succeed, and she triumphed over difficulties because she never acknowledged their existence.

"Listen!" continued the Empress. "You know Lesseps, my mother's first cousin; well, he has exactly the same temperament. Both have achieved the impossible. When my mother knew she was going blind she made incredible efforts to hide her infirmity from strangers and from herself. She insisted on directing her own steps as well as those of others, she knocked over furniture, she hurt herself against walls which she could not see, she attempted to walk through closed doors! So great an effort did it cost her to acknowledge herself beaten — even by an infirmity."

From the letters of Merimee and from what the Empress has told me I am sure that the Comtesse de Montijo was a born match-maker. Matrimonial projects for her daughters were her first preoccupation: in her leisure hours she pulled wires for candidates to the Academie Fran^aise. She lived in a little world of her own peopled with friends, proteges, hangers-on, with whom she always kept in touch and of whose interests she never lost sight in the midst of her multiple activities. The Comtesse has been falsely suspected of many weaknesses; It would have been more accurate to have accused her of the sin of ambition. But her ambition was never unreasonable, and she more than justified it by her sterling qualities, rare in a woman, of constancy, energy and courage. As

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First Days in Paris

"Camerara mayor," during the years 1847 and 1848, she acted, in a certain sense, as a member of the Narvaez Cabinet, and her influence was so great that it aroused the jealousy of the Prime Minister. When, against the advice of her elder daughter, and almost without the knowledge of the one most intimately concerned, she played the bold hand which won for Eugenie de Guzman^ the title of Empress of the French, she doubtless dreamed of wielding a great political influence in France. She was cruelly disillusioned, but it is only just to admit that this influence, had it existed, would have been both intelligent and liberal.

Days of greatness were as yet far distant when the exiled Montijos first came to Paris and took up their abode in very modest lodgings. "We were not well off," said the Empress to me, "and my father was quite right when he said that he wished us to become accustomed early to the poverty which he believed would be our lot in life. But he carried things rather too far when he made us wear linen gowns in all weathers and in all seasons, and when he would not allow my mother to buy us umbrellas or even to take us with her in a carriage."

The education of the two little girls was somewhat neglected, but they spent some time at the Sacre-Coeur, one of the best convents in Paris. They also took lessons in music and painting, but the progress made by the Empress in these accomplishments is not to be judged from the following story she used to tell against herself.

One day a friend called to see them and exclaimed: "Well, it's quite plain to see that you are living in furnished rooms!"

"How is that?"

^ The full maiden name (in Spanish) of the Empress was: Eugenia Guzman y Palafox y Portocarrero; de Montijo and de Teba were the family titles (Translator's Note).

II Recollections of the Empress Eugenic

"Well, look at those horrible daubs on the walls. . . . They stamp the place!"

"And they were my watercolors ! " said the Empress in pitiful tones.

But if this story is true the visitor was no judge. I have seen several watercolors by the Empress which were charming in conception and color, and very fine and soft in tone.

The Empress asserted that she could not sing a note, but nevertheless she loved music. French light opera was, however, little to her taste. "Just as one is getting interested in what they are saying they start singing," she used to say, "and when one is interested in their singing they start talking." Nor did she care for some of the Italian operas, being little moved by florid flights or vocal arpeggios of song, but she was sensitive to the quality of sound, sentiment and style, and I have seen her moved to tears by songs which touched some sympathetic chord in her soul.

Notwithstanding her precarious fortunes, the Comtesse de Montijo moved in the best Parisian society. At this time she knew the Castellanes and the Delesserts, and Cecile Delessert, the daughter of M. Gabriel Delessert, became the intimate friend of Eugenie de Montijo. After her marriage with the Comte de Nadaillac, who was an avowed enemy of the dynasty, this friendship did not cease, and, although the Comtesse de Nadaillac did not appear at official receptions, she made frequent visits to the Tuileries, and was invited in 1869 to accompany the Empress to the opening of the Suez Canal. Edouard Delessert was often a guest at the Tuileries and at Compiegne, and it was hinted that he had once entertained towards his sister's former playmate a feeling warmer than friendship.

Stendhal

Madame de Montijo also moved in artistic and literary circles. Merimee, whom her husband had introduced to her in Spain, on the occasion of the first journey made by the author of " Clara Gazul" across the Pyrenees, was her greatest literary friend, and he introduced her to many of his acquaintances, amongst others Stendhal, whom the two children knew as "Monsieur Beyle," by which name the Empress called him to the end.

"He used to come to our rooms in the evening," said the Empress, "and, taking us both on his knees, he would tell us about the campaigns of Napoleon. His visits were red-letter days, and we could hardly be persuaded to go to bed."

I do not believe the Empress ever read a line Stendhal wrote, but after sixty years she still preserved her first ideal of him. To her he was always a dear old man who adored little girls and who was a wonderful talker. And this tarnisher of souls first awakened heroic instincts within her; this pitiless realist inoculated her with the worship of greatness and the sense of the wonderful in history !

About this time she also indulged in a sort of "heroine" worship for Mademoiselle Rachel. The great tragedienne, who was then making her first appearances, often visited the Comtesse de Montijo and gave her tickets for the theater.

"Rachel used to say she wanted us to be quite near to her," said Eugenie, "and so we always sat in the nearer left-hand box of the lower tier (reserved under the Empire for the Superintendent of Fine Arts). Our emotion, our enthusiasm, our tears, inspired her, and she read in our dilated eyes the gradual crescendo of her tragic power." At that time Rachel seemed to Eugenie de Montijo as a being placed beyond the follies and weaknesses of humanity. Years after the Emperor enlightened her as to another side of her heroine's character.^

She never swerved in her belief in Rachel's genius, and one April evening in 1885, at Farnborough, she recited Phedre's great speech, beginning with the words: "Oui, prince, je languis, je brtile pour Thesee!" and invested the declamation with all her undying memories of the great artist.

It was after dinner; the men were in the billiard-room and three ladies were sitting with the Empress. My wife was one of them, and she told me how imprest she was by the forceful way in which the Empress rendered Phedre's passionate words.

I must return to these bygone days of childhood and girlhood, when the little girl who was to be known as the Empress Eugenie appears in two widely different anecdotes. Eugenie de Teba was only two years old when Merimee was first introduced to the Comtesse de Montijo. Some years later a friend met him in the Rue de la Paix, holding the hand of a charming little girl of five or six. Struck by the grace and prettiness of the child, Merimee's friend asked who she was. "Oh! it's a little Spaniard," said Merimee. "She is the daughter of one

1 1 have seen an interesting letter from Prince Louis Napoleon to M. Vieillard, in which he introduces Mademoiselle Rachel, and begs him to act as guide to an inexperienced young girl threatened with many dangers, and beset by innumerable temptations. At the time this letter was written Rachel was his mistress. I have been told this as a fact by the Empress herself, who related the following anecdote a propos of the liaison. Rachel once went on tour through the North of England and Prince Louis accompanied her. As a sort of "third" the young Prince Napoleon Jerome traveled in the compartment with them. Prince Louis dropped off to sleep, but happening to wake, he saw his cousin and his mistress engaged in ardent love-making. The Prince closed his eyes, said nothing, and peacefully continued his journey, but the next day he took the train back to London. The Empress added, smiling, "Now, wasn't that exactly like him?" — "Like both of them," I commented.

Death of Count de Montijo

of my friends . . . and I am taking her to have a feast of cakes." ^

Another day, some years later, when Eugenie was walking on the Boulevard with her sister, they noticed a pauper funeral on its way to Pere Lachaise. Not a single person followed the corpse, not even the traditional dog who, in the well-known picture, alone mourns his master. The sight of this lonely funeral aroused feelings of sorrow in the hearts of the two young girls. "Let us follow it," they said; and they walked behind the hearse and stood beside the last resting-place of the unknown dead. The Empress Eugenie never forgot this melancholy funeral, the corpse interred without a blessing or a tear, and from this memory originated the foundation of the "Aumoniers des dernieres prieres," whose duties fulfilled the wish of the Empress that religion should always be represented at funerals where family and friends were non-existent.

A new reign, which broke away from the traditions of Ferdinand VII, reopened the doors of Spain to the exiles and restored their worldly possessions. But the Count was at first the only member of the family to benefit by this new order of things, and it was only aftfer his death in 1839 that the mother and daughters recrossed the Pyrenees. Then a different life began for them. If I am not mistaken, I think it was at this time that their English governess, Miss Flowers, was with them, and her name was frequently mentioned by the Empress in a half-smiling, half-remorseful manner. "Poor Miss Flowers," she said; and one guessed what a series of shocks these impetuous girls must have given an old maid brought up on lines favored by Miss Edgeworth and Jane Austen. England was then a mixture of senti-

^ Preface by Louis Fagan. "Letters from Merimee to Panizzi." 15 mentality and prudishness, and it had not begun to take the interest in sport or flirtation it afterwards displayed. Miss Flowers taught her pupils English, and succeeded fairly well. The Empress pronounced English words correctly, but her vocabulary was limited, and in consequence she rather shrank from speaking this language. As for her mother tongue, her long stay in France did not appear to have made any difference to her knowledge of Spanish. I have been told by men of high breeding and intellectual culture that the Empress spoke the purest Castilian, and that her enunciation was of a classical dignity and clearness. As a matter of fact, when she talked to her former compatriots a stranger would have noticed the difference between the usual hurried little "explosions" which characterize ordinary Spanish conversation and the pure and sustained way in which the Empress exprest herself.

Even before recrossing the Pyrenees, Eugenie had written to Merimee; the gaiety of Madrid was powerless to make either herself or her sister forget the friends they had left behind, as is shown by the two following letters, both addrest to Beyle.

The original letters belong to a well-known collector who recently communicated their contents to the Press. The first is dated December, 1839.

"Monsieur, — I have received your letter with great

pleasure. I await impatiently the year 1840, when you

say we may hope to see you again. I am learning to paint

in oils, and I am laughing and working just as I did in

the past. Mama finds time to give us some lessons,

and we are trying not to forget what we learnt in Paris.

"At the present moment Spain is in a very unsettled

Letters of Girlhood's Days state. Everyone is crying out for peace, and Maroto, the Carlist general, has gone over to Cristino's party for quite a large bribe, which is not pretty; and all the other minor officers have followed his example. Navarre, Alava, Guipuzcoa and Biscaye have declared for the legitimate Queen. It is said that Don Carlos and the Duchess of Bura have gone to France; Cabrera is making for Jaramon, and twenty mounted men have gone to report the enemy's movements. At Madrid there have been great fetes in honor of the Peace Proclamation, but peace has been proclaimed so often that nobody believes in it though everybody wants it. Mama, my sister and Miss Flowers present their compliments to you, and I am, sir, — ^Your devoted and affectionate friend,