The Empress. Comte Primoli. M. Pietri.H.I.M. THE EMPRESS EUGÉNIE IN THE EMPRESS JOSÉPHINE’S BEDROOM AT LA MALMAISON, 1910.The Empress Joséphine died in this room on June 1, 1814.Courteously lent by the Proprietors of the illustrated Paris journal, “Femina.”The Photograph by “Central-Photo,” Paris.To face p. 368.
The Empress. Comte Primoli. M. Pietri.
H.I.M. THE EMPRESS EUGÉNIE IN THE EMPRESS JOSÉPHINE’S BEDROOM AT LA MALMAISON, 1910.
The Empress Joséphine died in this room on June 1, 1814.
Courteously lent by the Proprietors of the illustrated Paris journal, “Femina.”The Photograph by “Central-Photo,” Paris.
To face p. 368.
Leopold who did not trouble his last years; and she set a good example to others by submitting to her father’s rigorous will, and by delaying an alliance which she so long desired. Her artistic education and her penchant for “glory” make her the ideal companion of an exiled Prince.
From the outset of her acquaintance with the Prince, Princesse Clémentine has been a fervent upholder of the Napoleonic legend, and has made a close study of the works of M. Frédéric Masson, M. Émile Ollivier, and other historians of the First and Second Empires. She, at all events, does not regard the imperial cause as a lost one; and her friends laughingly assert that she is really plus Bonapartiste que le Prince. In her new home she is surrounded by many historical emblems of her culte—precious souvenirs of the First and Third Emperors and of the ill-fated “Napoléon Quatre,” these latter including presents from the Empress and others bequeathed to the present Head of the House of Bonaparte by the “little Prince” himself.
From her birth Princesse Clémentine was linked in relationship—very slightly, only in the seventh degree—to Prince Napoleon; for the youngest daughter of Leopold II. had for her maternal granduncle the Archduke Régnier of Austria, great-grandfather of the Prince-Pretender. But “the élans of two hearts are of more avail as a means of bringing two persons together than the drooping boughs of two genealogical trees.”[183]
Prince Napoleon’s exile dates from a quarter of a century ago; and some ten years have elapsed since there was an entente cordiale between His Imperial Highness and Princesse Clémentine. There was one obstacle (and, let it be emphatically said here, only one) in the way of a realization of their hopes—the fatal raison d’état! King Leopold was, or professed to be, haunted by the fear that such an alliance might possibly place Belgium in a delicate position vis-à-vis the French Republic. Has that apprehension vanished? Anyway, “Leopold the Builder” has gone to his last account, and Princesse Napoleon is not the daughter, but simply the cousin, of the reigning Sovereign.
Machiavelli outlined the line of conduct to be followed by Princes who reign or who will surely reign. He would, perhaps, have found it difficult to formulate the troublesome rules of existence of a Pretender in exile, who is obliged to firmly maintain his historical rights to the government of a neighbouring country, and to keep them sufficiently in the background, so that they may not compromise the nation which shelters him and whose hospitality he enjoys. How many banished Princes have known how to comply with two such contradictory conditions? The Comte de Chambord, Victor Hugo, and General Boulanger failed to grasp this essential point, and had to leave Belgian territory. It is by having known, since June, 1886, by his consummate tact, how to scrupulously respect the laws of hospitality, without in the slightest degree abdicating his dynastic claims, that Prince Napoleon has secured the respect and esteem of all Belgians, whether Conservatives or Liberals. They thank their guest because he has never been the cause of the least friction between Belgium and the French Republic; and they haveadmired him because, without going back upon his principles, he has never troubled the friendly relations which exist between Belgium and France.[184]
Machiavelli outlined the line of conduct to be followed by Princes who reign or who will surely reign. He would, perhaps, have found it difficult to formulate the troublesome rules of existence of a Pretender in exile, who is obliged to firmly maintain his historical rights to the government of a neighbouring country, and to keep them sufficiently in the background, so that they may not compromise the nation which shelters him and whose hospitality he enjoys. How many banished Princes have known how to comply with two such contradictory conditions? The Comte de Chambord, Victor Hugo, and General Boulanger failed to grasp this essential point, and had to leave Belgian territory. It is by having known, since June, 1886, by his consummate tact, how to scrupulously respect the laws of hospitality, without in the slightest degree abdicating his dynastic claims, that Prince Napoleon has secured the respect and esteem of all Belgians, whether Conservatives or Liberals. They thank their guest because he has never been the cause of the least friction between Belgium and the French Republic; and they haveadmired him because, without going back upon his principles, he has never troubled the friendly relations which exist between Belgium and France.[184]
By the civil law of Belgium, Princesse Clémentine was under no obligation (her father being dead) to request permission to marry. When the Constitution was revised in 1893 a clause was inserted providing that any “Prince” who married without the consent of the King would lose all rights to the Crown. No mention was made of “Princesses.” If Prince Napoleon had married the Princesse and created difficulties of an international character during her father’s lifetime, the Government, by virtue of Article 1 of the Law of February 12, 1897, could have expelled him from Belgium. King Leopold’s death changed the situation.
By her marriage Princesse Napoleon became connected with a reigning King (Victor Emmanuel), a former Queen (Maria Pia of Portugal), and a former Empress (Eugénie). One of her aunts (the Comtesse de Flandre) is the mother of a King (Belgium), and another aunt is an ex-Empress (of Mexico). The latter was deprived of her reason when on her fruitless mission to Napoleon III. and to Pope Pius IX. to crave their support for her consort, and was thus spared all knowledge of the execution by the insurgents at Queretaro, in June, 1867, of the Emperor Maximilian, brother of the present Emperor of Austria-Hungary. For forty-four years the Empress Charlotte has lived in complete seclusion in the residences provided for her by her brother, the late King of the Belgians—first, at the château of Tervueren, which was destroyed by fire in 1874; andthen at the château of Bouchout, a few miles from the Royal Palace at Laeken. The veuve tragique (as the Empress of Austria pathetically described her) wore her imperial crown for only three years—a period of continuous anxiety, trouble, and bitter humiliations. She had a devoted friend in the late Queen of the Belgians, and she found another in Princesse Clémentine.
Princesse Napoléon’s arrival at and departure from the church at which she hears Mass on Sundays is witnessed by an eager and admiring crowd of “the faithful”—and others; and she herself related this little episode to the eminent Belgian sculptor, M. Lucien Pallez, one day, when she was sitting for the bust which was completed in April, 1911. As Her Imperial Highness was leaving the church she heard a young girl of the people say to a companion: “How happy our Princesse looks!” This tribute, said the sculptor to a friend, touched her more than all her wedding-presents. The impression of supreme elegance which one derives from a glance at the bust—a chef-d’œuvre of Pallez—results from the harmony of the lines and the graceful curve of the neck and shoulders. The general allure of the bust recalls the Dianes chasseresses of the Renaissance. “I had only to look at my model to get my inspiration,” said the sculptor. On the imperial lady’s head (coiffée in Empire style) is a diamond and pearl diadem; the delicate ears and the supple neck are unadorned. M. Pallez has previously exhibited at the Paris Salon busts of the young Queen of Spain and the Queen-Mother, Pope Pius X., and Cardinal Rampolla.
The German Emperor and Empress met H.I.H. Princesse Clémentine for the first time during theirvisit to Brussels in the autumn of 1910. Prince Napoléon had a long conversation with the Emperor William, whom the Bonapartist Prince had not previously met. The Kaiser had, however, made the acquaintance of the Empress Eugénie in July, 1907, when Her Imperial Majesty received him one Sunday on board her yachtThistleoff Bergen. It was a memorable meeting, but not a single detail of the interview has ever been published, and never will be during the Empress’s lifetime.
Some two months prior to the marriage the illustrious fiancés visited Farnborough Hill, where, in the Empress’s Oratory, the nuptials would have been solemnized but for the weak health of the Prince’s mother, Her Imperial and Royal Highness Princesse Clotilde.
Prince Napoléon’s consort was no stranger to the august lady who entertained her in Hampshire in September, 1910; for the Princesse, her sister Stéphanie, and their father were the Empress Eugénie’s guests at Cap Martin some few seasons ago. To her unfeigned gratification, the Empress witnessed the enactment, chez elle, of an idyll the consequences of which may ultimately prove to be of high import to Europe. “The legends woven by the peoples aroundtheir Sovereigns must not be destroyed,” said the Empress one day. Prince Napoléon’s prospects of ruling France may not be very apparent at the moment; nor, in June, 1870, was the downfall of the Second Empire deemed within the region of possibility. But one September morning that terrible “shout from Paris” went up, and the imperial crown “flew off” with a suddenness which startled and thrilled the world. In France, more surely than in any other country, it is “the unexpected” which happens oftenest; and it may be that one day there may be another plébiscite, and that another Bonaparte may be invested with the imperial purple.
It needs a Ruskin or a Matthew Arnold to depict the Nature-glories of Farnborough Hill, the scene of this idyll. The rustic gabled mansion, the terraced slopes, the bosky lanes and dells, the “forest” which skirts the imperial domain, and the smiling Arcadian landscape provide all the materials for a great painter’s canvas, a poet’s tuneful lay. “How many walks,” says one of the venerable châtelaine’s French guests, “I recall in the alleys of the park at Farnborough Hill in the evenings of glorious days; or in winter, when the great trees were powdered with frosty rime, giving to the English landscape the semblance of some phantom picture; or in the early morning, in the second park, which has been christened ‘Compiègne,’ planted with rhododendrons and young pine-trees. The black dogs gambol round us, now racing off like mad things, then returning at the call of their mistress. The Empress’s firm voice mounts higher and higher in the pure invigorating air, as, leaning on her cane, with which she taps the sandy path, she gazes around, drinking in the freshness of the morning which she loves. Her features are more than usually animated. ‘Compiègne’ has revived memories of the past.”[185]
In “Compiègne,” those glorious autumn days, the story which is never old was once more told, to the accompaniment of the birds’ music and the rustle of the falling leaves, with, for spectator, an Empress, dethroned, ’tis true, but perhaps greater in her fall than in her elevation. Amid these beautiful surroundings, gladdened by the sympathy of one who has seen the world at her feet, the lovers’ days flew on lightning wing. For the Princesse, whose charm exercised a spell over all, those September days were of the nature of an imperial fête. The “auto” in which she and the Prince sped through the Hampshire and Berkshire lanes was not, certainly, preceded by piqueurs in the green-and-gold livery of the vénerie of the other Compiègne; but, to compensate for the absence of such luxe, the imperial guests revelled in that blissful solitude which is the one thing needful for the complete enjoyment of “love’s young dream.”
An excursion to Windsor awakened memories of happy days which the Princesse had spent at the royal château with her father as guests of the beloved “Great Queen,” whose good graces King Leopold’s youngest daughter enjoyed to the full. And, further, she was befriended at Sandringham by the then “Prince” and “Princess.” In Victorian days, too, Prince Victor had received hospitable entertainment at Windsor. His father hadpresented him to the Queen at Camden Place, Chislehurst, after the obsequies of the young Prince who had willed Prince Jérôme’s eldest son as his successor to the headship of the House of Bonaparte. Prince Victor could recall to his fiancée how, a score of years ago, he was taken along those same roads to Windsor, and how, at Queen Victoria’s dinner-table, he had met the Tsar of to-day, who later had also his idyll on the marge of the Thames.
Accompanied by M. Franceschini Pietri, the Princesse and the Prince paid their homage to the Empress’s beloved dead. They bore with them two crosses of violets, which with reverent hands they laid on the tombs of the Emperor and his son, the young victim of the assegais, who, as Monsignor Goddard said of him, had “the soul of a Sidney and the heart of a Bayard.” The then newly-erected arched tomb—the “arcosolium”[186]—for the surviving member of the illustrious trio was gazed upon by the Princesse with moistened eyes; the beautiful vestments in the sacristy—some made by the Empress and by the widowed Duchesse de Mouchy, the devoted friend of nearly half a century—were unfolded, to the royal lady’s inexpressible admiration; and she was shown the Sultan’s humeral veil; the illuminated altar-cards, whereon is traced a passage from the Prince Imperial’s “Prayer” (said by Cardinal Manning to be one of the most beautiful outpourings of a pure, devout soul he had ever read); the priestly purple vestments made from the Emperor’s pall, and the ecclesiastical apparel fashioned
H.R.H. PRINCESS GEORGE OF GREECE(néePRINCESSE MARIE BONAPARTE, ONLY DAUGHTER or H.H. PRINCE ROLAND BONAPARTE).Princess George and her Consort were the guests of the King and Queen at the Coronation of their Majesties. The Princess is the only member of the House of Bonaparte who ever attended the Coronation of an English Sovereign. Before leaving England, Prince and Princess George were the guests of Her Majesty Queen Alexandra at Sandringham.Specially photographed by Boissonas et Taponier, Paris, and lent for this work by H.H. Prince Roland Bonaparte.To face p. 376.
H.R.H. PRINCESS GEORGE OF GREECE(néePRINCESSE MARIE BONAPARTE, ONLY DAUGHTER or H.H. PRINCE ROLAND BONAPARTE).
Princess George and her Consort were the guests of the King and Queen at the Coronation of their Majesties. The Princess is the only member of the House of Bonaparte who ever attended the Coronation of an English Sovereign. Before leaving England, Prince and Princess George were the guests of Her Majesty Queen Alexandra at Sandringham.
Specially photographed by Boissonas et Taponier, Paris, and lent for this work by H.H. Prince Roland Bonaparte.
To face p. 376.
out of the Empress’s wedding-robe. There were no spectators of this pious pilgrimage of the Princesse and the Prince, or they would have witnessed the pathetic figure of the royal pair kneeling side by side at the foot of the high altar, and imploring the Divine blessing upon their union. Warm thanks for his genial courtesy were bestowed upon the Lord Abbot, Dom Cabrol, who had summoned all the members of the Benedictine community to witness the arrival and departure of the visitors, and to be presented to the Princesse.
Princesse Napoléon’s intimate friendship with the members of the Royal Family dates from as far back as 1895. Queen Victoria had expressed a wish to make the acquaintance of the youngest daughter, and on December 3 King Leopold and Princesse Clémentine proceeded to Windsor Castle, where they spent three days. Prince Christian and Princess (and the late Prince) Henry of Battenberg met the visitors at the railway-station, and escorted them to the Castle. Queen Victoria’s guests at the royal dinner-party that evening included the Belgian Minister and the Marquis and Marchioness of Lansdowne. While at Windsor Princesse Clémentine was taken to the cavalry barracks at Spittal, where she saw a “double ride” by non-commissioned officers and men of the 2nd Life Guards. From Windsor King Leopold and the Princesse went to Sandringham on a visit, from Saturday until Monday, to the then Prince and Princess of Wales, the former accompanying them to St. Pancras on the conclusion of their visit.
Princesse Napoléon has two sisters: one, Stéphanie, married, as her first husband, the Austrian ArchdukeRudolf, and, secondly, Comte Lonyay; the other, Louise, became the wife of Prince Philip of Saxe-Coburg, a son of the celebrated Princesse Clémentine (daughter of Louis Philippe, King of the French until his abdication in 1848), and consequently brother of Ferdinand, King and Tsar of the Bulgarians. Princesse Stéphanie’s widowhood was brought about by the Archduke’s tragic death in his hunting-box at Meyerling—a mysterious drama of which there are many versions, all of them unsatisfactory.
The story of Princesse Louise’s wedded life is only a shade less poignant than that of her sister Stéphanie. It has been told, in all its harrowing details, by a young Austrian officer, Count Mattachich, in a volume which had a sale of more than 30,000 before it was seized and its further circulation in the Austrian Empire prohibited by the Government. It is a narrative of dissensions between Princesse Louise and her husband, of bills of exchange bearing the signatures of herself and her sister, the widowed Archduchess, of a charge of falsification brought against the Lieutenant, of his imprisonment, of the placing of Princesse Louise under surveillance as being of weak mind, and of a discussion on all these circumstances in the Reichsrath. The death of King Leopold led to the opening of another chapter of family quarrels relating to the manner in which he had disposed of much of his large fortune by gifts to the lady whom he had made Baroness Vaughan, and to whom, it was publicly asserted by an ecclesiastical dignitary, he had been married. Princesse Louise displayed no indications of feeble-mindedness when, in May, 1911, she contested her father’s will. Thelittle ironies of royal lives, as well as those of humbler rank, are illustrated by the fact that Prince Philip of Saxe-Coburg was among the wedding-guests bidden to Moncalieri.
Before ending this narrative of the most important event in the history of Bonapartism since the martyrdom in Zululand of the only child of Napoleon III. and the Empress Eugénie—that tragedy which made Prince Victor, in accordance with the explicit terms of the Prince Imperial’s will, Head of the House—a few lines may be fittingly devoted to the Pretender’s brother and sister and their father.
At the period of the Prince Imperial’s death, in 1879, the Bonapartist Pretender of to-day and his only brother, Louis, now a General in the Russian army, were being educated in Paris. Their tutor was M. Blanchet, one of the most eminent scholars in France. He lived at No. 13, Rue de la Cerisaie, and the two sons of Prince Jérôme Napoleon were his only boarders. One of my friends asked M. Blanchet if Prince Victor was clever. “Very,” was the reply. “His early education was neglected, and it is wonderful how he holds his own with others who began the race long before him. [Prince Victor was then going through a year’s course at the Lycée Charlemagne, under his tutor’s supervision.] Before he came to me he was at a school at Vevey, and then at Vanves. He is, perhaps, best in physical sciences, history, and French. His mathematics might be better, but they were neglected in early youth. He excels in all field sports and all physical exercises. His great ambition is to be a distinguished soldier. [Later he studied at St. Cyr, the French Sandhurst.] Everything relating to military matters interests him, and he takes special pleasure in his fencing lessons, which are given him once a week. He is brought up very strictly. His father desired me to train him in the most liberal ideas, and keep him away from the many temptations which beset a youth in Paris. He hardly ever goes to theatres and races.”
Both Prince (Victor) Napoleon and his brother have worn the uniform of the French army. They entered the ranks as volontaires, and served for the regulation period, one year—Victor in the artillery, and Louis in the infantry. In 1908 Prince Napoleon made his “grand tour.” Accompanied by Prince Aymon de Lucinge and Colonel Nicot, he visited the Emperor of Austria-Hungary (who wore the Cross of the Legion of Honour given him by his young friend’s relative, Napoleon III.), the ex-Sultan of Turkey, and the Sovereigns of Bulgaria, Roumania, and Servia. In November, 1909, he was to be seen at Buckingham Palace, in friendly converse with one who, like himself, was to become an exile—King Manoel.
Princesse Lætitia’s marriage with her uncle, the Duc d’Aoste, aroused intense interest in Italy in September, 1888, owing to the high position of thebridegroom and bride and to their close relationship. The Duc’s daughters were not over-pleased at the prospect of having a stepmother of only two-and-twenty, who was also their cousin. Their two brothers showed their good-feeling by desiring their father to continue to reside at the castle of Cisterna, which had come to him by his first wife. The bridegroom (a one-time King of Spain) was double the age of the Princesse, who had the ripened intelligence of much older women, and exercised great influence in the family councils, more especially over her father. No one could manage Prince Jérôme better than Princesse Lætitia. Sometimes he rebelled, but only to yield with the protest, “Where did you get that strong little head?” In consenting to the marriage, she made it a condition that she should be allowed to see her brother, Prince Victor, as often as she chose.
Princesse Lætitia was only four when, in 1870, the day after the flight of the Empress from the Tuileries, she left Paris with her mother for Prangins, on the Lake of Geneva. Five years later she accompanied her mother, Princesse Clotilde, to the château of Moncalieri, an immense square edifice, then almost uninhabitable, situated on the hills above Turin. Owls and bats had made their homes in the castle; the vast rooms contain the portraits of many undistinguished members of the House of Savoy. Here the young Princesse spent her girlhood, going daily to a school at Turin, and, later, entering the convent school of the Sacré Cœur at Lyons, where the Sisters of the Adoration supervised her education. Thirsting for more knowledge after her return to Moncalieri, she received instruction from tutors of bothsexes, the present King’s father (the ill-fated Humbert, who was assassinated at Monza) placing at her disposal rooms in the Royal Palace at Turin. Her principal studies were drawing, painting, music, and languages. She speaks with equal ease French, Italian, German, and English, has still a fine voice, and sings with taste and feeling. Turin society thought that a more suitable consort for the Princesse would have been her cousin, the Duca delle Puglie, then nineteen, the present head of the ducal house of Aoste, who married the Princesse Hélène d’Orléans in 1895.
Princesse Lætitia’s wedding was not lacking in incidents. There was an evident coolness between the members of the House of Savoy and the Bonapartes. When the bride’s father and his youngest son, Prince Louis (now a General in the Russian army), arrived at Turin nobody awaited them at the station. The Court officials had been instructed to attend, but at the last moment the order was cancelled, and Prince (Jérôme) Napoleon and his son drove to the Hôtel de l’Europe, all the other wedding-guests staying at the Royal Palace. Even Princesse Clotilde abstained from meeting her consort on his arrival, and Princesse Lætitia sided with her mother. Prince Jérôme carried his resentment so far as to refuse to meet his eldest son, the Pretender, who was consequently, to the general regret, not present at his sister’s wedding. These family differences, arising out of the nomination by the Prince Imperial of Prince Victor as his successor, had their effect upon the Empress Eugénie, who did not attend the wedding, although she had given a qualified promise to be present if Prince Jérôme “made it up” withhis eldest son. But even Princesse Lætitia never succeeded in bringing about a reconciliation between her father and her brother.
Prince Jérôme Napoleon (as it has been usual, although incorrectly, to style him) never recovered from the blow to his pride inflicted by the Prince Imperial. He died in Rome in 1891, refusing to be reconciled to his eldest son, and on his death-bed nominating his other son, Prince Louis, as Head of the House of Bonaparte. That position Louis declined to accept, and “recognized” his brother forthwith. Prince Jérôme’s death was described by M. Duruy, son of one of the most distinguished of Napoleon III.’s Ministers, as “the end of a dream.” Princesse Mathilde, Jérôme’s sister, died thirteen years after her brother, and with her passed away the last niece of the “Great” Emperor.
One act of Prince Victor’s father will always be remembered to his credit. He condemned the declaration of war in 1870 from the first. When the fatal missive went forth, he foresaw what would, and did, happen, and said to the Emperor: “Tout est fini, et nous avec.” It was at Châlons, in the “blood month,” August, that Prince Jérôme next saw his imperial cousin. At a council held on the 17th the Prince, in angry mood, shouted to the Emperor, racked with pain and in the deepest despair: “To take part in this war you abdicated by leaving Paris, and now, by leaving Metz, you have abdicated the command of the army. Unless you cross over to Belgium, you must do one of two things—either re-assume the command, which is impossible; or go back to Paris, which will be difficult and dangerous. But, damn it! if wemustfall, let us fall like men!”
Prince Jérôme Napoleon disinherited his eldest son and his only daughter, and left all he possessed to his second son, Prince Louis, who has long held the rank of General in the Russian army. Prince Louis’ inheritance amounted to about £100,000; and his aunt, Princesse Mathilde, Jérôme’s only sister, made further provision for him under her will, leaving him also many valuable jewels and objets d’art. Scarcely anything was left by the Prince to his wife. As a Princess of the House of Savoy, the Italian Government allowed her £4,000 a year, a sum which, as she had lived a very retired and simple life since her husband’s death, sufficed for her wants. Princesse Lætitia was adequately provided for by her consort, or she would have been practically sans le sou, and this despite the fact that her mother brought Prince Jérôme a very handsome dot. Jérôme dissipated many thousands in wild speculations, and lost heavily by maintaining three newspapers—the “Peuple,” the “Ordre,” and the “Napoléon.”
The number of Bonapartist marriages since Napoleon III. ascended the throne is very limited. They include the wedding of the Emperor to “the beautiful Spaniard,” Mlle. Eugénie de Montijo, “Grandee of Spain of the first class,” in 1853; the late Prince Jérôme Napoleon (father of the present Pretender) and Princesse Clotilde, daughter of King Victor Emmanuel II.; the late Princesse Mathilde (sister of Prince Jérôme, and consequently aunt of Prince Victor and General Prince Louis Napoleon), who made an ill-starred marriage with the Russian Prince Anatole Demidoff, Prince of San Donato; Prince Pierre Bonaparte, who, although a first cousin of Napoleon III., made the reverse of a “great” marriage;
THE LATE MARQUISE DE VILLENEUVE(néePRINCESSE JEANNE BONAPARTE, ONLY SISTER OF PRINCE ROLAND, AND AUNT OF H.R.H. PRINCESS GEORGE OF GREECE).Photographed “for her friends” by Reutlinger, Paris, and lent for this work by H.H. Prince Roland Bonaparte.To face p. 384.
THE LATE MARQUISE DE VILLENEUVE(néePRINCESSE JEANNE BONAPARTE, ONLY SISTER OF PRINCE ROLAND, AND AUNT OF H.R.H. PRINCESS GEORGE OF GREECE).
Photographed “for her friends” by Reutlinger, Paris, and lent for this work by H.H. Prince Roland Bonaparte.
To face p. 384.
Prince Roland Bonaparte (only son of Prince Pierre), who espoused a daughter of the late M. François Blanc, of Homburg and Monte Carlo fame; the recently deceased Princesse Jeanne Bonaparte (Prince Pierre’s only daughter), who married the Marquis de Villeneuve; Princesse Lætitia (sister of the Pretender), the widowed Dowager Duchesse d’Aoste, who married as her second husband her uncle, the late Duc d’Aoste, the sometime King Amadeus of Spain; and Princesse Marie Bonaparte, the only child of Prince Roland, the consort of H.R.H. Prince George of Greece, a nephew of Queen Alexandra.
On April 2, 1910, at St. Paul’s, Grove Park, Chiswick, Miss Gertrude Crowther married Mr. Napoleon Gerald Bonaparte-Wyse, youngest son of the late Mr. C. W. Bonaparte-Wyse, of the manor of St. John’s, Waterford, and grandson of the late Right Hon. Sir W. T. Wyse, K.C.B., and Princesse Lætitia Bonaparte, daughter of Prince Lucien, brother of Napoleon I. There is a species of relationship—very remote, it is true—between Madame Sarah Bernhardt and one branch of the Bonaparte family. Prince Lucien, brother of Napoleon I., married as his second wife a Mlle. de Bleschamp, mother of Prince Pierre Bonaparte, Prince Roland’s father. Her daughter, by her marriage with a M. Maurice Jablonowski (her second husband), had a son, who, in 1860, married an American lady, Miss Mohr. The daughter of that union, Marie Terka Virginie Clotilde, married in 1887 M. Maurice Bernhardt, son of the famous actress, one of whose most successful parts is that of the “Aiglon” (the Duc de Reichstadt).
The marriage at Moncalieri revived general interest in the period of the Second Empire. The “greatyear” of the régime was that of 1867, when the Emperor and Empress of the French entertained foreign Sovereigns, Heirs-Apparent, Princes and Princesses, Generals, diplomatists, and the fine fleur of European society.
In 1911 there are still surviving several distinguished personages who were among the imperial guests in the summer and autumn of the most brilliant days of the Napoleonic reign. These include the Emperor of Austria-Hungary, whom the Empress Eugénie visited at Ischl in 1906; the King of Denmark; the King of the Hellenes; the King of Montenegro; the ex-Sultan of Turkey; Duke of Connaught; Comtesse de Flandre, Princesse Clémentine’s aunt; Prince Murat; the Duchesse de Mouchy (néePrincesse Anna Murat), the most cherished friend of the Empress; the Princesse de Metternich, who in 1910 was relating her recollections of Second Empire days to a select audience in her salon at Vienna; and the Comtesse Edmond de Pourtalès, who hastened to Chislehurst in 1870 to assist the Empress in a very practical way, and in 1911 is the valued friend of Prince Napoleon and his consort.
To this list must be added the familiar names of Mrs. Ronalds and Mme. De Arcos, both of whom have been for many years popular members of English society, and both residing in London. The last-mentioned lady and her sister, Mrs. Vaughan, are among the Empress’s most attached surviving friends; and Miss Vaughan has accompanied Her Majesty on some of her recent tours. M. Franceschini Pietri remains the most invaluable and devoted of secretaries.
Illustriousdisparusinclude King Edward and his brother, the Duke of Edinburgh; the King and Queen of the Belgians and the Comte de Flandre; the King of Denmark, Queen Alexandra’s father; the King of Holland, father of Queen Wilhelmina; Queen Sophia of Holland; the King of Sweden, father of his present Majesty; the King of Portugal, Dom Manoel’s grandfather; the Emperor William I.; the Emperors Alexander II. and Alexander III.; Ismaïl Pasha; Abdul Aziz, Sultan of Turkey from 1861 until 1876; Prince Jérôme Napoleon, father of the Bonapartist Pretender; Prince Pierre Bonaparte, father of Prince Roland and grandfather of Princess George of Greece; Princesse Mathilde, cousin of Napoleon III. and aunt of the Princes Victor and Louis; the Prince Imperial of France; the Prince of Monaco, father of the present ruler of the Principality; that Prince of the Netherlands popularly known as “Citron,” Bismarck, the great Moltke, Princesse Clotilde, and Queen Maria Pia.
Her Imperial Majesty the Empress Eugénie, who is deeply interested in the future of Prince and Princesse Napoleon, celebrated her eighty-fifth birthday on May 5, 1911. The unexpected and tragic death of King Edward, on May 6, 1910, came as a great shock to the Empress, who had known our beloved Sovereign from his boyhood—in fact, since 1855, when, some six months before he had attained his thirteenth year, he and his eldest sister (the Princess Royal, afterwards Crown Princess of Prussia, and later Empress Frederick) accompanied their august parents on their memorable return visit to theEmperor and Empress of the French. As Prince of Wales, King Edward had been present, earlier in that year, at the installation, at Windsor, of the Emperor Napoleon III. as a Knight of the Order of the Garter, and heard from his royal mother that, after the ceremony, the Emperor had expressed his gratitude for the honour conferred upon him, and, in a moment of rare expansiveness, had said to the Queen, “Now, at last, I feel I am a gentleman!”—a frank admission which much pleased, and probably amused, our beloved sovereign lady.
A week after the King’s death I learnt (although no mention of the fact had been made public) that early on the morning of May 7 (His Majesty passed away at a quarter before midnight on the 6th)—the Empress Eugénie had telegraphed “heart-felt condolences” to Queen Alexandra, Princess Henry of Battenberg, and Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll. It was also confided to me that, immediately after telegraphing, the Empress, although momentarily “stupefied” by the calamity which plunged our Empire into mourning, had written what were described to me as “very beautiful and most pathetic letters” to the three royal ladies. I was privileged to see other letters written by the Empress in May, 1910, and I do not hesitate to say that they were truly remarkable productions, revealing Her Imperial Majesty (as the Emperor once wrote of her) “in her true colours.”
I have a word to add. The Empress commissioned a Paris art firm to execute a very beautiful souvenir of King Edward. This she sent to Queen Alexandra, and in the autumn it was placed near the King’s tomb in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor. The Empresslunched (for the last time) with King Edward and Queen Alexandra, at Buckingham Palace, on December 16, 1907, when the imperial lady was accompanied by Mrs. Vaughan (whose sister, Mme. De Arcos, represented the Empress at the funeral of Queen Victoria) and M. Pietri.
In the summer of 1910 the Empress cruised in theThistlefor more than two months, visiting, besides Italian ports, Corfu, Athens, the Dalmatian coast, Smyrna, and Constantinople, which she first saw in 1869, when she went to Egypt to inaugurate the Suez Canal. The Sultan of those distant days and the Sultan of these entertained her. In the August of 1910 the Empress was in the Solent, and witnessed the launch of the Orion at Portsmouth. Later in the year she lunched, for the first time, with the King and Queen at Marlborough House, M. Pietri accompanying her.
The Empress signalized her eighty-fifth birthday (May 5, 1911) by a very pleasant cruise in the Mediterranean, as the guest of Sir Thomas Lipton, Bart., on board his yachtErin, and on June 24 she witnessed the review of the fleet.
In my previous volume[187]I dwelt upon the solicitude of Queen Victoria and other members of our Royal Family—notably King Edward and Queen Alexandra—for the Empress Eugénie and the fatherless Prince Imperial. I note the fact here because I am delighted to find that the details which I gave of that more than cordial—that affectionate—relationship are supplemented by M. Xavier Paoli in his volume of Souvenirs, entitled “Leurs Majestés....”[188]Sometwo years ago, in the “Pall Mall Gazette,” I announced M. Paoli’s intention to produce his reminiscences, and I emphasized the opinion that his work would contain some entertaining and piquant “indiscretions” concerning Queen Victoria and the Empress Eugénie. That my anticipations have been fully realized will be seen by what follows.
When Queen Victoria was at Nice a grave responsibility fell upon those who, like M. Paoli, the “Protector of Sovereigns,”[189]were charged with the onerous duty of guarding the royal residence without any great display of force, almost without any indication of it. The small body of infantry installed near the Queen’s abode had merely to present arms when the august lady appeared, and when French official personages called upon her.
One afternoon there was a “piquante adventure,” and all on account of “the” Empress. M. Paoli’s amazed gaze fell upon the little infantry force drawn up in the court, and he asked the officer in command “the cause of this mobilization, which was not in the day’s programme.” The officer replied that he had turned out the guard at the request of the Queen’s Courier, M. Dosse, who explained that Her Majesty was expecting the visit of “a crowned head.” Somewhat annoyed at his ignorance of what was about to happen, M. Paoli further questioned M. Dosse, who remarked: “Then you know nothing about it?” “Ma foi, non.” “Well, we are expecting the Empress Eugénie.” Paoli jumped. “What!” he exclaimed, “you want soldiers of the Republic torender honours to the former Empress of the French!” “I admit,” answered M. Dosse, “that I did not look at it from that point of view.” “But,” said M. Paoli, “Idolook at it from that point of view;” and he requested the officer to march his men off immediately.
A few days later M. Paoli related the incident to the Empress, who said: “Oh, how pleased I am that you have told me about it! Certain papers would have made me responsible for what happened, and my very delicate position would not have been improved.”
When the Empress attends a church in England other than St. Michael’s, Farnborough, it is an event. On Sunday, August 14, 1910, Her Majesty, accompanied by M. Pietri and Miss Vaughan, landed at Cowes and heard Mass at the church of St. Thomas of Canterbury. The celebrant was the Rev. John O’Hanlon, who told me he was born and brought up at Dumfries, less than a dozen miles from Closeburn, the home of the Kirkpatricks, from whom, through her mother, the imperial lady descends. The Empress walked up the steep road leading from Cowes Pier to St. Thomas’s Church. An observant spectator wrote of her: “Except for a slight lameness, the Empress has the activity and vigour of a well-preserved woman of sixty. The glorious chestnut hair, though now iron-grey, is still abundant, the eyes are bright, the features finely chiselled. The Empress, who once led fashions for all Europe, is now content to follow far in their wake, for the skirt of her simple costume was much ampler than those lately seen on the Royal Yacht Squadron’s lawns, while her coat had sleeves of a bygonefashion.” In the afternoon the Empress visited Princess Henry of Battenberg, at Osborne Cottage. On the following day (August 15, the date of the great fête in the Empire period) Princess Henry and Princess Christian took tea with the Empress on theThistle, which remained in the Solent for several days. The Queen of Spain and Princess Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein were other visitors. The Empress was seen walking on the parade at Cowes, but no one noticed the “slight lameness” referred to, which, in fact, is non-existent.
On February 4, 1911, the daily papers announced the death of John Brown, of Southwold, aged seventy-four, “a pensioner of the Empress Eugénie”; and it was added that Brown “brought the Prince Imperial’s body home.” This was incorrect. Colonel Pemberton had charge of the remains from the Cape to Woolwich. The body was brought to England by theOrontes, and transhipped at Portsmouth to theEnchantress, which conveyed it to Woolwich. On board those vessels, besides Colonel Pemberton, were the Abbé Rooney, the Prince’s valet (Uhlmann, who died some four years ago), and two grooms (Lomas and Brown).
In January, 1911, the Empress’s friends read in the Paris papers the somewhat disquieting announcement that MM. André de Lorde and A. Binet had written a play called “Napoleon III.,” in which both the Emperor and the Empress Eugénie will figure. French dramatists have hitherto, I think, refrained from presenting the august lady on the stage, and it is only within the last five years that the Emperor was impersonated in a piece entitled
THE LATE COMTESSE DE MERCY-ARGENTEAU(néeCOMTESSE CARAMAN-CHIMAY).From a private and unpublished photograph, courteously presented to the Author in 1911 by the Comte de Pimodan, the well-known author of a recently-issued valuable work on the Comte F. C. de Mercy-Argenteau, counsellor and confidant of Marie Antoinette.To face p. 392.
THE LATE COMTESSE DE MERCY-ARGENTEAU(néeCOMTESSE CARAMAN-CHIMAY).
From a private and unpublished photograph, courteously presented to the Author in 1911 by the Comte de Pimodan, the well-known author of a recently-issued valuable work on the Comte F. C. de Mercy-Argenteau, counsellor and confidant of Marie Antoinette.
To face p. 392.
“La Savelli,” by M. Max Maurey, produced by Mme. Réjane at her new theatre, Rue Blanche, in December, 1906. In the part of the Emperor M. Buguet acted with much distinction. His “makeup” was surprisingly good.
Very different was the treatment of the Emperor on the German stage, as recently narrated by M. Jules Claretie: “I was disgusted at seeing, at a Berlin theatre, in an adaptation of an old French féerie, Napoleon III., caricatured by a low comedian, dancing a cancan, his breast adorned with the grand cordon of the Légion d’Honneur.”
In December, 1907, MM. Julien and Marcel Priollet selected “Napoleon III.” as a title for their piece, produced at the Comédie de l’Époque, “amidst the bravos of the public.”
The Prince Imperial was dragged on the stage as a consequence of the “romantic” story first told to his detriment in 1879.[190]So persistently was the rumour spread that the Prince Imperial had lost his heart to an English girl that a German play was written on the subject and produced at the theatre at Kreuznach within a month of the Prince’s death in Zululand. In this amazing piece, which the German Government allowed to be performed at the fashionable watering-place (where the Empress Eugénie had “made a cure” some time after the war of 1870, and by whose inhabitants she was consequently well known), the Prince Imperial was portrayed in love with a gamekeeper’s daughter, “Miss Mary.” A rival tried to shoot the Prince,who escaped by the aid of a German servant, “Reinecke.” The story, as unfolded on the stage, showed that, when the Prince had made up his mind to go to the Cape, the Empress offered a bracelet to “Miss Mary,” who, regarding it as an attempted bribe, refused it, declaring melodramatically that woman’s love was “not to be bought with gold.” The dramatist made the most of the Zulus’ “surprise” of the reconnoitring party, numbering nine all told, led—or assumed to be led—by Lieutenant Carey, 98th Regiment; and the attack, the abandonment of the Prince by his comrades, and his cruel slaying by the savages were all enacted. The scene of the last act was described as “the crypt of the Catholic Church, Chislehurst,” and the Empress Eugénie was seen giving her dead son’s last letter to “Miss Mary,” who revealed to the imperial lady that she had been really married to the “little Prince” before he left for the Cape.
Not long after the tragedy of the First of June some Zulus were exhibited in Paris, and for fourpence, in a booth, illumined by oil lamps, M. Proudhon saw “how the Prince Imperial was killed”!
These fragments are pieced together for the sole purpose of completing the record of the history of the Empress given in my first volume. Such a record, imperfect as it may be, will not be found elsewhere. To be able to infuse into the narrative a note of gaiety is most agreeable to me, as I hope it will be to my readers at home and abroad.
One glorious summer afternoon[191]I roamed through rhododendron land. Oh the beauty of it!—the joyof living in so fair a world, a Paradise terrestrial! Through leafy mazes I wandered into gardens, where the air was laden with the perfume of roses and honeysuckles. For miles, and miles, and miles all was forest—dense, impenetrable forest. Unwillingly I left this scene of enchantment and entered a park. My brief midsummer day’s dream was over. I was invited to mount one of quite a “stable” of prancing steeds, galloping in a circle—“patronized by the Royal Family and the English aristocracy.” I was urged to “try my skill” in the art—say, rather, the science—of casting wooden rings over clocks, vases, and Lowther Arcade prettinesses in general. I was tempted by roundabouts, swings, “hooplas,” cocoanut shies, Aunt Sally, and “numerous side-shows.” “Zara,” the “celebrated Palmiste,” offered me “peeps into the future—the past laid bare”—“Zara,” whose “remarkable character readings” were guaranteed to “astonish you” (I felt sure of it). “Afternoon, 2s. 6d.; evening, 1s.” I could not, unfortunately, stay until the evening, or perhaps I might have made “Zara’s” acquaintance—at the reduced fee.
And what else? A Pastoral Play—scenes from “As You Like it,” presented by the “Marlboro’ Players”; a Venetian play, “The Honour of the Joscelyns”; a Vaudeville entertainment, by “The Bluebirds,” an “amateur association of ladies formed for the purpose of providing entertainments for the poor in winter, and also assisting deserving organizations”; a concert; Morris dances; a “display” by 100 boy scouts; daylight and evening fireworks.
It was a two days’ Coronation Fête, given atFarnborough Hill, “by kind permission of H.I.M. the Empress Eugénie,” in aid of the funds of the county branch of the National Service League. Farnborough had never seen the like, and rose to the occasion. I imagine that this garden festival “at the Empress’s” will be, as it deserves to be, writ large in Hampshire history.
Since the appearance of my first volume,[192]“the Empress’s Church”—St. Michael’s, Farnborough—has received an addition. While the Empress was on her unwontedly long cruise in theThistleduring part of May and the whole of June and July, 1910, a striking scene was being enacted within the walls of St. Michael’s. For some months the quiet which ordinarily reigns in the Mausoleum was disturbed. Sculptors and masons—French and English—appeared, masses of stone were hauled into the church, and the sound of mallets and chisels reverberated through the great crypt, which extends beneath the choir and transepts. Entering the crypt, I gazed at the transformation which had been effected. I saw a third tomb! It is a graceful arch, rising from the back of and surmounting the high altar. All who have visited the Catacombs at Rome will recall the “table” tomb and the “arched” tomb, and will not need to be told that the latter, from its shape, is the arcosolium. These tombs differ only in the form of the surmounting recess. In the “table” tomb the recess above, essential for the reception of the entombed body, is square. In the arcosolium, a form of later date, the recess for the tomb is semicircular, as at Farnborough. Thesemodes of interment were adopted by the early Christians. I leave it to the archæologists to tell us whether or no the Empress Eugénie’s arcosolium is unique in this country. I cannot recall anything resembling it. A space behind the altar is occupied by a massive block of masonry, with a flat surface, flush with the side walls from which the arch springs, and upon this the Empress’s sarcophagus (assuming it should take that form, and so harmonize with the granite tombs of the Emperor and the Prince Imperial) will rest.
Here, then,