The Idyll.
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 around their 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 had presented 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
(née PRINCESSE 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.
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 Archduke Rudolf, 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. The little 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.