Every great lady in Madrid has her circle of young and middle-aged men, known as “pollos”—literally, chickens. Among the Comtesse de Montijo’s “pollos,” all more or less smitten by the radiant Señorita Eugénie, was General Espartero’s successful rival, General Narvaly, Duke of Valencia, short, dark, a stern soldier, as supple in the young lady’s hands as the youngest and most impressionable of her “pollos.” A lady well known in social London, the wife of a foreign diplomatist, and gifted with the pen of a ready writer, drew this somewhat caustic portrait of the future Empress when she was the most-discussed personage in Madrid:
Hardly a week passed without some fresh anecdote being circulated of which Eugénie de Montijo was the heroine. She justified curiosity and courted censure by her disregard of conventionalities; and she certainly possessed the Alcibidian temperament which craves for notoriety. She wielded her sceptre of society queen with no light hand, and her favourites of to-day were discarded by to-morrow’s caprice. In her own house she was seen devoting herself for the whole evening to the entertainment of some obscure musician, hanging on his arm, speaking to no one else, and finally dropping the curtains over a window recess to which she had led him; but the following week, if the poor infatuated wretch came confidently to bask in the intoxicating favour that had bewitched him, he was received with a supercilious arching of the lovely eyebrows. This idol could look at him as if he were a total stranger, and glide away from him with the coldest inclination of her head.
The variegated life of the Spanish girl who was destined to become Empress of the French—her life between the ages of fifteen and twenty-six—has never been, and never will be, described in detail. They were “Wanderjähre,” years of travel, visits to modish Continental resorts, and one or two sojourns in England. Once, in the summer of 1851, she and her mother (but not “Pacca”) attended a Court ball at Buckingham Palace—an incident which Queen Victoria may have recalled in one or other of her numerous meetings with the imperial lady, but not recorded by the Queen in her “Leaves” or her “Letters.” The presence of the Spanish ladies among the Queen’s guests was, however, noted in the official list, the compiler of which, or the printers, effectually mangled the names of both. A week later Lord Malmesbury saw them at Cambridge House, Piccadilly, the town residence of Viscount and Viscountess Palmerston, now, and for many years past, the Naval and Military Club. Mlle. de Montijo struck Lord Malmesbury as being “very handsome”; with the “flair” of a modern journalist, he noted her auburn hair and her “beautiful skin and figure.” He would have earned our thanks had he given us the names of the social sponsors of the Montijos in London. It was our Great Exhibition year, and we may be certain that the ladies were among the hundreds of thousands who flocked to Paxton’s huge glass palace in Hyde Park, the exact site of which is probably unknown to all but the fogies of 1911.[18]
A resort which found much favour with the mother and daughter was Eaux-Bonnes, in the Pyrenees. At the hotel honoured by their presence was an observant gentleman who for a full fortnight had the felicity of dining in the company of the fair Spaniards. He was therefore, according to one of his friends, who made attractive “copy” of it for a Belgian paper, able to “coldly study” the younger lady. “C’est une très belle et très jolie femme, qui tiendra fort bien sa place, attendu qu’elle a, comme on dit, le physique de l’emploi.”[19]
CHAPTER II
THE BOYHOOD AND YOUTH OF NAPOLEON III
Few English readers are, I imagine, familiar with the boyhood and the adolescence of Napoleon III., whose centenary fell on April 20, 1908. It is true that Blanchard Jerrold has given us, in his “Life of the Emperor” (four volumes, published in 1874 by Longmans), an admirable and detailed history of the unfortunate Sovereign who drew his last breath at Chislehurst in 1873; but, perhaps owing to the abundance of other material officially placed at his disposal, Mr. Jerrold devoted only a few lines to the eight years during which Philippe Le Bas was the tutor of the future Emperor.
Luckily, M. Stéfane-Pol has recently produced a volume of the greatest value, entitled “La Jeunesse de Napoléon III.,”[20] containing the hitherto unpublished correspondence of the Prince’s tutor, Philippe Le Bas (of the Institut), with many original illustrations, some from the Prince’s own pencil, others by Queen Hortense and by artists familiar with Arenenberg.
“Prince Louis Bonaparte,” wrote Alphonse Karr, in “Les Guêpes,” “born in Paris in 1808, educated abroad, knew neither France nor its ways. He spoke our language with difficulty, with a very strong German accent. His early youth has left no souvenir, even in the mind of his most complaisant biographers.”
Even his partisans confine themselves to generalities, stupidly inaccurate. “Although far from France,” says M. Stéfane-Pol, “we read in a contemporary publication describing the coup d’état, ‘the education of the young Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was entirely French. His mother imbued him with a love of his natal land, and his father taught him, at an early age, to sacrifice everything—life, honours, and fortune—for the holy and sacred cause of the people; taught him, too, to dare and to suffer all things for the triumph of such great interests. Later, his parents, in order to complete his education, confided him to the care of M. Le Bas, son of the Conventionnel of that name, from whom the Prince acquired the wisest and most solid Republican principles.’”
Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, youngest son of Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland, and of Hortense de Beauharnais, was born on April 20, 1808. He was Napoleon I.’s nephew, and the Empress Joséphine’s grandson. He was baptized at the Palace of Fontainebleau by Cardinal Fesch, uncle of Napoleon I., and held at the font by the Great Emperor himself. In the Moniteur of April 21 his birth was thus chronicled: