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 to render 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, “I do look 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 bygone fashion.” 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 the Thistle, 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 the Orontes, and transhipped at Portsmouth to the Enchantress, 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
(née COMTESSE 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.