Not only do I accept with pleasure the dedication with which you are good enough to honour me, but I thank you for the much too kind terms in which you refer to me.
I thank you also for sending me your book, which I shall have read to me, and in which I am sure I shall find much that is interesting.
Accept my most cordially-sympathetic sentiments.
Émile Ollivier.
[The book referred to is “The Empress Eugénie: 1870-1910.” London: Harper and Brothers. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1910. Owing to M. Olliver’s somewhat impaired vision, books and documents are read to him.]
PREFACE
It is due to the readers of “The Empress Eugénie: 1870-1910,” that they should know how that volume was received by the British and American Press. Leading critics like Mr. Courtney, “Daily Telegraph”; Mr. Richard Whiteing, “Manchester Guardian”; and Mr. Tighe Hopkins, “Daily Chronicle,” devoted much space to their analyses of the volume, as did the able reviewers of the work in the “Morning Post,” “Daily Mail,” “Evening Standard,” “Scotsman,” “Illustrated London News,” “Observer,” “Athenæum,” “Church Times,” “Catholic Times,” “Onlooker,” and many other influential and widely-circulated journals. Two editions were exhausted in this country and the United States. A remarkable, and severely-critical, article appeared in “La Grande Revue” (Paris), from the pen of the celebrated author and publicist, M. Gérard Harry, a strong anti-Bonapartist, who deprecated what he considered the excessive praise bestowed upon the Empress Eugénie. I had a distinctly “good Press,” and to that fact I attribute the success of the work, a French edition of which will be issued by the eminent Paris firm of Pierre Lafitte et Cie. The written words of Napoleon III., hurriedly jotted down at the hazard of the pen on his way from Sedan to Wilhelmshöhe; of General Fleury by the side of the captive; of the Empress, and those about her, addressed to Mgr. Goddard—all these documents, it was agreed by the Press, threw new light upon the period of the Second Empire.
One of several appreciative American critics did not appear quite satisfied with the evidence authenticating the Empress’s “Case,” the elaborate statement justifying Her Majesty’s severely-criticized political and domestic acts. If any doubt existed on that point I will now remove it. The assertions contained in that document were indeed those of the Empress herself, and would never have been published without her express approval and sanction.
Sovereigns who have been traduced do not “rush into print” with signed denials of accusations published to their discredit. They adopt other means of repelling attacks upon their honour, and sometimes upon their morality. Thus, the Emperor Napoleon, during his captivity at Wilhelmshöhe, wrote with his own hand a detailed explanation of his policy as the Ruler of France. It would not have been convenable—not in accordance with his dignity or with the rigid etiquette which guides Sovereigns even in their most trivial actions—for the Emperor (who had not then been formally deposed) to have issued that statement with his signature appended to it. The Duc de Persigny refused to “father” the document, and it was sent forth as “by the Marquis de Gricourt,” although, as General Count von Monts assures us, the Emperor was the actual author of the pamphlet,[1] and gave the General a copy of it. Some extracts from the Emperor’s “Case” are printed in the present volume.