The Italians rivalled the Spaniards by their beauty as well as by their entrain. There were the Comtesse de Castiglione, Princesse Belgiojoso, the Duchesse Riario-Storza, the Comtesse Marcello, the Duchesse de Bojano, to name only a few of the best known.
There were many reasons why the advent of the Second Empire coincided with the reign of the foreigner in Paris between 1853 and 1870. Firstly, the Faubourg Saint-Germain would have no intercourse with the new régime. The Empress, as we have seen, welcomed with open arms the Spanish aristocrats. Thus the ladies from beyond the mountains found themselves in the centre of the social whirlpool, and to this point naturally gravitated other of the foreign invaders. It was this attractive cosmopolitanism which inspired the amusing boutade of Meilhac and Halévy in their (and Offenbach’s) “Vie Parisienne”: “You are a foreigner—so am I. Then, as compatriots, let us,” etc.
Another reason—and the principal one—was the facility for getting about by the multiplication of means of locomotion. If a new railway was to be inaugurated the Emperor was always ready to preside at the ceremony, and to make one of his telling speeches, abounding in happy phrases, and glorifying French genius and French enterprise. It was steam which acted as the great conductor of the foreigner to the Paris of the Second Empire—steam which linked France with, first, North, and then South, America. In 1852, when, until December, Louis Napoleon was only Prince-President, Paris did not contain a dozen American residents. The first American ladies seen in Paris salons when the new reign began were Miss Ridgway and Miss Moulton. Then came Mrs. Post and her daughters; Mrs. Moulton, whose daughter married Count Hatzfeldt; Mrs. Ronalds and her sister, Miss Josephine Carter, both beautiful; Mrs. Pilié, one of whose daughters became the Marquise de Chasseloup-Laubat; Mrs. Carroll, who found in the Comte de Kergorlay a husband for one of her daughters; Mrs. Davis, two of whose daughters married Frenchmen; Mrs. Payne, whose daughter became Mme. Ferdinand Bischoffsheim; Miss Beckwith; and Miss Polk, who married General Baron de Charette, the redoubtable leader of the Papal Zouaves.[80]
While Princesse de Metternich had a monopoly of notoriety, there were four ladies who enjoyed greater social triumphs than any others—a charming quartet, who shed lustre on the imperial Court, and were immune from the barbed shafts of the satirists, which is not to say that they escaped the attentions of the gossip-mongers. They were Jeanne de Tallyerand-Périgord, Princesse de Sagan; the Marquise de Galliffet, Princesse de Martignes; Mélanie, Comtesse de Pourtalès; and the Marquise de Canisy.[81] In the lives of each there is material for a chapter. Mme. de Sagan was dubbed in her monde “Canaillette”; Mme. de Galliffet, “Cochonette”; and Mme. de Pourtalès, “Chiffonette.” The Junoesque Mme. de Canisy had no such enigmatical “fond-name.” These ladies figure in the chronique as among what was known as the Prince of Wales’s coterie, which included a few others who do not call for particular mention.
One of the most noted speculators of the epoch was Baron Seillière, father of the Princesse de Sagan. Her husband was the eldest son and heir of the Duc de Valençay; the great Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun, was of this family. If the Princess lacked beauty, she had exceptional intellectual gifts, and was prized for the staunchness of her friendships and her never-failing good nature. It was not her brilliant mental equipment that attracted the Prince; she had a very large dowry, or she might never have been presented by De Sagan with his hand, his heart (or what remained of it), and his title. The De Sagans’ princely abode, in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, had belonged to an Englishman—Mr. Hope, the banker, whose London residence was converted into the Junior Athenæum Club, from whose upper rooms the Crystal Palace is visible.
The Princesse de Sagan used to assemble her relations and friends round her hospitable table every Sunday. Although she sprang from the wealthy middle class, Madame la Princesse, by her marriage, was immediately accorded a place in the forefront of the aristocracy, and she was one of the most notable figures at the Court of the Tuileries. One would have thought she had been born, if not in the actual purple, at all events very near it. They said of her that her husband, grand seigneur as he was to the finger-tips, developed her instincts, and that “she formed herself in his school.”
The immense wealth which this fascinating woman brought her husband enabled them to outshine the great majority of even the richest members of the French aristocracy. Her magnificent toilettes were the envy of all the women—the De Sagans’ horses and carriages excelled those of everybody else. The purple liveries, braided in gold, were singled out for special admiration by the crowd at Longchamp, where the Prince of Wales was seen fairly often. I have heard that the stables were not inferior to those of the Emperor. The luxe of the De Sagans’ residence was amazing. Very few, if any, royal palaces could show anything equal to it. There were said to be twelve hundred silver plates and dishes, and everything else was on a similarly regal scale.
A striking feature of the De Sagans’ hotel was the principal staircase, suggestive of the grand escalier at the Royal Palace at Madrid. The marble steps, covered with rich Aubusson carpeting; the cushions on the balustrades; the beautifully-decorated salons on the first floor; the bibelots of every kind; the white-and-gold adornments of the apartments; the galerie des glaces, scarcely less beautiful than the mirrored corridors at Versailles; the immense dining-room in which a hundred guests were often entertained; the rez-de-chaussée reserved for the use of the family; the park-like garden stretching over an immense area of the Faubourg Saint-Germain—how often did not our Prince see and admire all these!
The Princess had been the spoilt child of her wealthy father, who indulged her every caprice and humoured her every whim. Her jewels were the world’s talk at the time I am speaking of—and after. During one of her visits to London she made up her mind to appear at some great gathering in all her diamonds, and a telegram to Paris brought over one of the secretaries of her father (Baron Seillière) laden with the gems! Needless to describe the sensation which these bewildering stones, valued at many thousands of pounds, made in London.
Before very long the Prince and the Princess were living apart. Of the Prince and Baron Hirsch[82] this story is told by a friend of mine who was in the Bonapartist set during the reign.