France in the Nineteenth Century

by Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer

The beautiful woman thus raised to the imperial throne[2] was a mixed character,—not so perfect as some have represented her, but entirely to be acquitted of those grave faults that envy or disappointed expectations have attributed to her. Her character united kind-heartedness with inconsideration, imprudence with austerity, ardent feeling with great practical common-sense. Probably the emperor understood her very little at the time of his marriage, and that she long remained to him an enigma may have been one of her charms. With the impetuosity of her disposition and the intrepidity that had characterized her girlhood, she found it hard to submit to the restraints of her position, and the emperor had occasion frequently to remonstrate with her on her indifference to etiquette and public opinion. It was not until after her visit to Windsor in 1855 that she could be induced to establish court rules at the Tuileries, and to prescribe for herself and others, in public, a strict system of etiquette. But in her private hours, among her early friends, in the circle of ladies admitted to her intimacy, the empress was less discreet. Her impressions were apt to run into extremes; she indulged in whims like other pretty women; yet she was never carried by her romantic feelings or her enthusiasm beyond her power of self-control. Though careless of etiquette in private life, whenever a great occasion came, she could act with imperial dignity.

[Footnote 2: Pierre de Lano.]

Although she often experienced ingratitude, she was always generous. She was as ready to solicit favors and pardons as was the Empress Josephine. Sometimes she was even sorely embarrassed to find arguments in favor of her protégés. "Ah, mon Dieu!" she cried once, when pleading for the pardon of a workman, "how could he be guilty? He has a wife and five children to support; he could have had no time for conspiracy!"

As a wife she was devoted, not only to the public interests of her husband, but to his personal welfare. She was constantly anxious lest he should suffer from overwork; and her little select evening parties, which some people found fault with, were instituted by her with the chief object of amusing him.

Ben Jonson makes it a reproach against a lady of the sixteenth century that she would not "suffer herself to be admired." No such reproach could be addressed to the Empress Eugénie. Few women conscious of their power to charm will fail to exercise it. In the case of an empress,—young, lively, of an independent and adventurous spirit, and very beautiful,—all who approached her thought better of themselves from her apparent appreciation of their claims to consideration; and, indeed, in her position was it not the duty of the successor of Josephine to be gracious and charming to everybody?

Unfortunately the ladies who most enjoyed the intimacy of the Empress Eugénie were foreigners. She seems to have felt a certain distrust of Frenchwomen; and considering the ingratitude she often met with from those she served, it is hardly surprising that she preferred the intimacy of women who could not look to her for favors.

One of the ladies most intimate with the empress was the wife of Prince Richard Metternich, the Austrian ambassador. This lady seems to have had personal and political ends in view, and to have succeeded in inducing the empress to adopt and further them. That she was a dangerous and false friend may be judged from a speech she made when remonstrated with for countenancing and encouraging a project, favored by the empress, of making a promenade in the forest of Fontainebleau with her court-ladies in skirts which, like those in the old Scotch ballad, should be "kilted up to the knee." "You would not have advised your own empress," it was said to her, "to appear in such a garb." "Of course not," replied the ambassadress; "but my empress is of royal birth.—a real empress; while yours, ma chère, was Mademoiselle de Montijo!"

Brought up in private life, not early trained to the self-abnegation demanded of princesses, the Empress Eugénie did not bring into her new sphere all the aplomb and seriousness about little things which are early inculcated on ladies brought up to the profession of royalty. The career for which she had formed herself was that of a very charming woman; and one secret of her fascination was the sincerity of the interest she took in those around her. She loved to study character, to see into men's souls. She loved to be adored, while irresponsively she received men's homage. She especially liked the society of famous men, and when she was to meet them, she took pains to inform herself on the subjects about which they were most likely to converse.

That Queen Victoria loves her as a sister and a friend, is a testimony to her dignity and goodness; and we have her husband's own opinion of her, published on her fête-day, Dec. 15, 1868, after nearly sixteen years of marriage. The emperor had under his control a monthly magazine called "Le Dix Décembre," in which he often inserted articles from his own pen. The manuscript of this, in his own handwriting, was found in 1870 in the sack of the Tuileries. He omits all mention of his wife's Scotch ancestry, neither does he allude to her school-days in England. He speaks of her as a member of one of the most distinguished families in Spain, extols her father's attachment to the house of Bonaparte, and tells how she and her sister were placed at the Sacré Cœur, near Paris, declaring that "she acquired, we may say, the French before the Spanish language." He goes on to speak of her, not as the leader of a giddy circle of fashion in Madrid, as Washington Irving describes her, but as the thoughtful, studious young girl, with a precocious taste for social problems and for the society of men of letters; and he adds that after her marriage her simple, natural tastes did not disappear. "After her visit to the cholera patients at Amiens," he says, "nothing seemed to surprise her more than the applause that everywhere celebrated her courage. She seemed at last distressed by it.... At Compiègne," he also tells us, "nothing can be more attractive than five o'clock tea à l'impératrice; though," he adds slyly, "sometimes she is a little too fond of argument."

Assuredly she filled a difficult place, and filled it well; but the court of the Second Empire was all spangles and tinsel. It was composed of men and women all more or less adventurers. It was the court of the nouveaux riches and of a mushroom aristocracy. There were prizes to be won and pleasures to be enjoyed, and it was "like as it was in the days of Noë, until the flood came, and swept them all away."