Eugénie: The Empress & her Empire (12 page)

In November 1857 the British foreign secretary, the Earl of Clarendon, asked Lord Cowley to give him some idea of what life was like at Compiègne house parties. ‘It is difficult to describe …’, the ambassador replied, with a distinct lack of enthusiasm:

The empress instead of letting people alone, torments herself and them by thinking it necessary to furnish constant amusements for them – such amusements generally suited to some people and not to others, but the emperor and empress are both so natural and unaffected, and there is so little ceremony and etiquette that the life is not disagreeable for a short time…. Breakfast is at eleven, then there is either hunting or shooting, or some expedition. Dinner about eight o’clock, which never lasts more than an hour. In the evening there is dancing to a hand organ (a dreadful trial to one’s auricular nerves) or charades or cards…. The hand organ is employed because the emperor fancies that regular musicians would tell tales – so a wretched chamberlain has to grind all evening.

A Whig nobleman, Cowley did not enjoy mixing with intellectuals who were not gentlemen. The ‘hand organ’ was a primitive Debain mechanical piano which could only play a few tunes, hence his anguish. But often Waldteufel, who had an apartment in the town, played dance music on a proper piano.

A few years later, Lillie Moulton was invited and she gives a more enthusiastic account. At the station, ‘I think the whole twelve thousand inhabitants of Compiègne were gathered there to stare at us.’ About sixty guests were taken to the château in ten green chars-à-bancs, each drawn by four horses, the luggage going separately. Her own included eight day costumes (‘counting my travelling suit’), her green riding habit for hunting, seven ball dresses and five tea gowns. Accommodation for herself and her husband consisted of two bedrooms, two servants’ rooms, an ante-chamber and a large salon whose walls, curtains and furniture were covered in pink and mauve brocade. She much preferred the modern chaise longue and armchairs in white and green in her bedroom to the stiff First Empire furniture in the salon.

Despite being used to the Tuileries, and although the party was supposed to be comparatively informal, at first Mrs Moulton found herself a little daunted by the grandeur of Compiègne. The Cent Gardes were very much in evidence, fifty footmen with powdered hair in red and white liveries served dinner, a military band in the courtyard outside the dining-room playing throughout the meal. Eugénie was wearing a superb diamond tiara and a collar of huge pearls. After dinner, however, the atmosphere grew more relaxed, everyone going into the ballroom where they waltzed to music provided by Waldteufel – ‘the French Strauss’ – in person or by the famous mechanical piano which, whatever Lord Cowley might say, Lillie considered an altogether delightful instrument.

Occasionally there was singing in the evening, and during her visit Lillie sang to the court, among her American songs being ‘Nelly Bly’ and ‘Swanee River’ at Napoleon’s special request – he also asked for ‘Massa’s in de Cold, Cold Ground’, which he remembered from his visit to America, but she did not know the words. Sadly, Prince Murat’s suggestion that the entire court dance a Virginia reel ended in disaster – ‘the emperor refused to be swung’, complains young Mrs Moulton.

Other evening amusements during the ‘
séries
’, as Compiègne house parties were called, included Japanese billiards, while full use was made of the château’s pretty little theatre. Sometimes actors were brought from Paris or the guests mounted a play themselves – after one appearance on the boards, despite frenzied clapping, Eugénie was shrewd enough to realise that she had no gift for acting and did not try again. More often the theatre was used for charades, for whose organisation the architect Viollet-le-Duc had a special talent. In one of them Lillie Moulton impersonated ‘a mechanical doll sent from America’. There was also a rather dull-sounding parlour game of dictations full of grammatical pitfalls. Evenings at Compiègne always ended with tea in the empress’s salon.

The salon, Eugénie’s private drawing-room, had an ante-chamber furnished with Italian Renaissance cabinets, inlaid tables and vitrines. The salon itself was very large, filled with tables on which bibelots were strewn, screens made of eighteenth-century engravings and low, modern armchairs. Its walls were hung with magnificent old tapestries and cases of fans, while there was a painted ceiling in what seems to have been rococo style. Books, obviously in the process of being read, were lying about everywhere.

What Lillie Moulton particularly liked about the empress was her lack of self-consciousness. ‘None of the many portraits painted of her, not even Winterhalter’s, do her the least justice; no brush can paint and no words can describe her charm’, said Lillie. When the poor girl crept into the château’s dining-room late for lunch, a frightful breach of court etiquette, especially when she had been invited to sit next to Napoleon, Eugénie immediately restored Lillie’s self-confidence with an understanding smile down the table.

The imperial hunt was kennelled at Compiègne during the autumn months when the ‘
séries
’ were being held. The hounds always met at noon, at the Puits du Roy (‘The King’s Well’) in the middle of the forest, a spot which was the focal point of eight long and very wide woodland rides. If the hunt went according to plan, a stag was run down and killed in time for everyone to return to the château for tea. The empress presided over the tea, which was served in the Salon de Musique, Napoleon slumped amiably by the fire in his favourite, plum-coloured armchair. After dinner, standing on the balconies, the party watched the torchlit ceremony of the
curée
, which at Compiègne was held in the Cour d’Honneur; Eugénie, who felt the night cold keenly, was muffled in furs.

Every morning at nine a valet brought tea, coffee or chocolate according to choice to the guest rooms, together with a card listing the programme for the day. Lillie gives an example:

Dejeuner à onze heures

Chasse à tir à deux heures
.

Comédie Française à neuf heures
.

Excellent guns, ammunition and loaders were provided for any guest of either sex who wanted to join the shooting party, which was served by unusually helpful gamekeepers and an obliging horde of beaters. But although she knew how to, Eugénie never shot birds, merely watching the guns.

Generally there was shooting on the first day, ‘promenades’ in the forest (regardless of the weather) on the second, hunting on the third, and rabbit and rook shooting in the park on the fourth. Simpler outdoor amusements were always available, however. ‘Do you wish to walk?’, said Lillie. ‘You can tramp up and down the one-thousand-metre-long trellis walk, sheltered from wind and rain. Do you wish to drive? There are carriages of all descriptions, chars-à-bancs, landaus, pony-carriages, and even a donkey cart, at your service. Do you care to ride? There are one hundred and fifty horses eating their heads off in the imperial stables waiting for you. Whatever you do, you are expected to be in your rooms before four o’clock, which is the time the empress will send for you, if she invites you to tea.’

Mrs Moulton witnessed an unsuccessful attempt to introduce croquet to Compiègne, Napoleon having recently ordered a croquet set from Paris. According to Lillie, ‘The emperor, bored to death, slowly disappeared and the empress suddenly discovered that her feet were cold and went away, and couples flirtatiously inclined began wandering off.’

The party was invited to attend the local army manoeuvres, a faintly ridiculous mock battle during which enormous quantities of blank ammunition were fired, and which always ended in a triumphant victory for French troops. Eugénie and the ladies wore their green hunt uniform for the occasion. ‘The empress looked radiantly beautiful, her well-fitting riding-habit showing her fine figure to the greatest advantage’, Lillie tells us.

On another afternoon there was an expedition to see the great fourteenth-century château of Pierrefonds on the edge of the forest of Compiègne, the guests, wrapped in furs and rugs because of the cold, travelling in the green, four-horse chars-à-bancs which each held eight passengers. They were accompanied by Viollet-le-Duc, ‘the pet architect of the emperor’, who was restoring the château. (As at Carcassonne, Viollet-le-Duc’s so-called ‘restoration’ was in fact a wildly inaccurate reconstruction.) Lillie found it interesting, but very cold and tiring, even though she enjoyed the beautiful drive through the woods.

Not everybody was quite as enthralled as Mrs Moulton by the
séries
. ‘The Compiègne gathering is an odd one’, Viel Castel had sneered enviously in October 1856. ‘The court has come up with a thoroughly unsuitable guest list. Literature is represented by the Comte Alfred de Vigny … who paints his face and licks his lips to make them pinker, looking just like an old woman dressed up as a man contrary to police regulations. He doesn’t write any more, for fear of making a mess of it.’ Even so, Vigny (who remembered the courts of Louis XVIII and Charles X, having been an officer in their household troops) was delighted to be invited – ‘puffed up’ (
gonflé
) is Viel Castel’s description.

What was surprising about this particular
série
was that it included so many
ancien régime
names, because all the old aristocracy were supposed to be irreconcilable Legitimists and boycott the imperial court – the Prince de Beauvau-Craon, the Prince de Bauffremont, the Comte de Caumont la Force, the Marquis de Caulaincourt, the Comte Frédéric de Lagrange. A less unexpected guest was Baron de Rothschild, an old and valued friend of Eugénie from before her marriage, ‘who will perhaps divert the company with some financial calculations’, sniffed Viel Castel. ‘Auber and Meyerbeer will talk music with Verdi, Horace Vernet and Isabey will exchange puns. The Marquess of Hertford is no doubt very clever and amusing, but you have to fill in the background with ministers, generals and officials and if, after all that, you don’t admit the company is most elegant and select, then you’re hard to please.’ But Comte Horace de Viel Castel’s sarcasm came from knowing that he was too insignificant to have any chance of being invited himself.

In contrast, Mrs Moulton was fascinated by the company she met at Compiègne a decade later. One night she sat next to the poet Théophile Gautier, who entranced her, telling her about his educated cats, and who then sent her a poem. She made friends with the Marquis de Gallifet, who was the most dashing cavalry colonel in the entire French army. (A future hero of the 1870 war and scourge of the Communards, in his old age he would be immortalised by Proust.) The marquis told her how he had been shot in the stomach and left for dead in Mexico, but had crawled to safety ‘holding my entrails in my képi’. She was taken into one lunch by Baron Haussmann, the great rebuilder of Paris. At the final lunch Gustave Doré passed round the table an album of caricatures he had drawn during the week, with a ‘sketch of Her Majesty driving a chariot like the “Aurora” in the Rospigliosi gallery’.

No doubt after one of the
séries
, Prosper Mérimée wrote, ‘I feel half dead. Fate never intended me to be a courtier’, although he added loyally, ‘You can’t imagine a more amiable hostess.’ But Mérimée was a professional intellectual, nervous about his image and deeply embarrassed at having been made a senator at Eugénie’s request.

On the last morning the pleasure of Lillie and her husband was a little marred by the major-domo bringing them a bill for a huge tip – 600 francs. The whole party grumbled about the tips on the train back to Paris, despite learning that Compiègne cost 10,000 francs a day to run, with 900 people to feed. Eventually a guest complained in the newspapers and the emperor, who had no idea of what had been happening, angrily banned all tipping. But next year Lillie eagerly accepted another invitation to Compiègne.

B
IARRITZ AND THE
V
ILLA
E
UGÉNIE

The pressures on Eugénie grew throughout the reign. Years afterwards, she was to confide in a close friend, ‘If only you knew what we had to endure!’ It was not just the claustrophobic, demanding life in the great palaces, always on show and in the public eye, hemmed in by stifling pomp and etiquette, that was such a strain on her, but the ever-increasing worries – about her husband’s compulsive infidelities, about a dangerous international situation that deteriorated steadily and about the régime’s sheer insecurity at home, more than just a few times expressed in determined attempts at assassination by bomb, revolver or dagger. (After one particularly narrow escape she commented, ‘It’s our business to be shot at.’) Often her life as a sovereign at the Tuileries, even at Compiègne, must have seemed barely tolerable to a woman who was so highly strung and who in any case was by nature a free spirit, fiercely independent, and who loathed any form of constraint on her personal liberty. She needed a special refuge where she could relax and be herself.

Fortunately, Eugénie had already found it at Biarritz, that obscure, south-western fishing village on the shore of the Bay of Biscay, just north of the Spanish frontier, which she had first discovered in 1847. She loved its pleasant weather, so much gentler than the weather in northern France even if often interrupted by storms; but she took a perverse pleasure in storms. When she returned to Biarritz a few months after her marriage, there were still only a few hundred people in the village, all of them Basque-speaking fishermen and their families, while the only building larger than the little church and the local lighthouse was a ruined castle, the château d’Atalaye. The landscape was ‘wildly picturesque’, with a magic coastline of little bays, caves and grottoes, together with the Pyrenean mountains for a background. But the couple also explored inland, driving through the Landes. One of the expeditions was to visit new mineral springs near
Grenade, where a tiny spa (which still exists) was subsequently established, with the name ‘Eugénie-les-Bains’.