“She did indeed look the part [of an empress] and really was a
most accomplished woman of the world.” 1
—PRINCESS PAULINE VON METTERNICH ON EMPRESS EUGÉNIE
“He had that wonderful simplicity about him, an absolute want of pose, that distinguishes great gentlemen from all the others.” 2
—PAULINE VON METTERNICH ON NAPOLÉON III
“His Majesty, the Emperor!’ the usher announced from the doorway of the Galérie de Diane as Napoléon III entered the Throne Room followed by Eugénie who curtsied three times,” Princess Pauline de Metternich, wife of the Austrian ambassador, noted in her memoirs. After greeting the ambassadors accredited to the Tuileries and their ladies, at nine-thirty “the Emperor offered his arm to the Empress, and, passing through several drawing-rooms, and followed by the entire diplomatic Corps,… made their way to the Salle des Maréchaux,” for the evening’s ball.3
A solemn march accompanied by the orchestra in an upper gallery announced their appearance as the imperial couple ascended the dais “from which the Empress again curtsied three times to her assembled guests. These balls then always opened with a waltz.” The ladies wearing flowing, hoop-skirted, décolleté gowns and jewels were attended by “the men [who] were either in full [military or diplomatic] uniform or in court dress, including cashmere knee-breeches, silk stockings and pumps.”4 Empress Eugénie, “a miracle of grace and dignity impossible to surpass” often wore white satin and “in her hair [Queen Marie-Antoinette’s] celebrated [140.5 carat] Regent Diamond surmounted by a tift of white feathers shimmering with smaller diamonds, while round her neck she wore three superb rows of pearls.”5 Louis Napoléon addressed Eugénie in the informal you, tu, while she invariably used the formal you, vous. He pronounced her name “Ugenie,” and she for her part followed the ritual of always rising whenever he entered a room, even when en famille informally.
After eleven o’clock the court went in to a supper, which was served at the buffet in the Galérie de Diane. Their majesties would then retire, while the younger couples danced until two or three o’clock. Such was a typical ball at the Tuileries, which the young journalist-novelist Émile Zola described in his twenty-volume Social History of the Second Empire as a den of iniquity and a vortex of corruption and decadence.6
For Princess von Metternich, still in her twenties and an eyewitness and participant, unlike Zola, who never met Louis Napoléon and Eugénie, or even entered the Tuileries, the reality was slightly different. The imperial couple, while discouraging serious gambling and overzealous drinking, were invariably gracious and thoughtful. Nevertheless, a strict, remorseless protocol ruled every aspect of their lives, and at these official balls the wives of ambassadors were required to remain seated throughout, denied all dancing, although admittedly “it was an extremely fine sight.” But Princess Pauline added, “for sheer unmitigated boredom they surpassed—in my opinion—anything that can be possibly imagined.”7 And this was the routine she was obliged to adhere to over the next decade. Much more to the princess’s liking were Eugénie’s “Mondays,” unofficial balls given in the Blue Saloon, when the empress’s private apartments were thrown open to the guests, and “everyone could dance to one’s heart’s content” in less formal circumstances.
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Like all European courts, that of the Second Empire had its well-regulated “seasons,” including periodic changes of residence and activity. From mid-December through the month of May, the Tuileries Palace was the heart and nerve center of the empire. Here Louis Napoléon received petitions, met with his ministers, or conferred with his Privy Council, received diplomats and distinguished visitors, met several times a week with Baron Haussmann on the current stage of construction, oversaw the very extensive programs he was preparing for his model farms, cattle and horse breeding stations, and major agricultural reforms, and held meetings with the war minister of the day to prepare for the annual army maneuvers at Châlons, much needed army reforms, and to go over the latest daunting casualty reports coming from Algeria. He also saw Auguste de Morny frequently to discuss the latest bills to be presented before the legislative body, while holding frequent work sessions with Minister Fould, who had the disagreeable task of reminding Louis Napoléon of excessive state expenditures and the necessity of practical budgetary constraints.
Relief and distraction were to be provided at the end of the workday, however, when Louis Napoléon received one of his numerous mistresses—his wife having forbidden all marital relations for many years—or attended receptions, balls, and frequently visited “the opera,” music hall attractions, in the company of brother Morny, Mouchy, and Haussmann. The daily demands on the emperor were relentless, and by the early 1860s they were beginning to take their toll. If he never did drink to excess, his chain-smoking was having an effect on his lungs. In any event, he was too conscientious to escape this unrelenting self-imposed schedule demanding his attention and decisions. Without the authority of the Second Empire and without himself at the helm, his many plans for transforming the country into a modern France would never have been fulfilled. At particularly dark moments, he confided in the English ambassador, Lord Cowley, about abdicating, an idea that caused considerable anxiety for Lord Clarendon and Downing Street, who feared a return to chaos and republican government. “We are wavering back and forth between anarchy and absolute power,” an anxious Prosper Mérimée observed. Once compromise with “the republicans” begins, “there is no going back.”8 And although still holding wide, sweeping powers as emperor, he was already fighting “the opposition,” at his own court and in political circles.
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Every year in the middle of May, the entire court transferred to the Palace of St. Cloud, a forty-minute drive by phaeton from the Tuileries via the Bois de Boulogne. There Louis Napoléon and Eugénie stayed at the nearby secluded villa of Villeneuve-L’Étang, while the official receptions and dinners were held in the palace itself. In mid-June the court would then transfer again, this time to the southeast of Paris, to the elegant palace of Fontainebleau, with its vast forest, a palace that Pauline von Metternich found to be “far more luxurious than Compiègne.”9 Fontainebleau was a favorite of François I, Louis XV, and Napoléon I before him; Louis Napoléon would now invite large numbers of guests in the more relaxed midsummer warmth to enjoy the endless round of picnics, shooting parties, boating, equestrian and charabanc excursions, dancing, and love-making.
In July and August Louis Napoléon and Eugénie would abandon the court and retreat to the fashionable Vosges Mountain spa of Plombières once again to take the waters for his crippling rheumatism, contracted as a prisoner at Ham, and especially to rest and recuperate after escaping the unrelenting pressure and demands in governing the country. Then, in the early 1860s, he replaced it with a new, relatively unknown spa on the River Allier at Vichy, which quickly filled up with courtiers and the wealthy, accompanied by its first luxurious hotels.
September then found the imperial family, including the young prince imperial, at the Atlantic coastal fishing village of Biarritz, just twenty-two miles north of the Spanish frontier. Louis Napoléon built the “Villa Eugénie,” far from Paris and the court. The solitude of the broad Basque village beach overlooking the Bay of Biscay was soon encroached upon, however, by the inevitable casino, hotels, and villas of the wealthy. The guests invited to the Villa Eugénie, unlike all other imperial residences, official or unofficial, were limited to close immediate friends and family like Prosper Mérimée and the Delesserts, Eugénie’s sister, Paca, the Duchess of Alba, and her children and family. But occasional “tourists” did drop in on them, including one Otto von Bismarck and his wife. This was Eugénie’s favorite residence, where she was seen daily strolling across the sand with her famous yellow parasol, her young son at her side.
The court season would then resume at the Tuileries in October and continue until about the eighth of November, when Louis Napoléon and Eugénie moved north to the enormous fourteenth- to fifteenth-century palace of Compiègne, entirely rebuilt in the eighteenth century by Louis XV, where they would remain for the next month.
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Compiègne was a world unto itself unlike any other, and the most highly selective one so far as the great names of the empire were concerned. “About a hundred carefully selected guests were invited [for the first week],” according to Princess Metternich, “and it can be readily imagined how eagerly and jealously the invitations were sought after.”10 Officially, Louis Napoléon’s cousin, the first chamberlain, Count Felix Baciocchi, was responsible for drawing up the four “series” selected, that is, for the four one-week slots. In the final analysis, of course, it was Eugénie who decided, a task she executed with painstaking consideration, finding the right balance of names and positions in society—politicians, diplomats, foreign visitors, artists, writers, scientists, all of whom were known to get on well with everyone else (to avoid spats, female rivalry, personal vendettas, and embarrassing out-of-date mistresses). One of the irritating problems was “the Duke of Persigny’s pretentious wife,” and others were eliminated from the list because of one scandal or another. Those surviving this scrutiny received a large gold engraved invitation:
By order of their Imperial Majesties, XX—is, or are, invited to spend a week at the Palace of Compiègne from the ___ of November to the ____ of November. The visitors and their servants will travel by a special train, which will also bring their luggage. It will leave the Gare du Nord at three o’clock.11
Pauline von Metternich, as the wife of the second most important ambassador accredited to the court after the English delegation, was one of the most frequent to receive the royal summons, and she relates her experiences from the day of their arrival. “At Compiègne we were met by brakes to which some of the most beautiful horses in the Imperial stables were harnessed. Starting at a full gallop, we reached the Palace where we found Count Felix Baciocchi standing at the head of the steps to receive us.” The number of baggage and portmanteaux brought for the sixty members of the initial party was phenomenal, even by aristocratic standards of the day. “One day we counted as many as 900!… I was the proud possessor of eighteen of these cases,” just for her gowns, without counting another dozen boxes for her hats. The maids and valets “shouting at the top of their lungs” swarmed over “a veritable mountain of trunks” heaped unceremoniously before the main entrance of the château in order to sort out theirs. It turned into a veritable free-for-all, the maids even “fisticuffing and swearing at one another!”12
The guests gathered in a drawing room that evening included the Duchess of Alba (Paca), the second Countess de Walewska, the Countess de Pourtalès, the Countess de la Bédoyère, the Baroness de la Poëze, the Marquise de Gallifet, Baroness Alphonse de Rothschild, the Duchess of Sutherland, and the Duchess of Manchester, among others … “all the youth and beauty of Paris.” Nor were the men forgotten, including novelist and playwright Alexandre Dumas, fils; prolific novelist and playwright Octave Feuillet; popular novelist, playwright, and journalist Edmond About; the shy writer Gustave Flaubert; the composer of operatic and sacred works Charles Gounod; chemist Louis Pasteur; the physicist Jouvert de Lamballe; artists Ingres and Jérôme; barristers Lachaud and Chaix d’Estange; the Duke and Duchess de Morny,13 ministers, diplomats, local landowners, the Marquis and Marquise de l’Aigle, the commanding general of the local garrison, and the prefect of the region. And there was almost always a small, frequently last-minute British contingent including the Lansdownes, the Malmesburys, the Clarendons, and “some Scots in kilts,” the Duke of Athol and Lord Danmore.
At Compiègne there were usually ninety to one hundred guests for dinner, Princess Mathilde or the wife of the senior ambassador always seated at Louis Napoléon’s right. Princess de Metternich was astonished to find only silver-plated, not sterling silver, cutlery. Having found no cutlery when he moved into this palace, Louis Napoléon refused to pay five million francs for this basic item. “At least we will not have to worry about burglars,” he laughed.14
After dinner—which never lasted more than sixty minutes—at eight-thirty the guests walked two by two to the drawing room, when Louis Napoléon would withdraw alone to his study to smoke a cigarette, and the other gentlemen went to the smoking room. On their rejoining Eugénie and the ladies, a chamberlain arrived and stood by the side of a small upright mechanical player piano and began to crank the handle. “We were obliged to dance to this hideous and monotonous music,” Princess Pauline complained, as he “ground out one frightful little tune after another.” Most of the guests, however, “collapsed on the hard little benches set round the room yawning.” These soirées, which usually continued until about half past eleven, “were the least agreeable of all our experiences at Compiègne,” the princess confessed. “They bored us to death.”15
Most evenings were more entertaining, however, when the emperor would suggest the latest Strauss waltz, which he had introduced in Paris, or La Boulangère, or the Sir Roger de Coverley. They would often just sit chatting, and the empress “went on talking with extraordinary verve and animation, with a complete absence of pose of any sort.” Louis Napoléon was himself an accomplished raconteur. He told “some good stories and thoroughly enjoyed those told by others as well,” Princess Pauline remembered. Group activities were the key attractions, however, including charades, tableaux vivants, or short plays composed then and there. “How many delightful little plays were given in the drawing-room.” A permanent stage had been built at one end and “my husband Richard [von Metternich] conducted the chamber orchestra.” “We once acted out Caesar’s Commentaries. On another occasion, at the insistence of Louis Napoléon, Auguste de Morny presented his little play, The Bonnet Inheritance (later put to music by Offenbach). The Marquis de Massa prepared a revue in which Pauline von Metternich played the part of a Zouave Cantinière, Madame Portalès looking “radiantly beautiful as ‘France’ and Madame de Galliffet as ‘England.’” The prince imperial dressed as a Grenadier Guardsman—“he was a dear little boy.”
Louis Napoléon always withdrew from the drawing room early, but “we were obliged to remain till it pleased her Majesty to retire. A tea-table was brought in for her, but no one touched either the tea or the cakes. The Empress alone had a cup of tea to which were added some drops of orange-flower water.” And then Eugénie rose and left, followed by her guests.16
Prosper Mérimée relates several stories about unscheduled events taking place at Compiègne, including one about his host. One evening Louis Napoléon was spotted prowling along the corridors of a guest wing, when suddenly Edouard Delessert dashed out of a room before him “dressed like a wild woman” [“habillé en femme sauvage”]. Startled and bewildered by this extraordinary vision, the timorous host quickly retreated to his own quarters. On another occasion Prince Jérôme—Plon-Plon—was briefly visiting Compiègne, when one evening after charades, they all sat down to champagne cocktails, the emperor inviting his cousin to propose the empress’s health, next to whom he was seated. “He [Jérôme] frowned.” “I am a little afraid of your speeches,” Eugénie quickly warned, “however eloquent they may be.” “I am no good at public speeches,” Plon-Plon mumbled. “And if Your Majesties permit, I will dispense with one now.” Absolutely outraged by this uncouth behavior, his cousin, the young Prince Murat jumped to his feet, and, trembling, made the toast. “Their Majesties betrayed no emotion,” Mérimée informed Countess de Montijo, but Prince Jérôme was never again invited to Compiègne.17 One day Mérimée encountered the precocious eleven-year-old imperial prince Louis lecturing his mother on her speech. “Certainly you speak French well, Maman, but you are still a foreigner and fail to understand the subtleties of our language.”18
On other evenings complete professional plays would be performed in the little palace theater by troops of actors brought up by special train from Paris, including from the Comédie Française, the Vaudeville, or the Gymnase. The stage was surrounded by the imperial box, with smaller ones on either side. Everyone wore full dress. After the curtain dropped, the emperor and empress would bow to the audience, who returned their obeisances. After the performance the artists were always invited to the imperial box, where they were congratulated by their majesties. But when it came to music, Louis Napoléon, Eugénie, and the royal court were less than satisfying as far as the good Viennese Pauline von Metternich was concerned. Or as she subtly put it, “There never existed a set of people of less musical ability than those attached to the Court of Napoléon.”19 She was equally disappointed later when she persuaded Richard Wagner to come to France to present his Tannhäuser, only to see him all but booed off the stage.
The day’s activities began “at the stroke of twelve as we all assembled in the salon for luncheon. Our dress was perfectly simple, little woolen costumes.” Although the great House of Worth prepared her formal dresses, here Eugénie wore “a woollen skirt—generally black, a red cotton shirt, and a leather belt round her waist.” They settled at the table, where a great many dishes were served, “and in my opinion it was superior to dinner.” At one o’clock they returned to the drawing room to make their plans for the rest of the day.
At two o’clock a veritable caravan of elegant carriages arrived “when we usually went for a drive in the beautiful forest of Compiègne,” or the emperor took his guests to the castle of Pierrefonds, which Violet-le-Duc was restoring. But of all the events planned during this week in mid-winter, the most elaborate and dramatic was a big hunt. These shooting and stag-hunting parties were usually comprised of ten to twelve guns, and the amount of game daily bagged could come to hundreds, including a great number of hare.
“The Emperor was a superb shot. He used to walk slowly alongside Eugénie’s carriage, swaying slightly as was his wont … he seldom missed a shot … Soldiers were brought in to act as beaters.… The men wore Imperial colors, green coats, braided gold, red facings, white leather breeches, top boots and three-cornered hats.” While the ladies wore “green cloth riding-habits; the bodices braided in gold with red facings, and like the men also wore three-cornered hats. The effect was charming.… Everyone was well mounted, the pack [of bloodhounds] was very fit, the huntsmen and whips chosen from among the best in France.” On this day the emperor shot a fine seven-year-old stag with a large set of antlers, “and he presented a foot to one of the ladies present. I still possess the one he presented to me.” Later on, the emperor gave each of the beaters a cigar. After the carcass had been carved and antlers removed, and with the bugles blowing, the first whip brought out the stag’s head to which the hide was still attached, and the hounds were free to eat it. “They devoured all that remained in less time than it takes to write … It was a very pretty sight!” the princess acknowledged.20
But enough was enough for the wife of the Austrian ambassador after they were invited to extend their stay for another week … “The fact is it was most dreadfully exhausting to go through an entire fortnight of incessant entertainments. On our return to Paris I felt such a wreck that I did not stir from the embassy for a good week.”21
* * *
If Compiègne was renowned for its splendid hunts, it was the Second Empire’s fabulous masked balls in Paris that revived Princess Pauline and Tout Paris. Not only did they attract the most beautiful women of the day, including Comtesse de Mercy-Argenteau, Mesdames de Pourtalès, de Galliffet, Le Hon, Walewska, and the Marquise de Las Marsemes, but the originality and sheer luxury of their costumes defied imagination. The new wealth of the empire created vast new personal fortunes, and the great names of the empire vied with one another with their balls, including those offered by Princess Mathilde, Mesdames de Fleury, Rouher, Delessert, and the Baroness de Rothschild.
For Pauline von Metternich, however, “the most gorgeous fancy balls of all were those given at the Quai d’Orsay by Count Walewski, at the Admiralty in the Place de la Concorde by the Marquis de Chasseloup-Laubat, and at the Présidence du Corps Legislatif [the Hôtel de Lassay] by the Duke de Morny.”22 One of the high moments of each ball was the introduction of the quadrille, with four women to a group, and its unique motif. For the princess the most dazzling was entitled “The Four Elements of the Universe”: “Earth,” with four society ladies “wearing nothing but emeralds and diamonds”; “Fire,” with the beauties of the day “wearing only rubies and diamonds”; “Water,” represented by gowns strewn with pearls and diamonds; and “Air,” with the titled ladies wearing sheaths of diamonds and turquoise, “borrowed from the Princess Lise Troubetskoi.”23
A quadrille given at an Admiralty Ball selected a more artistic approach based on the theme of “The Four Quarters of the Globe,” with Madame Bartholony making her grand entrance as an “African Queen,” wheeled in in a golden chariot covered with flowers. Madame de Chasseloup-Laubat, “an excessively pretty woman,” outdid even her as “she was carried into the ballroom by slaves in a palanquin adorned with enormous multi-coloured peacock feathers.” But for sheer beauty “the sensation of the evening was undoubtedly the entrance of the lovely Madame Ernest Feydeau, wife of the celebrated novelist.” She appeared wearing a large white hat with plumes in a white satin, gold-embroidered tunic and cape “based on one in a portrait of Louis XIV as a boy, complete with a short pleated skirt that fell to her knees,” in an age when it was scandalous for ladies even to show their ankles. “I have never seen any human being more fascinating and altogether delicious,” a famously plain Princess von Metternich sighed. This ball was held at a time when the reforms in Algeria were still meeting imperial hopes, and thus it seemed only fitting that “Louis Napoléon appeared as a Bedouin, wearing a flowing white burnous and white woolen turban … with a bejeweled dagger in his belt.”24