THE TUILERIES
The “great” balls at the Tuileries were given before Lent; the “little”
balls, otherwise known as the Empress’s “Mondays,” after Easter. At the
larger of these entertainments all the men were in uniform. The Emperor,
the Generals, and the officers of the household wore white cashmere
breeches, silk socks of the same colour, and pumps with buckles.
Civilians were in Court dress, with embroidered collars and cuffs, and
swords; the crush hat (clâque) was carried under the arm. One person
only wore buckskin breeches and high riding-boots of varnished leather:
this was the écuyer on duty.
At the “Mondays” the guests were restricted to those who had been
previously “presented”; they were selected in rotation from a list--this
was the “séries.” Court functionaries and a few of their Majesties’ most
intimate friends were invited to all the “Mondays.” The regulation garb
for men on these occasions was either “shorts,” or very tight-fitting
trousers, and black tail-coats. The Emperor and the officers of the
household were in evening dress, the coat being of a dark blue cloth,
with velvet collar, the lapels lined with white satin, and gilt buttons
bearing a crowned eagle.
Each ball was preceded by a family dinner, the guests being Prince
Napoleon and his wife, Princesse Clothilde; Princesse Mathilde, the
Murat Princes and Princesses, Prince Charles and Princesse Christine
Bonaparte, the Marquis and the Marquise de Roccagiovine, and Comte and
Comtesse Primoli.
About ten o’clock the Emperor and Empress entered the salon of the First
Consul. Here the guests had previously assembled, here new presentations
were made by the First Chamberlain, Comte Bacciochi, and their Majesties
made the tour of the room, saying a few words to all before the dancing
began. The Empress, who seldom danced, took up her position in an
adjoining salon, whither she was generally followed by diplomatists like
Lord Cowley (H.B.M. Ambassador), Prince de Metternich, and Chevalier
Nigra, and by intimate friends like Prosper Mérimée, Édouard Delessert,
Onésime Aguado, and a few others.
During the dancing the Emperor chatted for an hour or so with his
Ministers; then, reappearing in the ballroom, chose a partner, and
himself led a “boulangère,” or formed a set of the “lancers,” preferring
either of these to quadrilles, which he found lacking in “go.” Then came
the cotillon, led by Princesse Anna Murat and the volatile Marquis de
Caux (both unmarried at the time, and both in high favour with the
Sovereigns), who took up their position in chaises volantes in front of
the fireplace. In the cotillon forty couples took part, including on one
occasion (the Marquis de Massa noted) Mlles. de Heeckeren, de Seebach,
de Bassano, Harvey, de Errazu, Magnan, Haussmann, Hamelin, and Bouvet,
whose cavaliers were MM. Davilliers, Castelbajac, Poniatowski,
d’Espeuilles, Duperré, du Bourg, Clermont-Tonnerre, des Varannes (all of
whom were either écuyers or officiers d’ordonnance), Arthur de
Cossé-Brissac (the Empress’s Chamberlain), etc. The cotillons at the
Tuileries were very simple affairs, the presents distributed being
merely flowers and coloured rosettes. The guests supped standing at a
buffet, and by one o’clock the ball was over.
At one of the first of the grand balls given at the Tuileries before the
marriage the Emperor danced in the quadrille of honour with Lady Cowley,
wife of the British Ambassador. “He danced another quadrille with Mlle.
de Montijo, who,” Baron Imbert de Saint-Amand has told us, “was
assuredly the most beautiful of all the women present. Her resplendent
beauty and extreme elegance excited general admiration.... How she would
have shuddered could she have foreseen the state in which she would find
this supper-room in 1870, at the beginning of the fatal war! Then she
would instal an ambulance there. Instead of women loaded with jewels,
there would be sisters of charity with their white cornettes.”
At one of the “small” dances, or, as they were called, “Mondays,” at the
Tuileries--entertainments which always took place before Lent--after the
author of “Colomba”[50] had regaled the chosen few who had been invited
to join the “circle” with some tales drawn from the chroniques
chevaleresques of ancient Spain, the Empress volunteered to tell a
little story of herself when she was still Mlle. de Montijo. The scene
was Estramadura. She was riding a richly-caparisoned mule, and, with her
little party, stopped for a few minutes at an auberge, in front of
which, taking a rest, was a man, shod in espradilles--
Plus délabré que Job, et plus fier que Bragance
--one of those lithe mountaineers, with flashing eyes, the type of
Victor Hugo’s Don César de Bazan and Hernani. The young lady was
parched, and asked for a vaso de agua. Struck by her beauty, the
mountaineer resolved that none but himself should have the honour of
serving the fair traveller, and, snatching from the landlord’s hands the
jug of fresh water and the glass, he filled the latter and offered it to
Mlle. de Montijo, but not until he had knelt a moment in homage. “Muchas
gratias,” said the future Empress, returning to the gallant caballero
the glass, in which some water still remained. Raising the glass to his
lips, he slowly drained it, keeping his gaze fixed upon the lady all the
while, and finally breaking the glass into fragments, in order that no
one else should ever use it!
Of the score or more of those who have essayed to depict the imperial
vie intime during the first years of the reign--from the marriage in
January, 1853, to the “attempt” by Orsini in January, 1858--none has
surpassed M. Gaston Stiegler.[51]
It is early morning, and the Emperor’s toilette is being completed by
his faithful valet, Charles Thélin. The carpet is littered with opened
telegrams and newspapers. His Majesty is tired, and rubs his dull eyes,
while Thélin waxes the large fair moustache which covers the master’s
mouth, and draws it into two fine points. After his sparse locks have
been artistically combed and brushed, “washes” and pomades applied, and
the pale cheeks brightened with rouge--after everything has been done as
scrupulously as the most elegant petite maîtresse could have
desired--Napoleon III. rises and puts on the severely cut frock-coat in
which he is almost invariably seen, save when he is in uniform or
hunting or shooting garb. His faithful companion, his meerschaum pipe,
beautifully coloured, smiles upon him from a little table. He lights it,
and joins his secretary (M. Mocquard) and Dr. Conneau, both blindly
devoted to him. These morning moments were generally the best parts of
his day. Mocquard and Conneau were the friends of his youth, the friends
of his mother, who, on her death-bed, made the doctor promise never to
leave her son.[52]
“Has your Majesty slept well?” asks Conneau.
“Not badly, thank you; but not enough, my good friend,” came from the
thick voice, which did not harmonize with his air of natural
distinction.
“Yes, yes; I know. You returned late--always too late. It is telling
upon you.”
The Emperor took this scolding every morning very amiably. The
solicitude for his health pleased him.
“Youth will have its fling,” said Mocquard, smiling.
“You chaff, Mocquard,” replied the doctor. “I am uneasy until I know the
Emperor is here, in this château, with the doors locked, under the eyes
of the sentinels.”
“I chaff faute de mieux, mon cher. I am entirely of your opinion. But
morality--that is not in my line. We knew nothing about it in my time.
You have taken charge of it, and it could not be in better hands.”
“Well, well,” said Conneau; “let us leave him to kill himself--or to get
killed!” And, growling, he put on his glasses, opened a large book which
he had just received, and plunged into its pages as if he had had enough
of the conversation.
“Charles,” said the Emperor, “tell Félix to send the Prince down and
inquire after the Empress.”
Smoking his pipe, he paced up and down, his head sunk in his shoulders,
balancing his massive body on his short, little legs, which seemed not
to have been made to bear him. He stopped before the mantelpiece; the
blazing fire absorbed his whole attention. He seemed to see in the red
and blue sparks the reflection of the tricks played upon him by that
fortune of which he was himself the most remarkable example, and he
asked himself how long those petits follets would last. Suddenly a huge
log broke into halves, littering the hearth. The beautiful flames were
extinguished, and in their stead came a disagreeable volume of smoke. He
grasped the tongs, carefully picked up the pieces of half-burnt wood,
and, while amusing himself in this patriarchal manner, asked:
“What are you reading, Conneau?”
“I am not reading, Sire.”
“And this great book?”
“It is a Bible, which I bought yesterday.”
“Ah, yes, for your collection,” said the Emperor laughingly. “What
language is it?”
“Hebrew, Sire.”
“Nonsense, Conneau! You don’t know Hebrew, and you are not the man to go
into ecstasies over a Bible, even a French one. Well?”
“It is a magnificent edition, published at Venice in 1551--printed by
Giustinani.”
“Well?”
“Sire, do I laugh at you when, at Champlieu, or elsewhere--in some camp
of Cæsar or other--you pick up old tiles, Roman or pretended Roman;
antique things without form or colour, broken vases which have been used
for Heaven knows what purpose? However, you put them carefully in glass
cases or in the museums, and you like people to look at them. Everybody
has his own hobby.”
“Oh, my poor potteries!” sighed the Emperor. “How they abuse you!”
He laid down the tongs, and, after rolling a cigarette, took up a
fragment of an amphora which had been found during the excavation of a
Merovingian tomb near Soissons. It was a common-looking piece of clay,
without a vestige of decoration. But he held it up to the light, and
examined it with all the tenderness of a connoisseur, while Conneau,
with loving hands, turned the leaves of his beautiful Bible, in which
some amateur had intercalated several rudely-executed pictures.
Less than three years after the imperial nuptials a very distinguished
Englishwoman was the guest of their Majesties. Her son, Lord Ronald
Sutherland Gower, wrote:
In October, 1855, my mother[53] took me over to Paris for the first
time. We visited the Tuileries and Versailles. During one of our
expeditions to some gallery or exhibition the Empress recognized
my mother, although she only knew her from her likeness to her
portrait by Winterhalter, the lithographs of which were in the
printsellers’ windows, and immediately invited her to dine at St.
Cloud, where the Court then was. My mother had known the Emperor
slightly, for on a previous visit [of the Duchess] to Paris he had
called on her at Meurice’s Hotel. Although charmed by the beauty
and grace of the Empress, my mother had little liking for the
imperial Court of France or its master.
In the great year 1867 Lord Ronald, like thousands of English people,
went to Paris for the Exhibition. “It was the apogee of the Second
Empire--of the Empire that smelt half of gunpowder and half of
patchouli. Maximilian’s death was not then known at the Tuileries.
Napoleon III. was then host to all the Sovereigns of the Continent, and
yet within three short years all was in the dust.”
Later (in January, 1868) he was invited to a ball at the Tuileries:
It was a hard winter, and all the gay world was skating in the Bois
de Boulogne. There were Mme. de Metternich, plain, with the
exception of fine, roguish eyes, and always beautifully dressed,
and Mme. de Galliffet, with whose looks I was disappointed. Thanks
to some French friends--the Boyers--I saw a ball at the Tuileries
without the trouble of a presentation to their Imperial Majesties.
As a sight the ball was interesting, unlike any other Court ball
that I have seen. Perhaps the most striking sight was the double
file of Cent Gardes, in their gorgeous pale blue and silver
uniforms, lining the State entrance and staircase and standing
sentry at the doors. After passing the Salon de Diane and
struggling through a crowd principally composed of officers, I got
a good place in front of the daïs, on which the Emperor and
Empress were seated. The Empress was all in white, and looked
strikingly handsome. The Emperor did not appear to advantage in his
white silk tights and stockings, and seemed tired and bored.
During, and between, the dances he walked across the open space in
front of the daïs and conversed with some of the officers and
diplomatists. He was a long time in conversation with a fat
General, who I was told was Lebœuf. The supper was admirably
managed. Piles of truffes en serviette abounded, and here there was
less of a crowd than at Buckingham Palace.
The Duchess of Sutherland was Mistress of the Robes to Queen Victoria
when the Empress paid Her Majesty a visit at Windsor.[54] Lord Ronald,
then at Eton, was sent for by his mother, who was in attendance on the
Queen. He says:
I had a glimpse of the Empress as she passed through a corridor in
the castle, and was greatly struck by her beauty. She had shortly
before lost her sister, the Duchesse d’Albe, and was in deep
mourning for her. An odd idea had taken her fancy--to build on the
site of her sister’s house in Paris, which, after the Duchesse’s
death, she had razed to the ground, a similar building in every
respect to Stafford House, and she had visited that house and sent
architects over to take its dimensions. But the plan fell through;
perhaps it was thought to be too considerable a scheme for
realization.
When the Duchess of Sutherland was in Germany in 1864, accompanied by
Lord Ronald, the then Crown Princess (afterwards the Empress Frederick)
invited her to dine at Potsdam, and the Duchess observed that in the
royal lady’s sitting-room the furniture was covered with Gobelin
tapestry, the gift of the Empress Eugénie.[55]
Among the diplomatists accredited to the Court of the Tuileries until
his retirement in 1867 was Mr. John Bigelow, United States Minister, who
has put on record this not very complimentary appreciation of the
Emperor and Empress of the French:[56]
That the lesson of Louis Napoleon’s life and death might not be too
soon lost to the memory of that portion of the world still in need
of its instruction, his widow, whose picturesque career raises the
Tales of the Thousand and One Nights almost to the dignity of
history, though happily spared in a measure the fate of her
unfortunate sister of Belgium [the Empress Charlotte], shares
another fate scarcely less pitiable. Like Salathiel,[57] she still
tarries, one of the most unhappy of mortals, an Empress without a
country.
In the sous-sols of the Pavillon de Flore were the kitchens of the
Tuileries.[58] This annexe of the Palace was constructed, from the
modified plans of Visconti, by Lefuel, who was interrupted in his work
by the war. He had, however, just time to finish the great staircase,
which is decorated with a beautiful ceiling by Cabanel and four
bas-reliefs by Eugène Guillaume.
In this immense and sumptuous temple--such as Brillat-Savarin and
Grimod de la Reynière could not have dreamt of--all the meals required
for the imperial family and the household were prepared by an army of
cooks, male and female. We can see, in the magnificent nave, the goings
and comings of the officiers de bouche, the patissiers, and the
marmitons. At the entrance of each section was a large marble slab,
inscribed, in gold letters, Vestiaire, Contrôle, Porcelainerie, Lavoir
de l’Argenterie, Pâtisserie, Lavoir de la Cuisine, and so on. All the
walls were oak panelled, finely carved.
On great tables the silver and porcelain vessels were ranged--thousands
of pieces. The most marvellous sight of all--after the kitchens (all
separate) for sauces, for grills, for soups, for pastry, and for
stews--was the huge kitchen in which the roasting was done. This
occupied the whole of the sous-sol of the “Flora” wing. Between two
immense stoves, each having three compartments, each compartment capable
of receiving two sheep and five or six dozen fowls, was the
Brobdingnagian fireplace, of wrought iron and varnished tiles. Each
stove measured nearly fourteen feet in width and about sixteen feet in
height, and each had two solid, movable beams, from which hung spits. Of
the latter there were twenty, with steel racks. Here whole oxen could be
roasted. Above the fireplace was a gigantic central motor, with a
clockwork arrangement, for turning the spits. It was a complicated piece
of machinery, subdivided, and furnished with devices for turning joints
at various speeds. The fuel was naturally wood, with which only can meat
be properly roasted. The logs used were more than twelve feet in length.
The table on which the meat was cut before roasting was of dimensions
which suggested to the more imaginative lookers-on a “village green”!
The wine-cellars sloped downwards beyond the kitchens and their annexes
under the pavilion of the Salle des États, which extended to the
entrances to the Carrousel.[59]
Among the newspapers which found their way into the Tuileries, or
wherever the Court happened to be--St. Cloud, Compiègne, or
Fontainebleau--was a very curious, very audacious, and very amusing
little sheet, published in London only during the season and the
Parliamentary Session. It was called _The Owl_. Much of its most
diverting matter (1864-1869) had reference to Napoleon III. and his
Ministers. The most amazing diplomatic “despatches” were concocted, so
closely resembling the real article that it was sometimes difficult even
for experts to discriminate between the two. To prevent mistakes I must
quote the words of the editor of _The Owl_, Mr. Algernon Borthwick:[60]
The Owls were Evelyn Ashley, Lord Wharncliffe, Stuart Wortley, and
myself. Others wrote for us later ... but we really started the
paper. One night I had a brilliant idea. There had been pourparlers
between the Government and the Emperor Napoleon III. on the subject
of the reduction of armaments. He was, however, unwilling to take
the initiative, and had said, in a private conversation with the
English Ambassador, “Je ne veux pas encore être snubbé” [“I don’t
want to be snubbed again”]. I knew the Emperor’s style in writing,
and concocted a letter supposed to be written by His Majesty, and
ending with the words, “Je ne veux pas encore être snubbé.”... The
_Moniteur_ [the official journal] telegraphed that the letter was
_not_ written by the Emperor, but was an impertinent fabrication,
and our fame was established.... During the Congress of Paris the
delegates lost their tempers, and hot words were exchanged. _We_
wrote a fictitious account of it, and said that they shied the ink
at each other, and that during a lull in the proceedings Lord
Clarendon[61] got up with a bored air and looked out of the window
at an Italian organ-grinder. This last incident really took place,
so the astonishment of those who had been present was great.
Once all the Owls went to Paris, and spent the day in woods near
the city. We sang songs, and crowned ourselves with ivy garlands,
and finally climbed up in a huge old tree, into whose branches we
were hauled up by ropes, ladies and all, singing ballads the while.
The next night we were all invited to a great dinner and ball at
the Tuileries, and the contrast with our woodland revels was
charming.
Early in June, 1865, M. Drouyn de Lhuys presented to the Empress Regent,
in the name of the Paris Cricket Club--an English institution--a box
containing a complete cricketing outfit for the Prince Imperial, then a
little over nine. The Empress sent the following reply:
MONSIEUR,
La fondation d’un club du jeu de cricket ne peut qu’être utile au
développement d’une bonne hygiène publique, si l’exercice de ce jeu
répand autant que je le désire et que le font espérer les efforts
de votre société. J’applaudi de grand cœur à cette fondation, et
j’accepte avec plaisir l’appareil de jeu que vous voulez bien
offrir au Prince Impérial....
(Signé) EUGÉNIE.
ÉCRIT AU PALAIS DES TUILERIES,
_le 7 Juin, 1865_.