THE EMPRESS EUGENIE AT CHISLEHURST.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 806, 22 January 1877, Page 3

THE EMPRESS EUGENIE AT CHISLEHURST.

(From the World.) The snovy is thick upon the ground, th-c sky is a level slate overhead, and an ease, wind is blowing. There is no cab at the damp little station, muddy with the thaw logs from travellers’ shoes, and no'hing ff>r it but a walk up the hill in the teeth of the wind, charged with snow-powder that mak the face a benumbed mask. Across the common, floundering in the ruts and hole 0 the snow has filled to yonder gilded gate j, where a policeman is crouching by vthe lodge away from the bitter breeze. Tilodge is firmly closed, as though no visitors could be expected this dismal January day ; and while the keeper's wife is getting out or her comfoitadilq quarters to answer the gate-

bell, there is time to survey the sombre avenue of damp trees that leads to the house, the front of which is just visible. In this avenu;. on a winter’s day, the sometime master o p lho destinies of Europe took his last wailfour years ago. The park, stretching Londonwarda from the house, is rounded with a gray mis: hedging the broad expanses of snow, and th - great black clumos of trees stand out likprodigious masses of funeral feathers. It i> a sad scene, more especially depressing to the visitor who remembers the bright winter f s urroundings of the Tuileries, and the spring and summer beauties that lay under the Marie Antoinette windows of Saint Cloud Under the portico of the entrance, dipping his sagacious nose tentatively in the clumps of snow lodged upon the columns is a Camden, a superb black poodle, beloved of his imperial mistress, and therefore the object of the constant solicitude of the majestic servant in black who receives visitors in the outer hall, and has a care of cloaks and hats. Camden Place is a good sample of a spacious, solid, square manor house of Queen Anne’s time. Within the vestibule is a lofty hall, intersecting a fine picture gallery, the dominant object in which is Clesinger’s equestrian statue of Napoleon 111. To the right and left of the gallery are the drawing rooms, the dining room, the morning room, and the library and billiard-rooms. The reception rooms are not daintily, but substantially and richly, furnished, and have now a striking Anglo-Gallic anoearance. French nirknacka and ohjets d’art of all kinds are. added to solid British upholstery. Imagine what a Parisian grande dame of the mono cultivated taste would make of an ordinary English drawing-room, in order to render it inhabitable even for a few months in her sight ; and you may realise a picture of the large and small salons of Camden Place—indeed of all the rooms. In the morning room a sparkling pile of logs burns in the grate, with a white mound of braise under them, throwing out the gentle heat and the sweet smell of a French fireside. Sitting before it , pincettes in hand, a learned prince of the house, who has lived in lettered ease amongst us for many years, tisonne —buried in thought. He graciously welcomes us to a seat, and remarks that it is a day for a good fire. And we gossip of the morning’s news, until Count Clary, the most pleasant ot chamberlains, comes to conduct us to the drawing-room. To-day the reception is in the little drawing-room, which is also brightened by a superb French fire. A noble and most pathetic historical figure, draped in black, stands by the fireside, and responds to our obeisance with ineffable grace and dignity. The Empress combines iu tier perfect manner the superb air of the high born Spanish lady with the grace and witchery of the Parisian grande dame. The exquisite self-command, ease, and quiet with which the visitor is led to a free conversation on the subject of his interview, form a delightful experience. The Empress is a very earnest thinker and talker on most of the public questions of the time ; but more especially on those which occupied many hours of all her days while she shared the throne of Napoleon 111. The illustrious lady whom the outside world has been wont to regard as the beautiful Empress whose taste for many years dominated the fashion, and whose wit and tact and kindly heait spiead a charm over court life, a' tne Tuileries and Saint-Cloud, Compiegne, Fontainebleau, and Biarritz, is a social reformer in downright earnest. In her conversation on local questions her listener delects the consort an the author of the " Extinction of Pauperism” and the “ humanitarian Emperor,” who was for ever making co-operative, sanitary, and other experiments, intended to benefit the claws which has proved most ungrateful to his memory. When we inquired of her Majesty how her Societc du Fret an Travail, which she had not only founded, but over the destinies of which she had watched week by week, from the birth of the Prince Imperial to September, 1870, has fared since the war, she replied with a most minute description of the aims of the society, of its const! tutiou, and of the manner in which French working men had responded to the confidence of its founder. With a smile her Majesty began ; "It ap peared quixotic to many to establish a loan society that was to lend us mouey without further security than the honor of the borrowers. But the Emperor encouraged us to make our experiment ; for he believed wc should lose nothing. He always looked to to the good side of human nature, and believed in it to the last. Pauvre Brnpereur I II dtait trop bon ’ Aft-, r a pause her Majesty resumed, and in a few minutes set forth her experiences as working president of the society . “ We kept strictly to our plan, which was to lend money only to people who were ready to work; and" the exclusive object of each loan was to enable a workman or workwoman to buy tools, or raw material to be worked up. We had hundreds of applicants for money for other purposes; but i kept strictly to loans to labour, to enable men and women to earn their own living. Then as to our mode of lending. The applicant must be a person of good conduct, and hia application must be backed by two friends who would vouch for his probity. Understand that these friends incurred no pecuniary risk whatever. I would not have men put their homes in eopardy to serve a friend. No; the two witnesses to character —for they were nothing more—incurred only this penalty, when their friend broke his bond and did not pay ; they could never themselves be borrowers from the society, nor could they be witnesses again for a friend, so long as their defaulter had not discharged bis debt. Our loans were made purely and simply on the honour of the borrower and that of his witnesses. On this surety wo have lent more than one million of francs to poor but honest and industrious workmen and women, and every franc has been devoted to the purchase of goods or raw material; and we have lost a little more than one thousand francs.” The Empress looked proud and pleased as she dwelt on this most remarkable fact, which she repeated once or twice, emphasising it ly a gentle pressure of the hands together. “ L’Brnperour avait raison,” she presently added, with a tender tone in her voice, au i looking pensively into the fire. Then with energy, as remembering a wrong, her Majcs y resumed : “ But it is all over now. I cannot tell you what has become of our society. A! any rate, they will change its name ; for it was under the patronage of my son. and was known as the Socidtc du Prince Imperial,” The Empress was right. First the Republican authorities quarrelled with the oociety name, and then they crushed the inatitutio ~ Sometimes the Empress receives in her boudoir—a most dainty cabinet de travail on

the first floor, adjoining her Majesty’s and the Prince's bed and dressing rooms, with a well loaded desk in a corner near the window which commands the avenue leading to the great gates —at which her Majesty spends many afternoons over her correspondence. One of the gentlemen in waiting taps at thboudoir door ; a gentle voice from within ci ies. ‘ Eatrez ! ’ and the Empress turns froar her writing to receive us. The same sad aw et. smile, the same kindly grace, roundea wii h an impressive native dignity, under the sp' il of which it has already been our privilege to speak of great events to one of the illustrious authors of them. Still draped and gloved in black, with that severe simplicity which French widows (who never show the least sign of coquetry in mourning, at any rate, and in this are an example to their British sisters) invariably observe, and the golden hair gathered close, the Empress Eugenie derives a new and a softer beauty from her sorrows. These have chastened—they could not break —her intrepid spirit. “ Her conduct after Sedan was heroic. It is impossible to conceive a nobler courage than she showed on the 4th of September,” an ex-Minister of the Empire said to us a few days ago. When the Empress speaks of the Empire or the Emperor, it is always with regret that the aims of imperial institutions have been misrepresented, and that the Emperor has been misunderstood. A. z-.’along reader of the English papers, her Mfj >sty watches the shif tings of our opinions on French affairs. On one occasion she observed that the English journalises would not understand the democratic basis of the Empire. The Empire wanted and wants to give a di'ect voice to all Frenchmen in the Government ; whereas other regimes would give a monopoly of power to the bourgeoisie, and make the people pay the taxes, and remain voiceless. If turbulent Frenchmen had only the calm in political matters of the English public It was at this interview that Her Majesty observed, smiling, that she had a drole de igraces. “ Monsieur Guizot pretends that he will force me to receive back the money the Emperor gave his son.” With great energy and flashing eyes the wife added, “ The Emperor, was not in the habit of lending, but of giving.” The Prince Imperial receives visitors in his study. It is no more show-place, with books doing the duty of wall-paper, but the comfortable, somewhat heavy and sombre, room of a thorough student and of a young soldier ; for with the books and by the fine tapestry which line the chamber are trophies of arms. Camden Place includes some grand specimens of ancient tapestry. Among the cariosities is a superb old French clock, vhe handiwork of M. Filon’s great-grand-father. The Prince receives his visitors with a hearty shake of the hand. He combines Die vigour and manliness of the young Bugiif.h gentleman, with that suavity and grace which were so conspicuous in his father, and reminded one of the grand old French seigneurs rather than of the poseurs of the modern French salon. You see at once the gentleman cadet and the Prince. A face full of intelligence—"sickbed o’er,” perhaps, with clouds of thought and sadness that seldom lie upon so young a mask, —the brow like the mother's, but the dominant effect akin to that of the kindly, impressive, mysteriouy, internal countenance, Prince Louis commands a strong interest at once. The inclination of the head and the strong manly timbre of the voice reveal the father in the eon. Nor is it possible lotalk long with the Prince without tracing the influence of the. father’s sweet temper and tender heart, This comely, bright-witted, courageous boy grew up with his father’s arms about his neck, and his ears were filled with those dreams of a reconstructed society, in which there was to be no suffering and no poverty, that filled the mind, even to the bitter end, of ‘ tire humanitarian Emperor.' The son worships the memory of his sire, and he has not yet learned to speak of monpere without itvong emotion.