THE YOUTH OF THE EMPRESS EUGENIE

Otago Witness, Issue 2815, 26 February 1908, Page 78

THE YOUTH OF THE EMPRESS EUGENIE

I took up a paper tbe other day and I read that the Empress Eugenic was about to start on a journey to Egypt, and that she intended, in all probability, to follow this up by a further journey to the Island of Ceylon. Seeing that she is now 80 years of age, and' that she has known. «very Borrow that it is possible for a woman to know — by the dteath of husband, death of child, obscurity for dazzling glory — it seemed almost incredible that she should be undertaking; all the fatigues and perils of such journeys. And just as I was making these reflections there came into my hands two books which have been recently published, and both purported to be biographies of this extraordinary woman. And, curiously enough, as I read these 'books — and especially the earlier pages— at seemed to me as if I could see in the very girlhood of this lady the characteristics that have preserved her in, advanced age in such juvenility both in body and of spirit. The^ciild was emphatically the mother of the womarr ; I might even put it, the infant was the mother of the wondtous octogenarian. It ie with the beginnings only of the Empress that I can deal in this article ; to those who want to learn her whole story I must say that they had better read the two books themselves. They are both veTy well written, and, curiously enough, I should be inclined to say that the book by the English writer was 'the better; of the two. At all events, it was the one which interested me the more.

The first thing that strikes one in reading these stories of the Eimpress > 6 earliest years is the immense instinctive, immediate power she had of interesting people in her. Never at any moment of her existence was she commonplace ; never did she enter into <any environment without immediately becoming the object of attention and of speculation. Two of her very first slaves were made when she wa* a little girl of four or five yeans of age 7 sitting on their knsee and listening . to their stories. ' And these two men] — both born storyteller;? — were never tired of weaving their tales for a hearer so enthusiastic and sc- responsive. The names of these two men ere known to every 'over oi French literature : one waa Prosper Merimee, the author of th© immortal "Carmen" ; the other was Henri Beyle, less known but far greater, tbe man who, under the name of Stendhal, has written two of the greates* novels ever written by a Frenchman-"** least, that is my poor judgment — ''La- Chartreuse de Panne" and "'Rouge et Noir." How' far these two gallant young Frenchmen loved the child because they loved the mother, who can tell at this remote age? But it is certain that the Empress did draw most of her veiy striking gifts from her mother. As, of all women — and men, too — whose personalities become entangled in the conflicts of ,polibics, there- are very different estimates of the old Countess de Montijo. In the odious columns of the satirical papers, which came into existence in the dying hours of the Empire, she figured as one of the most adventurous mothers who trail themselves and their marriageable daughters through all tbe capitals and all the pleasure resorts of Europe; from Vichy to Carlsbad, from London to Paris, and' from Paris, to Monte Carlo, in the hope of finding come. eligible son-in-law. Uut this is not a correct description -of the woman. She was of remarkable gi*te • and attainments ; to that -testimony is given by many different men. all of them a'ole. Merimee declared that he was "confounded by her learning" ; and Merimee I was one of the most frigid of critics, even when his judgment was clouded by the beautiful eyes of '& pretty woman. He was one of the many mem who weTe enI tangled in the nets of George Sand; but j he got out of them without damage either !to bis heart or his dignity. JBeyle was also a connoisseur in. the female character, I 1 and he admired the old Countess im- | mensely. And, finally, Geonge Ticknor— j a celebrated American publisher of the early portion of the nineteenth century, with strong literary tastes and a great love in particular of the literature of Spain. glows with, unusual fervour for a. man .from "Boston when he comes to describe the Countess as he saw her in Madrid 1 during his travels. And he — like the others— speaks not of her physical charms so much aa of her great gifts of knowledge and intelligence. — Power of Attraction. — Daughter of such ,a mother, Eugenic was given from her earliest years every _ opportunity of cultivating her abilities. She mixed with men. of genius— as has been said — while she was still almost an infant in arms. And even, then, recurring to this point, she wa* able to exercise that power of attracting notice which was one of "her dominating qualities all through her life. Beyle, holding the little girl on his knees, and .amused and interested by the graceful and coquettish a>rts of tbe child, said to himself, as rf thinking alojud : "The day will com© when you will marry oome Prince Charming ; and then I won't care for you any more." There are other stories — some of them perhaps apocryphal — of forecaste of her brilliant future, even while still , voiraig and obscure. For instance, it is said that one day, paying a visit to a convent at a time when an unhappy love affair made her think for tbe moment of taking the veil, Eugenic was met by a poor half-witted nun, jwho then, bade her renounce such thoughts, for she was reserved for high destinies* And there is , another variant to this story, in which the place of the- nun is taken by the

• "The Luat Empress of the French: Being* the Life of the Empress Eugenic, Wife of Napoleon III." By Philip W. Sergeant, B.A. Illustrated. (Price, 12s 6d. T. Werner Laurie.) "La Vie dUne Imperatrice Eugenic de Montijo." Par Frederic Iroiiea.

classic form of a ,gfpsy woman ; a reproduction of the same legend with regard to Josephine. These stories, I ,say, may ..all be inventions coming long after the event ; but they all tend' to prove the truth of the statement wtth which I started : that from h«T earliest years there was something, in this girl that seemed to fasten, excite, and hold the attention of those whom she met. What waa the secret of this attractiveness? The fiust place, of course, must be givea to her .extraordinary and weird beauty. I have used tfh© word weird for the reason that it was not the usual kind of beauty which you meet among her countrywomen. If you see the face of the Emipneas in a photograph you at once are struck by the fact that it is almost ultra-Spanish in type. Here is a woman, you would say, who could never be mistaken for anything but & Spanish woman. There is the- long, oval shape, including that curious tendency to — may I use the ugly word, because- it is the only one which will quite express what I mean? — pouchin«ss around the jarw ; >and wherever you see any body of Spanish women, whether in their own country or in. the resorts they frequent, this is the first thing which strikes you as their most usual and common «haracteristic feature. But, then, if you had 1 aeen her— especially in h«r youth — her beauty waa of almost- ran-Spanish type. The hair was dazalingly fair — indeed, some described it as Titian red ; the complexion was strangely clear and brilliant, with none of the darkness, amounting almost to> saliowness, which is the characteristic complexion of women born under the fierce sun of hei native land; her eyes were not the flashing dark of the typical Spaniard, but bin© and soft ; and they were veiled by long black lashes, rather the Irish tha,n any other type. And so she produced that curious, arresting, and haunting impression that always comes from a beauty which is ft surprise and< an exotic, tt is not now difficult to understand why there should be these contradictions between the Spanish, oval shape of the face and the colouring of a Northern I land ; for Eugenic had in her blood strains from many lands. Her grandfather was a Scotchman; her grandmother— still on j the maternal side — was a Frenchwoman ; j and, on the other hand, her father came .from 9 long line of illustrious warriors whose names figure largely in the annala of tihe Spanish wars, and are inscribed in the list of the highest grandees, and the exclusive aristocracy of that land. , ( — Mental Training. — Such was the young girl physically 5 how was she mentally T Her mother had been cent by that old Scotch, father — who inherited the love > of learning which is so pronounced a characteristic of his race — to Paris with her sisters, and there it was that she acquired that amount of knowledge which impressed such' different acquaintances as Ticknor r Merime*, and , Beyle ; and Manuela Kirkpatrick, when .it came to the turn of her own children, saw that they got the same advantage. The future Empress of the French was but eight years old .when, she reached, at Perignen, ' the country she waa afterward* to , govern, and for yeasrs she breathed in Paris nothing but a French, atmosphere. Her husband, when he was about to marry hex, was justified in his statement that her training and her sympathies had been always French. Her fatW, ac a> matter of fact, was am (officer in the army, of Napoleon, and lost an eye and injured one' of his legs in fighting the battles of' the great Emperor. It was natural^, then, that Eugenic should be able to speak French like a Frenchwoman. In Paris, as at Madrid, she had the ,advan.tage of being taught and inspired by Merimee and Beyle, and, indeed, ,mu6t h«ve known th» best of society— in the intellectual as well as, the social sense— from her earliest days. Not content with this, the girl was sent to England. Probably she always spoke English ; but she waß taught the language more completely by constant visits to England, beiginning with some time in an English boarding-house. Her school was at Clifton, and it is a. curious coincidence that at the same moment and within afew door* from her he whom we know He Lord Roberts' to-day was learning his A B C at a dantes' school, being then ten years old. It will be seen, then, that Eugenic de •Montijo -was » tHorottg'hl-y accomplished woman, and was especially gifted with that knowledge of other languages as well as her own which impresses people more almost than any other accomplisiiment. But, after all, the final factor that produces the fascination of man or woman, is temperament. And here, again, there was something exceptional in the young woman which attracted attention, and not _ always of a favourable kind. That-splen-did health and vitality of which such startling evidence is given in the announcement of those long journeys! on which the Empress has just started must have added enormously to the attractiveness of the girl when she was still fresh from tHe creative and opulent hands of Nature.She was almost a precursor of the modern athletic woman. She fenced ; but above all ier accomplishments was her skill as a rider. There aw stories of her girlbood which shocked, or were supposed to shock, a good mariy of the strait-laced Madrid mothers, accustomed to the bread-and-butter young lady who is silent and lazy in girlhood md noiqy and fat in early womanhood. Brought up in the healthy independence ©f the British stock fronH which she came, the young Eugenic pro* bably did nothing which most tealt'hy English girls of her station do not do today. TheTe are stories of fearless and audacious rides through the streets of Madrid on bare-backed steeds, which I take to be simply exaggeration or distortion of that love of fun and of opeu-air exercise which are so perfectly harmless ; I dismiss ,the other lesjends of cigarettesmoking openly as either invention or simply "a distortion of some quite innocent "larks." There ,may be more foundation for the statement that she loved to appear in the arena at the bull fight in the startKng and conspicuous "colours which

' the Spanish woman sometimes affects j' and that she was not afraid to play the part of Queen of Beauty who distributecl to the toreador those- smiles of approving; 'beauty which axe the rewards of their fight for life against all the risks of the arena. This, again, is nothing beyond what most Spanish girls of high spirits would do; the bull fight, horrible to us, is to them a national institution which no monarch could dare to interfere with. All I deduct from these stories is that the girl was what we should call a "tomboy" ; and, after all, that comes back to this : that there was in this beautiful 1 and well-proportioiLecL woman that strong spirit of vitality which would make her in her maturity a woman to boldly face tremendous risks and Titanic situations ; and that, while she was istill young, would, give to her other fascinations — ibat strange attractiveness which belongs, to the woman who suggests uncertainty, disquiet, the possibility of great ftfeuppiness or disastrous and devastating sorrow. Such, then, was Eugenic de Monti jo in her early years. As . will be seen, she was at once a person to be counted with ; to be noticed wherever jshe we»t ; and to , suggest a curiously mingled impression. o< attractiveness and disquiet. This may be opj6 of the reasons why sbe remained unmarried until a comparatively late period in. the .life of a, woman. Another reason may have been some disappointment in. early affections which women have to hide with the same heroic endurance as the Spartan bby who allowed the fax to eat out his entrails rather than, utter a cry .of pain. There is one such story, the authenticity of which ifi open to doubt. When her elder and much less attractive sister was eighteen she was. married to the Duke of Berwick and Alva — descendant- on the one aide of Arabella Churchill and James 11, and on the other, one of that family whose aw^ul! name is still recalled with a shudder in the Lowlands ac the moat complete impersonation of Spanish tyranny and Spanish cruelty when these lands were still subject to~Spada. The story is that the younger sister admired the same man ■as her elder; and that in her despair at overhearing a conversation a* which the Duke announced his preference Tfor her elder sister, she attempted to commit suicide. Thds may be fake, but. it is known that when Louis Nepoleon proposed to her in 1863 she was frank enough to tell him that her. heart had been -touched micro than once already i but, after all, what woman, ever reaches 27 — the age of Eugenic when she married— without some auch experience.? — Married. — By the time she was asked in marriage, Eugenic then' had had ranch experience of the worid. She had visited "most of the capitals of Europe; sfie had known the best society in fch«tfi all ; dowbtl«s her hand had been sought by mote than one admirer, her heart had bean mdre than once touched. Bat nobody did doubt that all these thing* ha<f passed over heiwithorat/ making any real diminution in" that fund of vitality which radiated from her perfect complexion, her bright eyes, her alert, and beautiful 'figure. It was as a horsewoman that she finally, conquered the heart of Louis Napoleon. He had loved her for some years before he proposed marriage ; from 1849, in fact. But his advisers recommended him to find a bride in tbe B<^a.l Courts; his future was uncertain- until 1852 — the plot to overturn the Bepublic was not yet I successfully carried ouf., and it^nugjb^end ! either in a throne or th« guillotine. When, [ at last he saw himself proclaimed. Em- ! peror, when the different Courts turned a : cold shoulder on his c proposals, when one I day he saw this beautiful creature dressed as an Amazon and riding her horse with the perfect ease of an accomplished iider, he at'last gave full reign to his pawiom The other Nanokons were engaged, society was shocked, the Minirtere protested ; but. Louis Napoleon had a good deal of ob> stinacy in important- affairs, and he went on. And half-enttanced with her dazzling fortune, 'half-frightened by her sudden elevation from comparative obscurity to such brilliant eminence, thinking at once of the glories and the terrors of the. woman on the throne in French history, of Josephine, of Marie Louise., bat* above all, of Marie Antoinette,, sb** McampaiaeJ Napoleon to Notre Dame. And there she was married with the same vast pomp and ceremony as surrounded the weddings of so many of her predecessors, and there she was haunted as they were by the shadow .of uncertainty, suspense, and. the spectre of the final and almost inevitabfe denouement in disaster, flight from death, long exile.— T. P., in T. P.'s Weekly.