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Welcome to a few unpublished tidbits on Empress Eugénie.
Researching for a book or any kind of work can be a frustrating business. So many interesting, fun or unheard of facts have to be left aside. I have piles of documents and information stuck in my drawers, filing cabinets and on my computer. When going through them, I decided to use some for short bits of trivia or information.
I hope you'll enjoy those little pieces! Happy reading!
Paul Poiret, the unlucky rival of Worth and the overlooked brother of famous women
By commissioning gowns from the British expatriate Charles Worth and working with the silk industry, Eugénie fostered an entirely new segment of the French economy: haute couture and luxury. Her initiative allowed creators to launch what we now call a lifestyle brand. How did she manage to become such an inspiration?
Her “partner in crime”, Charles Worth, used luxurious textiles, lace and embroidery to compliment his daring designs. In a time when showing ankles was more shocking than baring shoulders and breast, he designed a shorter skirt for the empress who loved to hike but disliked long skirts.
American women who, as he frankly stated, “believe in me”, have “figures that I can put into shape”, and, more importantly, “francs to pay my bills” were of utmost importance to his business. Americans were so much in love with his dresses that they traveled to Paris to buy their entire wardrobe in his store.
Even if Worth didn’t create any perfumes or accessories, his house became the symbol of an exclusive and luxurious lifestyle. Nicknamed the “Father of Haute Couture”, his legacy influenced the style of a rather overlooked stylist, Paul Poiret, the “King of Fashion” of his time.
Paul Poiret was born in 1876, a few years after the exile of the Empress Eugénie in England. He was the only boy in a family of four children. His sisters became prominent figures of the artistic world: Jeanne married the jeweler Boivin and took the commands of the house after her husband’s death; Germaine was a painter and a designer; Nicole married the interior designer André Groult, became Marie Laurencin’s lover (Marie was a painter, the muse and the mistress of the poet Apollinaire, a dear friend of Cocteau and Picasso), opened her own fashion house and promoted the “garçonne” style (the tomboy style). Her two daughters, Benoîte and Flora, were feminist activists and writers.
Let’s go back to Paul, their little brother. The current exhibition held in Paris at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs (Museum of Decorative Arts near the Louvre Museum) highlights his multiple talents, not only as fashion designer but also as interior designer, perfumer, artist and entrepreneur. His brand would now be called a lifestyle brand. Poiret didn’t envision fashion as a goal in itself but as part of an artistic project: he launched an art design school whose students and teachers worked on perfume bottles for his fragrances, he decorated three barges for the 1925 World Fair, he collaborated with artists (did he meet them at his sister Nicole’s place?) and organized crazy parties like the ones of the Roaring Twenties.
Today Poiret is almost forgotten. He’s a mere mention in history books but his legacy still lives in Jean-Paul Gaultier’s costumes for the ballets of Régine Chopinot or Agatha Ruiz de la Prada’s creation for the theater. Even if a brand can die, its spirit can survive.
Dress created by Worth
Dress created by Poiret
Eugénie's stolen crown
The crown of Empress Eugénie is safe!
It is a lucky break for French heritage that Empress Eugénie’s crown fell down the bag of the Louvre Museum’s thieves today. Indeed, it is the only French sovereign crown still in existence on display.
The theft and damage of her crown would have infuriated her: she would have considered them as an attack on an artistic creation.
Eugénie considered jewels as financial means to help people: in 1853, she refused a gift of 600,000 francs for a necklace and ask the city of Paris to invest the money in the building of a school for poor girls. Nicknamed “The Necklace House” by her detractors, it became the Foundation Eugène-Napoléon, still existing now.
But it was also her love of craftsmanship and art that directed her taste for beautiful jewels. Unfortunately most of those masterpieces were sold by the French Republic in 1887 as part of the Crown jewels and ended in the hands of foreign collectors, such as Nancy Astor. But the crown, ordered by Napoléon III in 1855, was given back to Eugénie in 1875 as part of the financial settlement between the former empress and the French government. Princess Marie-Clotilde Napoléon inherited the crown with its 1,354 diamonds and 56 emeralds. It was then auctioned in 1988 and bought by collectors who offered it to the Louvre.
Let’s hope it will be back soon in a safe place for everybody to admire such a beautiful masterpiece of French craftsmanship.
The temper of the redhaired empress
The temper of the redhaired empress
“Hair is the woman’s glory – unless it’s red”, claimed Brenda Ayres in A Vindication of the Redhead. Many famous women had red hair: without going as far back in time as the biblical Lilith, the “Queen of the West” of Ives and Currier, Empress Eugénie, the painter and model Victorine Meurent, the pre-Raphaelites female figures and Albert Herter’s “Woman with Red Hair” are testimonies of the appeal of red hair in artistic and social life. However, only 1 to 2% of the world population currently have red hair.
“No shade of hair is unlovely, if luxuriant and healthy in growth”, one etiquette book stated. However, hair color often carries social stereotyping and some stigmatization. In history, red hair conveys signs of flaring temper, wild but also intellectual gift.
An obscure French book, self-published in 1855 by a mysterious Séjour de Lorraine, “Secrets of Face and Body Beauty for Men and Women”, presented a rather entertaining taxonomy of the connection between hair and character: coarse black hair and dark skin? One had “great power of character” and sensuality. Fine dark-brown hair gratified the owner of “exquisite sensibilities”. Red hair meant “powerful animal passions” and “strength of character”. Auburn hair was a rather puzzlingly bringing “highest order of sentiment”, “intensity of feeling”, “purity of character, with the highest capacity for enjoyment of suffering”.
Empress Eugénie was born with a mane of red hair. Her British classmates made fun of her and called her “Carrots”. She grew up to become the envy of women for her beautiful auburn hair. Did she enjoy suffering? Were her feelings intense? Maybe not for the enjoyment part but she did suffer a lot: her husband betrayed her and even fathered an illegitimate son who was the spitting image of her own child, the press insulted her daily, grotesque and humiliating caricatures were published, she had to fight misoginy and disrespect from her husband’s ministries. She was also known for her flaring temper, her empathy for sufferers and her strong moral sense.
Her contradictions were her strong point. Was it connected to her auburn hair? The case is still open.
George Sand, baronne Dudevant
George Sand, baronne Dudevant
George Sand and Empress Eugénie, two strong women during the Second Empire
July 1835. Paris. George Sand, the most famous female author of her time, was home waiting for her son Maurice, 12, to return from a visit to the Spanish Countess Manuela of Montijo. In Manuela’s salon, Maurice met the vivacious Eugenia, younger daughter of the countess (she’s 9) and future wife of Emperor Napoleon III. He was delayed returning home by his conversation with Eugenia. What could those two young, but precocious pre-teenagers talk about? “Politics, of course, Mother”, explained Maurice to avoid being chastised for his tardiness.
During the July Monarchy, led by King Louis-Philippe, France was a pressure cooker waiting to explode. The republicans were fighting the monarchists for a political change. Countess Manuela of Montijo was a conservative aristocrat from Spanish, Scottish, French and Belgian origin married to a Spanish Grandee, Cipriano de Palafox, count of Montijo who fought along the Bonapartes’ army to expel the Bourbon king of Spain. Eugenia sided with her father’s political convictions, meeting her new friend Maurice’s republican ideas inherited from his mother.
Forward to January 1853. Eugénie de Montijo married Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, now Emperor Napoléon III and became Empress of the French. At the same time, George Sand was so disappointed by Louis-Napoléon’s switch to an authoritarian regime she stayed closer to his cousin, Jérôme, Prince Napoléon – Eugénie’s nemesis. Nicknamed “Plon Plon”, the prince stayed loyal to his republican ideas and was a constant thorn in Eugénie’s politics.
Whatever Sand’s beliefs, she had to work with Eugénie, a strong, independent and fiercely opinionated woman who ruled France several times. In October 1857, George wrote to the empress begging her to help some poor workers (all republicans and opponents to the regime) and got a positive answer. She then addressed petitions and requests directly to the empress for help, going over Napoléon III’s head.
Why did Eugénie answer positively to George? The values defended by the writer were opposite to those of Eugénie’s: George was an atheist, hostile to the papacy. She was a republican, separated from her husband and raising her children by herself, and never hid any of her various affairs. She considered the empress “good and charitable, but very childish and submissive to priests”!
The writer also acknowledged Eugénie’s important role in running the country. She valued “the well-worn Spanish chic, the taste for strong emotions, for bullfights”, and admired her elegant use of the fan, her passion for costume, her hair powdered with gold, her arched waist, all those features striking everyone’s imagination, senses, and heart.
By then Eugénie certainly didn’t remember the young boy she met at her mother’s almost twenty years ago and might have been unaware of George’s opinion of her. Feminist even before the name existed (it was used for the first time in 1880), she supported George’s candidacy to the French academy and offered her a 20,000 francs (about US£180,000; 200,000€) compensation when she was denied the election. George politely and firmly declined.
That’s why Eugénie was deeply hurt when George published in her 1870 novel, MalgréTout, a portrait of a Spanish upstart, Mme. D’Ortosa. Many readers and critics assert the ferocious portrait was intended for the empress. Mme. D’Ortosa was mistaking “pomp and glitter for glory”, wrote Sand. She meant “to marry a man, rich, young and handsome who shall be madly in love “with her – which hardly fit Napoléon III’s physique and feelings! He will also remain subject to her influence, a rather common criticism directed at Eugénie. Indirectly, on the other hand, George recognized all the qualities of the empress through d’Ortosa who claimed to “possess erudition and political science”, to “know the histories of dynasties and peoples, […] the secrets of diplomacy, […] all the men of note, the women of power in the past and the present.” Eugénie and D’Ortosa also complained often that “people little guess what serious thoughts occupy my mind”. Like her literary counterpart, the empress was “eager for great struggles, or great perils”. But unlike Eugénie, D’Ortosa agreed to “have the most tragic destiny”, with her head on a pike to “be doubly crowned by martyrdom” and stay “ever stamped in the memory of mankind”.
What’s true? What’s not in this portrait? Eugénie had a vast political culture, thanks to her youth spent with writers and political minds in her mother’s salon and her readings in several languages. She was ambitious not so much for herself but for her husband, her son and her country of adoption and mostly driven by her notion of duty. However, she was not suicidal. Despite her admiration for Marie-Antoinette and her compassion for her tragic fate, she categorically refused to end up on the guillotine and left Paris for England after her husband’s defeat in Sedan in 1870.
Obviously, George Sand denied Mme. D’Ortosa’s character was inspired by the empress. Eugénie didn’t believe her. She might have been wrong in her feeling of betrayal. Sand was close to Plon Plon, Eugénie’s arch enemy, who might have painted Eugénie under dark colors and inspired Sand’s writing.
We’ll never know the truth. Both women respected each other even if they never met in person but they were so radically different that we can’t even imagine what a meeting between them would bring: tumultuous or friendly?
Empress Eugénie
Empress Eugénie
Eugénie admired and helped George Sand many times but felt betrayed by the famous author. The sad story of two strong females who could have struck a famous friendship.
Carmen, Bizet's heroin
Carmen, the scandalous opera by Bizet
The opera Carmen by Bizet was considered a moral scandal 150 years ago when it was first performed in Paris. Nowadays, women read something different: wouldn’t it be wiser to consider Carmen as a victim of a femicide?
When Count Cipriano de Montijo met a young French writer, Prosper Mérimée in the coach between Seville and Granada, he invited him to his place. Mérimée met Cipriano’s beautiful wife, Manuela, and their two daughters, Paca aged 5 and Eugenia aged 4, future Empress Eugénie. For a month, Mérimée listened to Manuela’s stories on Spain and its wild customs. He was especially enthralled by the legend of a gypsy woman, Carmen, who was murdered by her frustrated lover, Don José. Carmen was one of those free spirits who could not be subjected to the law, whether of her country or a man – therefore, her death by the hand of Don José.
Mérimée worked on the story for over 15 years. How could he tell the scandalous story of a free woman to his fellow countrymen? When he finally published his novella, there was an outcry in France. It was such an immodest and shocking story!
Carmen stayed ignored for almost 30 years when a composer, Georges Bizet, fell in love with the story and called upon two librettists, Halévy and Meilhac, famous for their lighthearted operas. The director of the Opéra-Comique was delighted by the project he thought would be a “small, easy, cheerful thing”. But there was nothing light or cheerful about Carmen’s story. The audience and the director ended up with one of the most tragic love stories!
The first performance took place on March 3, 1875. The audience reception was cold. The critics scolded the composer and his creature, thinking necessary to “gag her”, “put an end to her frantic hip thrusts” and “lock her in a straight jacket after having refreshed her with a pot of cold water poured over her head”. In other words, Carmen was the temptress, the bad person who drove poor Don José to kill her by her dances and her free attitude.
It was a terrible blow for Bizet who died a few months later. His failure was due mostly to the mores of his time. The society, still recovering from the French Prussian war and slowly evolving towards a more liberal political regime after the Second Empire of Napoleon III, was not ready to accept the wild temperament and free attitude of a woman. Fortunately, artists recognized the beauty and the greatness of Bizet’s work. Tchaikovsky even claimed that “Carmen will be the most famous opera in the world.” He was right: Carmen is the most performed opera in the world! But it is still the sad and tragic story of a femicide as most contemporary music critics now acknowledge.
Eugénie's precious emerald brooch
A romantic story: the emerald clover brooch of empress Eugénie
A few months before their wedding, Eugénie de Montijo and Napoléon III were strolling in the Fontainebleau Forest. The dew left delicate sparkling drops on the clovers’ leaves. “What a charming sight”, exclaimed the young woman. Always the gentleman, Napoléon discreetly sent his aide-de-camp to order a brooch imitating the plant.
Christmas was coming up. Napoléon organized a trumped-up draw to present Eugénie with a delicate brooch: three emeralds figuring a clover’s leaves sparkled with diamonds. Eugénie fell in love with the jewel. The court also understood the message: the emperor would marry the beautiful Spanish countess.
Eugénie always had a soft spot for this modest piece (in comparison with the Crown jewels and her personal collection worth millions). She wore it on several official portraits as a centerpiece on her corsage. Even when she renounced wearing jewelry after her husband’s death, she made an exception for the lucky clover. However, when her son died in 1879 at the early age of 23, the brooch sat for years in her jewelry box.
Eugénie sold many of her jewels to finance her lavish lifestyle. Nobody is sure where this symbol of her romantic encounter with a Bonaparte now lies. But to her it was the symbol of the powerful love between her and her husband.
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