Eugénie: The Empress & her Empire Read Online Free
Author: Desmond Seward
training school, run on Pestalozzi methods by a Spaniard, Colonel Amoros, who like Cipriano had fought for Napoleon. This was probably the first strenuous exercise that Eugénie had ever taken, apart from riding her ponies, and she enjoyed it.
Don Cipriano reappeared in Paris in autumn 1837. The war still dragged on in northern Spain, but the enemy’s best general had died and they had failed to capture any of the major cities. Ostensibly for reasons of health, his visit may have been because he feared that his marriage was in danger. His wife had more or less stopped writing to him, and he knew she was entertaining lavishly. Although they lived together until his departure in January 1838, afterwards Maria Manuela sent him very few letters.
In a report of autumn 1838 Colonel Amoros tells Eugenia’s parents that their daughter enjoys physical exercise, that her character is ‘good, generous and firm’ and her temperament ‘sanguine and nervous’. This fits with what we know from other sources. She was very highly strung, almost hyperactive, never able to keep still or stop talking, even during meals, in an age when children were not supposed to speak unless spoken to, often having long conversations with herself, and obsessively fond of her father – one biographer comments that her letters to him sound like ‘an impatient woman in love’. When only nine, she wrote, ‘I’m so looking forward to your coming here that I think you’re going to arrive every day, although it’s three weeks since I asked you if you were coming soon.’ In other letters she says, ‘Dear Papa, I want to throw my arms around you’; ‘Dear Papa, when are you coming, my heart is sighing for you?’
Sometimes she seems very grown up. ‘It’s just not possible to live in Paris any more as they’re always trying to kill the king’, she complains early in 1837. ‘Yesterday the gas blew up, breaking lots of windows, and we were told it happened because people had set light to it. What was so funny was how all the soldiers came running with their guns, afraid that it was a revolution.’ This is written by a girl not yet twelve, who in the same letter tells her father that she is looking forward to reading Robinson Crusoe and The Swiss Family Robinson . She also mentions Napoleon, reminding Cipriano he has told her to read a book about Napoleon, and that what happened to him on St Helena made her cry.
Meanwhile, Doña Maria Manuela was meeting as many of the great as possible, including Legitimist diehards such as the Duc de Richelieu and Orleanist leaders like the Duc de Broglie, and also a young Bonaparte, Princesse Mathilde. Nor did she neglect literary lions, renewing her acquaintance with Prosper Mérimée, by now the author of several successful books and recently appointed Inspector General of Historic Monuments. A trim, birdlike man, very well dressed, with black hair starting to go white, a high forehead and a nose that enemies called ‘snout-like’, if not a grandee he had polished manners and a marvellous sense of humour. Lonely despite his constant party-going, he was grateful for her friendship, writing regularly to her for the rest of his life, while she valued someone so scholarly and amusing, who knew everyone worth knowing. It is unlikely that he slept with her, however – he told Stendhal, his closest male friend, that the countess was definitely not his mistress.
Mérimée played games with Maria Manuela’s daughters, took them for walks – buying cream cakes – and even to shootinggalleries where they learned to use pistols. He admired Eugenia’s high spirits, calling her ‘a lioness with a flowing mane’ ( une lionne à tous crins ), referring to the red hair that still embarrassed her. He helped them with their homework – they were day girls at the Sacré Coeur, not boarders – and improved their rather Spanish French. It was his idea that they should make a first visit to the theatre and in September
Don Cipriano reappeared in Paris in autumn 1837. The war still dragged on in northern Spain, but the enemy’s best general had died and they had failed to capture any of the major cities. Ostensibly for reasons of health, his visit may have been because he feared that his marriage was in danger. His wife had more or less stopped writing to him, and he knew she was entertaining lavishly. Although they lived together until his departure in January 1838, afterwards Maria Manuela sent him very few letters.
In a report of autumn 1838 Colonel Amoros tells Eugenia’s parents that their daughter enjoys physical exercise, that her character is ‘good, generous and firm’ and her temperament ‘sanguine and nervous’. This fits with what we know from other sources. She was very highly strung, almost hyperactive, never able to keep still or stop talking, even during meals, in an age when children were not supposed to speak unless spoken to, often having long conversations with herself, and obsessively fond of her father – one biographer comments that her letters to him sound like ‘an impatient woman in love’. When only nine, she wrote, ‘I’m so looking forward to your coming here that I think you’re going to arrive every day, although it’s three weeks since I asked you if you were coming soon.’ In other letters she says, ‘Dear Papa, I want to throw my arms around you’; ‘Dear Papa, when are you coming, my heart is sighing for you?’
Sometimes she seems very grown up. ‘It’s just not possible to live in Paris any more as they’re always trying to kill the king’, she complains early in 1837. ‘Yesterday the gas blew up, breaking lots of windows, and we were told it happened because people had set light to it. What was so funny was how all the soldiers came running with their guns, afraid that it was a revolution.’ This is written by a girl not yet twelve, who in the same letter tells her father that she is looking forward to reading Robinson Crusoe and The Swiss Family Robinson . She also mentions Napoleon, reminding Cipriano he has told her to read a book about Napoleon, and that what happened to him on St Helena made her cry.
Meanwhile, Doña Maria Manuela was meeting as many of the great as possible, including Legitimist diehards such as the Duc de Richelieu and Orleanist leaders like the Duc de Broglie, and also a young Bonaparte, Princesse Mathilde. Nor did she neglect literary lions, renewing her acquaintance with Prosper Mérimée, by now the author of several successful books and recently appointed Inspector General of Historic Monuments. A trim, birdlike man, very well dressed, with black hair starting to go white, a high forehead and a nose that enemies called ‘snout-like’, if not a grandee he had polished manners and a marvellous sense of humour. Lonely despite his constant party-going, he was grateful for her friendship, writing regularly to her for the rest of his life, while she valued someone so scholarly and amusing, who knew everyone worth knowing. It is unlikely that he slept with her, however – he told Stendhal, his closest male friend, that the countess was definitely not his mistress.
Mérimée played games with Maria Manuela’s daughters, took them for walks – buying cream cakes – and even to shootinggalleries where they learned to use pistols. He admired Eugenia’s high spirits, calling her ‘a lioness with a flowing mane’ ( une lionne à tous crins ), referring to the red hair that still embarrassed her. He helped them with their homework – they were day girls at the Sacré Coeur, not boarders – and improved their rather Spanish French. It was his idea that they should make a first visit to the theatre and in September
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