So now, instead of having to sneak women into his rooms as he had at army camp and (probably) Windsor, Bertie would be able to issue an invitation and have a lady knocking at his door. Or he could be invited for a tête-à-tête chez elle. And, as one of Bertie’s French biographers Philippe Jullian notes, his moral guardians would not intervene – Bertie was, after all, a personal guest of the Emperor of France, so supervision was not necessary, n’est-ce pas? Although what Jullian does not mention is that Bertie’s moral guardian, General Bruce, was suffering from a fever that he had contracted in the Jordanian marshes during their tour of the Orient, so his guard was down and his young charge was freer than usual to enjoy himself.
Either way, to Bertie, it must have felt like leaving Saudi Arabia and arriving in Bangkok – or Paris.
II
In the opinion of Philippe Jullian, the key thing about Napoléon III’s France was that it wasn’t England.
Chez Victoria and Albert, hypocrisy ruled. The English upper classes engaged in adultery and homosexuality, and young men relieved their sexual frustrations with prostitutes, but if any whiff of scandal seeped out into the London smog, the guilty parties could be ruined, and often had to flee into exile – in France.
As Jullian puts it, in London, ‘Vice – one can’t speak of pleasures – was easy and brutal, with none of the gaiety of our Second Empire.’ He describes London’s ‘sixteen-year-old prostitutes dressed in ragged lace’, and evokes a world ‘behind the superb façades of Regent Street and the Strand, a hidden hell of mean streets, courtyards and stables, home to child traffickers and schools for thieves’. Even Dickens, he asserts, shied away from revealing the true horrors that went on there.
Rich Londoners were forced either to descend into this hell or hide behind tightly drawn Mayfair curtains if they wanted to indulge their sexual appetites. Their Parisian counterparts, on the other hand, could express themselves freely.
Bertie himself had already been on incognito outings to a few of London’s more salubrious music halls and gin palaces with his army pals and Nellie Clifden, but now, in 1862, as he arrived at Napoléon III’s summer residence in Fontainebleau, he was to get a first taste of real sexual freedom. Jullian describes the situation suggestively: ‘In this amiable court, the Prince [Bertie] could breathe, and his entourage did not intervene . . . The women whom he had kissed as a small boy were prepared to give their all to the young man.’
Perhaps more importantly, Bertie would be able to discuss sex with his true father figure, Napoléon, without being ordered to keep his urges to himself until he was married. To Napoléon, unlike Albert, extra-marital or pre-marital sex was deliciously naughty rather than shamefully secret. Jullian says that ‘one could speak freely about everything’ with the Emperor, who ‘always preferred to charm rather than intimidate’. He was the very opposite of Bertie’s biological father.
Arriving at Fontainebleau, Bertie would probably have felt more relaxed than he had for a very long time. Most French writers talking about Napoléon’s country houses stress how at ease they felt there. As we saw in Chapter 1, both the Emperor and Empress combined a love of officialdom with a real gift for hospitality – something for which Bertie himself would later become famous (infamous, even).
By 1862, Napoléon and Eugénie had found their feet in French society and ensured that even the most snobbish die-hard royalists were desperate to belong to the new imperial in-crowd. Napoléon was surrounded by a staff of high-ranking army officers and aristocrats with grandiose titles like Grand Maître du Palais, Grand Maître des Cérémonies, and Grand Veneur (Master of the Royal Hunt). Eugénie, although a cheated wife and a foreigner, had overcome all the prejudices against her, and reigned over her own highly regimented court, which featured a Grande Maîtresse of her household as well as a Dame d’Honneur (Chief Lady-in-waiting), her twelve dames du palais and two lectrices – ‘reading ladies’ to keep her and her clique amused with news and the latest novels.
Alongside the small, slightly stooping Napoléon, Eugénie was the epitome of Parisian elegance – not beautiful in the classic sense, but graceful, stylish and (to contemporary eyes) very sexy. When Bertie met Eugénie again in June 1862, she was at the height of her glory. She had given Napoléon the long-awaited male heir, and now conducted herself like a born empress. She had become famous for her trademark way of greeting the crowds that parted in her presence – she would nod her head slightly to her right and left, according a mute smile to the fortunate onlookers.
A poem written in 1861 gives an idea of how strong the Eugénie idolatry had become. The poet Edouard d’Escola published an ode to the Empress’s beauty that oozes as much syrup as a crème caramel. Here is a typical verse:
Elle enchante par sa présence,
Riche, pauvre, faible et puissant,
Et vole aux deux bouts de la France
Pour la bénir toute en passant.
This could be translated as something like:
By her presence, she enchants
The richest and the poorest classes,
And flies all over France
Blessing all as she passes.
Admittedly, d’Escola was an obsequious patriot who also wrote a poem about Waterloo that was prefaced with a wonderful example of French denial – ‘Defeats are only victories to which fortune has refused to give wings.’ But everyone at court testified to Eugénie’s regal presence amongst them. And now Bertie was instantly elevated to a position of equality, by her side, to bathe in her reflected glory. Aged only twenty, he was being parachuted in at the pinnacle of French society.
For a young man in need of entertainment, Bertie’s arrival couldn’t have been better timed. Despite all the rank and ceremony at Napoléon’s court in Paris, the summer residences at Fontainebleau and Saint-Cloud and the winter residence, Compiègne, were run so that the guests would feel free.
While in attendance the guests were invited to share the imperial couple’s daily life. Not in the way that Louis XIV made his courtiers watch him eating, dressing and even giving his morning performance on the commode,2 but at a series of amusing dinners, dances, riding parties, games evenings and shows.
Eugénie had fitted out her private sitting rooms as a cross between a Buddhist temple and an English gentleman’s club. Amidst Chinese vases, oriental woodwork and dragon statues, and presided over by Franz Xaver Winterhalter’s group portrait of the Empress and her glamorous dames du palais, armchairs and sofas were set out around the room in convivial huddles. There were also card tables big and small, a baize-covered forerunner of a pinball table, and a piano with a wind-up music-box mechanism in case a proficient player couldn’t be found. In summer, regular rounds of sorbets would be served, and thé anglais came punctually at five. Conversation, cards and constant refreshment – it was Bertie’s ideal environment.
The plays put on in Napoléon’s new theatre were sometimes classical, but the taste of the time was more for light entertainment, and the Emperor was fond of inviting out the starlets of the Paris stage, many of whom were better known for their physical attributes and loose morals than their skill at memorizing Molière. This, as we will see in a later chapter, was the kind of French literary experience that Bertie enjoyed most.
In his memoirs, Souvenirs du Second Empire, the Comte de Maugny, who served in Napoléon III’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, writes that the fun and games out at the country châteaux also included such very French activities as a dictation, with participants having to write out a complicated text while making as few errors as possible. Maugny records one such occasion at Compiègne when, despite the presence of the famous literary critic Charles-Augustin Saint-Beuve and the writer Prosper Mérimée, the contest was won by the Austrian Ambassador Richard von Metternich. It is highly doubtful that Bertie, who at twenty still had problems elevating his English sentences above schoolboy level, would have felt tempted to join in. Besides, there were plenty of more rewarding pastimes on offer.
Napoléon, like Bertie, preferred repartee to spelling tests, and spent much of his time chatting up the wittiest, most beautiful women. ‘He [Napoléon] would go and sit beside each of them in turn,’ Maugny says, ‘and, while talking to her, would hail any passing lady that came within range of his voice or gaze.’
At dinner, Napoléon would sit between his two favourite ladies amongst that week’s crop, while Eugénie was always seated opposite him and between the two most important men. Bertie, during his first solo visit to Fontainebleau as a young man, would certainly have been one of them. The other guests sat where they wanted, or could find a seat. In an unusually modern spirit of equality, ladies who had not been selected by the Emperor or a prestigious male guest could choose which man to sit next to, and he would be her beau for the evening – and sometimes for the night as well.
The men were, according to the Comte de Maugny, guaranteed to find female admirers who ‘made it their profession to go mad for them’. At the country residences, a female courtier’s role was clear.
According to Philippe Jullian, during Bertie’s visit to Fontainebleau in 1862, the Prince ‘formed long-term friendships’ with some very glamorous ladies. There was, for example, Mélanie de Bussière, one of Eugénie’s closest friends. Mélanie, or the Comtesse Edmond de Pourtalès to give her her full married title, was in her mid-twenties and a striking, chestnut-haired beauty. She was the mother of two boys, and young married ladies who had done their dynastic duty were prime targets for adultery. As if this weren’t enough, Mélanie was also renowned as a witty conversationalist. In short, Bertie’s dream girl.
Others he met during this visit included Anna Murat, a granddaughter of Napoléon Bonaparte’s sister Caroline, and Léonora, the wife of the banker Baron Alphonse de Rothschild, who was also a glamorous young mother.
Bertie would probably have renewed his acquaintance with Princess Mathilde, Napoléon III’s cousin and former fiancée. She had a personal suite at Fontainebleau – appropriately enough in the former apartment of Madame de Maintenon, mistress and then secretly married wife of Louis XIV. Mathilde was still living with her lover in Paris and holding literary salons for the likes of Gustave Flaubert (author of the adultery novel Madame Bovary which had been published in 1857). A sexy, scandalous divorcée, Mathilde would have been a no-holds-barred guide for a young English prince seeking to understand the ins and outs (no pun intended) of Napoléon’s court.
Whether Bertie immediately invited himself into the guest suites of any of these noble Françaises is not clear. But he was the second most highly ranked member of the Fontainebleau house party that summer, and would have had his pick of the available ladies.
The atmosphere of sexual availability reigning at Napoléon III’s court is vividly described in the kiss-and-tell memoirs of a certain Marquise Irène de Taisey-Chantenoy, who was one of the Emperor’s many discarded lovers. Understandably, her stories drip with vitriol. Attempting to lambast Napoléon and Eugénie, the Marquise refers to ‘this futile court, so seductive on the surface . . . that thinks of nothing but pleasures and enjoyments’.3
Coming from an old French aristocratic family, Irène de Taisey-Chantenoy felt superior to Eugénie, ‘a Spaniard married because of her auburn hair’. Even so, the Marquise (who was also married) was desperate to get noticed at court, and was delighted when one day Napoléon deigned to speak to her, using a chat-up line that sounds horribly cheesy.
‘Aren’t you Madame . . . er?’ he asks her. ‘I’m sure we’ve met before. Where was it?’ He goes on to tell Irène that she is ‘séduisante’, to which she adds, ‘He wasn’t the first to notice that.’
Once her youthful beauty has been officially recognized by Napoléon’s roving eye, Irène’s place at court is assured. She becomes a member of Eugénie’s band of caillettes, a name which was supposedly a diminutive of canaille, or rabble, but could also come from a slang word of the time for prostitute – caille or quail. They were all rich ladies (‘so that Eugénie could be sure we wouldn’t ask her for money,’ Irène notes), but were given risqué nicknames like Salopette (literally a small slut, it also means a pair of overalls) and Cochonette (from cochon, a pig, which is also an adjective meaning sex-mad).
These dames du palais spent their time discussing what Irène sarcastically calls ‘insignificant things of great importance’, like the fact that Napoléon had not drunk his coffee that morning, as well as exchanging all the latest salacious gossip about Parisian high society. She tells, for example, the story of a ballerina who went to see the Deputy Minister for Fine Arts to apply for promotion to the front row of the troupe. The Deputy has his way with her in his office and sends her in to see the Minister. However, when the Minister takes his turn at lifting the dancer’s skirts, he sees that a memo from his Deputy’s desk has got stuck to her backside. An old hand at the game of giving and receiving favours, the Minister simply files the sheet of paper in his in-tray and gets down to business. The ballerina, meanwhile, earns her promotion.
This sounds like the type of story that the newly experienced Bertie would have loved to hear – and exactly the kind of gossip that would have had his recently departed father reaching for earplugs and the Bible.
Irène also reveals the extent of the freedom enjoyed by married upper-class Parisiennes at the time. In an attempt to find out how call girls operate, she and a friend rent a private room at the notorious Café Anglais (more of which in Chapter 6) and pretend to be Belgian ladies on the prowl. However, their plans go awry when two prostitutes turn up and sense that things are not what they seem. The evening ends with Irène’s friend getting roaring drunk and Irène herself being propositioned by a baron.
The Empress Eugénie also famously made a foray into the lower echelons of society, though more out of a desire to imitate Marie-Antoinette, who had romantic visions of being a shepherdess. Irène tells the story gleefully. While in summer residence at Fontainebleau, Eugénie and a friend dress up as farm girls and go to a peasants’ dance. The ladies are invited on to the floor by a pair of stonemasons, who quickly make their amorous intentions rustically clear. At this point, Eugénie’s disguised bodyguards intervene and a fight breaks out, only for the two masons to be unmasked as courtiers – they had got wind of Eugénie’s plans and come to play a practical joke on her. Irène says that Eugénie was furious. Being fondled by two smelly yokels would have made the perfect anecdote back at court, and now the story was ruined, and she was the butt of the joke.
Given that the ruse involved Eugénie, it sounds likely that Napoléon himself had sent the impostors along. It was definitely the kind of joke he adored.
The most elaborate scheme of his that Irène describes is a visit to court by the King of the non-existent state of Oude and his entourage, who are in fact some of Napoléon’s friends dressed up as Orientals. Napoléon announces that he is unable to attend the reception, and asks Eugénie to receive the head of state in his place. Flattered, she welcomes the veiled visitors in all her finery, telling them in slow, easy-to-understand French to go back to their people and inform them of the Emperor’s great affection for their country. Then a laughing Napoléon bursts in, the veils are lifted, and Eugénie understandably erupts in a ‘violent fit of nerves’.
Napoléon may well have been an inspiration for Bertie’s own taste for practical joking at his house parties, though Bertie’s humorous japes were often less subtle – one frequently repeated favourite was pouring brandy over his friend Christopher Sykes’s head, to which the poor victim could only reply ‘as your Royal Highness pleases’. Another involved serving mince pies that turned out to be filled with mustard.
Irène’s most detailed descriptions are reserved for Napoléon’s sexual mores. He ‘will accept no obstacles or deprivations in his pleasures’, she says. ‘All the master’s whims must be obeyed.’ She recounts how Eugénie once walked in on her husband and an actress famous for ‘showing her legs in a small theatre and the rest everywhere else’. The girl is inv
ited to the Tuileries Palace, where Eugénie catches Napoléon fondling the aforementioned body, and informs him that: ‘Tickling a pretty girl’s legs is not amongst the duties of a head of state.’
Even though the long-suffering Empress obviously had a talent for quotable putdowns, Irène is scornful, saying that by disapproving of her husband’s waywardness Eugénie ‘reveals the most bourgeois sentiments’. At Napoléon’s court, as it would later be amongst Bertie’s own set, upper-class spouses were not meant to object openly to their partner’s adultery.
Irène quotes one cuckolded man who was forced to hide his embarrassment with some quick thinking. At one of Napoléon and Eugénie’s Parisian parties, he is seen rushing around the palace looking for his wife, and a courtier asks him if he’s jealous.
‘Oh no,’ he replies, ‘one’s wife always comes back, but tonight she’s wearing 538,000 francs’ worth of diamonds around her neck.’
Irène’s crowning moment, and her downfall, comes when she gets her turn in bed with Napoléon. They are out at the Château de Compiègne, the imperial winter residence north of Paris, where Napoléon has installed a carousel so that he can watch the women swirling around with their ‘flying skirts and exposed calves’.
In the gardens, after much manoeuvring, Irène catches Napoléon’s eye and he takes her for a walk, complimenting her on her beauty and elegance, and eventually kissing her. (After which, she complains that she had to wipe her lips clean of a ‘smelly grease that stung me’ – Napoléon’s moustache oil.) He helps her up into a seat on the carousel and watches her as she careers around exposing her calves. They part with a whispered ‘à ce soir’, and Irène’s husband (who is present during the whole public courtship) is dispatched to Paris on a spurious errand.
A servant informs her that she is to spend the night in ‘la chambre bleue’, the bedroom next to Napoléon’s. She goes there, slips into bed and awaits his visit. As she lies nervously in the dark, she thinks that if she changed her mind and fled the room, ‘even my own husband would have regarded me as a stupid flirt, a deranged idiot’. Napoléon eventually stumbles in through a concealed door and, as Irène describes it, ‘my destiny was fulfilled’.
Dirty Bertie Page 6