The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire

by C. M. Mayo

  There are so many, but one more example: Sara Yorke Stevenson’s Maximilian in Mexico: A Woman’s Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862–1867, a magnificent tome in all other respects, relegates the Iturbide affair to—I found this astonishing—a snippet of a footnote, apropos of Maximilian’s flight from Chapultepec to Orizaba in late 1866.

  I read and I read, but in these works about Maximilian, the Second Empire, and the French Intervention, whether a memoir or based on original research, when it came to the Iturbides the story was always the same: mystifying errors and vagueness.

  Why, precisely, Maximilian would want to take custody of the Iturbide grandsons, and why Alice, her husband, and his siblings would agree to this, at least initially, were questions I could not begin to address when the Iturbides themselves remained obscure.

  I knew there were archives on the Emperor Agustín de Iturbide in both Georgetown University and the Library of Congress, but I was still in Mexico City. So my first path out of the bramble was an unlikely one, and I found it thanks to Mexican economist and historian Eduardo Turrent, who granted me access to the Banco de México’s Matías Romero archive. During the French Intervention, Romero, one of Mexico’s great statesmen, served as the Mexican Republic’s minister to Washington where he lobbied, gathering money and arms, against Maximilian. In Romero’s archive, among countless treasures, I found several letters from Angel de Iturbide, anxiously requesting that he and his family be permitted to return to Mexico. These are dated August 1867, some two months after Maximilian’s execution. They were sent from “Rosedale, near Georgetown, D.C.”

  Rosedale, Georgetown, D.C.: that was my lead. When I went to Washington, in addition to delving into those archives at Georgetown University and the Library of Congress, I went to the Washington Historical Society Library, the Peabody Room at Georgetown Public Library, and the Washingtoniana Division of the Martin Luther King Library. Alice’s family turned out to be an old and prominent family, on both sides. It gave me a start to realize, after several visits to the Washington Historical Society Library, then housed in the Heurich mansion on New Hampshire Ave, that it was Alice’s lace-capped grandmother, Rebecca Plater Forrest, whose portrait graced the vestibule. Over on Massachusetts Avenue, in stately Anderson House, the Society of the Cincinnati had the records of Agustín de Iturbide y Green’s membership, descended as he was from the Revolutionary War hero General Uriah Forrest. And in the library of the Daughters of the American Revolution headquarters, I found a copy of the 1861 diary of his grandmother Ann Forrest Green. And about Rosedale, which crowns the knoll just behind the National Cathedral, several archives had newspaper clippings, some dating back to the 1930s and including interviews with Alice’s family members. Also of enormous help were Washington, D.C., historian Louise Mann-Kenney’s Rosedale: The Eighteenth-Century Country Estate of General Uriah Forrest and a personal visit to Rosedale, one snow-dusted day in February.

  The biggest trove of information about Alice and her son, however, I found in an unlikely place, for as far as I can determine, they had no association with it during their lifetimes: the archives of the Catholic University, in Washington, D.C. The rest of Agustín de Iturbide y Green’s life is the subject of my next book, so here, suffice it to say, his career in the Mexican cavalry ended abruptly in 1890 when he was court-martialed and imprisoned for 340 days for having written a letter to a newspaper criticizing President Porfirio Díaz. On his release, he and his mother returned to Washington. In 1892 when she went alone to Mexico City to conclude some business, she died suddenly of blood poisoning from an infection to the foot. Soon another bout of inopportune truth-telling resulted in Agustín’s expulsion from Washington’s exclusive Metropolitan Club, though many of the members considered this so grossly unfair that years later there was an attempt, without his cooperation, to reinstate him as a member.

  And so the onetime prince of Mexico, orphaned, ostracized, and plagued by chronic tuberculosis of the bone, made his living as a translator for the Franciscan Brothers and, later, as professor of French and Spanish at Georgetown. He nonetheless made a happy marriage, which lasted a decade until his death in 1925. The Catholic University archive, donated by his widow, Louise Kearney de Iturbide, contains his personal papers, scrapbooks, photographs, and her handwritten memoir, as well as many Washington area newspaper clippings, among them one dated 1939, “Memory of Imperial Fame: Princeling’s Widow Refreshes Lost History,” that shows the same portrait I had seen in Mexico City.

  Why, having done so much original research, did I write the story as fiction? I wanted to tell it true, which means, of course, getting the facts as straight as possible but also, and this was the most interesting to me, telling an emotional truth. Why did Alice, Angel, Pepa, Maximilian, and Charlotte do what they did? Who encouraged and supported them, and who criticized, intimidated, and frustrated them—and for what motives? The answer is not only in historical and political analysis, but in their hearts, and the hearts of others can only be experienced with the imagination, that is, through fiction.

  How much of this is fiction and how much is fact? We will never really know. Whether in a novel or a textbook, a character is not a real person, merely a metaphor. How good is the metaphor? All I can say is that, with some minor exceptions necessary to create what I hope is a harmonious narrative structure, I have done my utmost to render the facts and the contexts as accurately as possible. All the characters are based on real people, with the exceptions of Lupe, Chole, the bandits, the palace nannies Olivia and Tere, the murdered Count Villavaso, and the prince’s bodyguard—though, in all these instances, real people did fulfill these or very similar roles, and I under-took extensive research into the sociology of the time and place to portray them, if imaginatively, as accurately as I could.

  Several scenes incorporate lines of dialogue based, though loosely, with the tweaks and embellishments of fiction, on previously published works. These include: John Bigelow’s interviews with Alice de Iturbide in “The Charm of Her Existence” and with French foreign minister Drouyn de Lhuys in “Pas possible” which rely on Bigelow’s memoir, Retrospections of an Active Life; Alice de Iturbide’s interview with Carlota in “In the Grand-Hôtel,” which relies on Bigelow’s article, “The Heir-Presumptive to the Imperial Crown of Mexico: Don Agustín de Iturbide” (Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, April 1883); Captain Blanchot’s exchange with General Bazaine about the rumors of the latter’s supposed corruption in “Basket of Crabs,” which relies on the former’s Mémoires: L’ntervention Française au Mexique; and, finally, Bigelow’s visit to Mexico and his meetings with Alice de Iturbide in the chapter “An Unexpected Visitor,” which rely on his 1882 diary in the Manuscript Division of the New York Public Library.

  Letters quoted in part and in whole (with some modifications for literary purposes) include: from Pedro Montezuma XV to Maximilian, (my translation, Kaiser Maximilian von Mexiko Archive, Library of Congress) and from Louis Napoleon to Maximilian (my translation, Egon Caesar Conte Corti, Maximiliano y Carlota), both in the chapter “The Archduke Maximilian or AEIOU”; from Madame de Iturbide to her son, Angel de Iturbide (my translation, Agustín de Iturbide Papers, Library of Congress), in “Past Midnight”; from A. [Agustín Gerónimo] de Iturbide to Maximilian, from Maximilian to Alice de Iturbide and from Alice Iturbide to Carlota (my translations, Kaiser Maximilian von Mexiko Archive, Haus-, Hof-, und Staatsarchiv) in “One Takes It Coolly”; from Alice de Iturbide to Maximilian (Bigelow, Retrospections of an Active Life) in “The Charm of Her Existence”; from Angel de Iturbide to Maximilian (my translation, Kaiser Maximilian von Mexiko Archive, Haus-, Hof-, und Staatsarchiv) and from Maximilian to Carlota (my translation from the Spanish translation, Konrad Ratz, ed., Correspondencia inédita entre Maximiliano y Carlota) in “One Stays the Course”; from Angel de Iturbide to Maximilian (my translation, Agustín de Iturbide Papers, Library of Congress) in “In the Grand-Hôtel”; from Countess Hulst to Carlota (Prince Michael of Greece, The
Empress of Farewells) in “Night in the Eternal City”; and from Maximilian to Alice de Iturbide and Maximilian to Josefa de Iturbide (my translation, Kaiser Maximilian von Mexiko Archive, Haus-, Hof-, und Staatsarchiv) in “The Road to Orizaba.”

  A last word about research. There is no end to it. This may be true of any period, but it is especially true of Mexico in the 1860s, for Maximilian’s presence there makes no sense without an understanding of both the Mexican and the international context—the American, Austrian, Belgian, French, Prussian, Russian, Italian, English, and so on. The histories, memoirs, and documents themselves reveal only scraps and, at best, patched-together swaths of the wider story; and many as these may be, precious few have been translated. To give one of many examples, L’ntervention Française au Mexique, the monumental three-volume memoir by Colonel Charles Blanchot, General Bazaine’s aide-de-camp, has not yet been translated into Spanish, German, or English. In 2008 (more than 130 years after the fall of the Second Mexican Empire), Austrian historian Konrad Ratz, working from previously untranslated German documents, published Tras las huellas de un desconocido (In the footsteps of an unknown), with important new information about Maximilian’s early education; his governorship of Lombardy-Venetia; his last doctor, Samuel Basch; Prince and Princess Salm-Salm; and the shadowy Father Fischer. I had already finished and placed my manuscript; Ratz’s was the latest research I could utilize for this novel. No doubt more wonders are forthcoming. There are more archives I might have looked into. I could also try digging a hole to China. After these several years’ work, with a great sigh, I simply declared, “pencils down.”

  As I said, writing a book is like climbing a mountain, and this climb was made possible by the aid of many sherpas. First, always, and most important, I thank my husband, Agustín Carstens, whose support in every way has been unstintingly generous. Together we visited many of the scenes in the novel, including Cuernavaca, Mexico City, Río Frío, Orizaba, Veracruz and, though no scenes set there appear in this novel, the theater for Second Empire’s bloody end, the city of Querétaro. It was my husband’s suggestion that we make a journey to Vienna, Venice, and Miramar Castle in Trieste, which proved to be an indispensible step in my attempt to understand Maximilian. I also found that I had much to learn from our visits to Brussels and Paris.

  I also thank my parents, Roger and Carolyn Mansell, and sister, Alice Jean Mansell, for their support in so many ways. Another family member who cannot go without a mention is my pug dog, Picadou. From the beginning of this project, she has stayed close by my desk, ever-patient, content to nap for hours, but with the wherewithal to insist, when need be, that we both go outside for a breath of air and a long walk.

  Many librarians have my thanks, among them those of the Banco de México (Matías Romero Archive); Biblioteca Lerdo de Tejada (Sociedad newspaper archive); Catholic University of America (Iturbide-Kearney Family Papers); Georgetown University’s Lauinger Library (Agustín de Iturbide Collection); Daughters of the American Revolution Library; Haus-, Hof-, und Staatsarchiv, Vienna, Austria (Kaiser Maximilian von Mexiko Archive); Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Manuscript Division (Agustín de Iturbide Papers, and Kaiser Maximilian von Mexiko Archive); District of Columbia Public Library, Peabody Room, Georgetown Regional Branch; Washingtoniana Division, Martin Luther King Library, Washington, D.C.; New York City Public Library, Manuscript Division (John Bigelow and Bigelow Family Papers); Rice University Fondren Library (Maximilian and Charlotte Collection); Washington Historical Society, Washington, D.C.; University of California at Berkeley, Bancroft Library; University of Texas at Austin, Benson Latin American Collection.

  My deep appreciation to the Ragdale Foundation, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Yaddo, which provided residencies—the time and peace for creative writing.

  Thanks to Potomac Review for publishing the first excerpt from “The Darling of Rosedale.”

  To the Foundation for Youth for Understanding, then owner of Rosedale, for the tour.

  So many have helped me by the gift of a book, an article, a document, a key suggestion, and more. In alphabetical order: Lupe Arrigunaga de Mancera, Kate Blackwell, Carmen Boone de Aguilar, José G. Aguilera Medrano, Margarita Carstens Lavista, Helen de Carstens, Francisco José Joel Castro y Ortiz, Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Chain, Teresa Franco, Amparo Gómez, José Antonio González Anaya, Miguel Hakim Simón, Carlos de Icaza, Samuel Maldonado, Dawn Marano, Ileana Ramírez Williams de del Cueto, Robert Ryal Miller, Emilio Quesada, Salvador Rueda, Oriana Tickell de Castelló, Eduardo Turrent, María Josefa Valerio, Eduardo Wallentin, Roberto Wallentin, and Nancy Zafris.

  I have been truly fortunate in having thoughtful readers of the various chapters or versions of the manuscript, again in alphabetical order: Kate Blackwell, Ellen Prentiss Campbell, Sofía Carstens, Luis Cerda, Maxine Claire, Kathleen Currie, Katherine Davis, Nancy Eaton, Timothy Heyman, Javier Mancera Arrigunaga, Ann McLaughlin, Mary O’Keefe de O’Dogherty, Carolyn Parkhurst, Leslie Pietrzyk, Deborah Riner, Sara Mansfield Taber, Amy Stolls, and Mary Kay Zuravleff.

  Thanks to Washington, D.C.’s Politics & Prose Bookstore and Taylor Real Estate, where my writers group, bless you all, met many a Thursday.

  Thanks to Douglas Glover for the long ago but not forgotten, and truly inspiring lesson on the novel, and to Robert McKee for his magnificent workshop on story.

  Warmest thanks to the “invisible cheerleaders,” above all, Louise Kearney de Iturbide and the many people, now “on the other side of the veil,” who appear as characters in the novel. I do not know whether I have done you justice, but oftentimes I have felt your friendly presence. In this regard, I am deeply grateful to Lyn Buchanan, for the tools to help me stretch my concepts of the mind and space-time. I have also had the invaluable aid of two gifted mediums, Diane Forestell May and Deborah Harrigan.

  Any mistakes or shortcomings in this book are my own, of course.

  Finally, heartfelt thanks to my editor, Greg Michalson, who recognized what I aimed to achieve with this book and patiently helped me, as far as I am able, to realize it. Thanks also to my agent, Christina Ward, who has been a bright and timely light for me. Thanks to Pippa Letsky for such superb copy-editing. At this point the book leaves my hands, but to everyone at Unbridled Books, and all the people who bring the book to your hands, and you, dear reader, know that you have my gratitude.

  Washington, D.C., and Mexico City, 2008

  SELECTED BOOKS CONSULTED

  Aguilar Ochoa, Arturo, ed. La fotografía durante el Imperio de Maximiliano.

  Almonte, Juan Nepomuceno. Guía de forasteros y repertorio de conocimientos útiles.

  Arróniz, Marcos. Manual del viajero en México. Paris, 1858.

  Ávila, Lorenzo, ed. Testimonios artísticos de un episodio fugáz 1864–1867.

  Basch, Dr. S. Memories of Mexico: A History of the Last Ten Months of the Empire. Translated by Hugh McAden Oechler.

  Bigelow, John. Retrospections of an Active Life. 3 volumes.

  Blanchot, Col. Charles. Mémoires: L’Intervention Française au Mexique. 3 volumes.

  Blasio, José Luis. Maximiliano íntimo: El Emperador Maximiliano y su corte.

  Buffum, E. Gould. Sights and Sensations in France, Germany, and Switzerland; or, Experiences of an American Journalist in Europe.

  Clay, Mrs. A Belle of the Fifties: Memoirs of Mrs. Clay, of Alabama, Covering Social and Political Life in Washington and the South, 1853–66.

  Conte Corti, Egon Caesar. Maximiliano y Carlota.

  Cortina del Valle, Elena, ed. De Miramar a México.

  Cossío, José L. Guía retrospective de la ciudad de México.

  Fabiani, Rossella. Miramare Castle: The Historic Museum.

  Evans, Henry Ridgely. Old Georgetown on the Potomac.

  Evans, Dr. Thomas W. The Second French Empire: Napoleon the Third; The Empress Eugénie; The Prince Imperial.

  Genealogía de la Familia Iturbide. Privately printed.

  Gooch, Fanny Chambers. Face to Face wit
h the Mexicans. Original, unedited edition.

  Hamann, Brigitte. Con Maximiliano en México: Del diario del príncipe Carl Khevenhüller, 1864–1867.

  Haslip, Joan. The Crown of Mexico.

  Iturriaga de la Fuente, José N., ed. Escritos mexicanos de Carlota de Bélgica.

  Kearney de Iturbide, Louise. My Story. Manuscript, Catholic University Archives.

  Kolonitz, Paula. Un viaje a México en 1864. Translated by Neftali Beltrán.

  Leech, Margaret. Reveille in Washington, 1860–1865.

  Lombardo de Miramón, Concepción, Memorias.

  Luca de Tena. Ciudad de México en tiempos de Maximiliano.

  Magruder, Henry R. Sketches of the Last Year of the Mexican Empire.

  Mann-Kenney, Louise. Rosedale: The Eighteenth-Century Country Estate of General Uriah Forrest, Cleveland Park, Washington, D.C.

  Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico. Recollections of My Life. 3 volumes.

  Meyer, Jean, ed. Yo, el francés: Biografías y crónicas.

  Michael, Prince of Greece. The Empress of Farewells: The Story of Charlotte, Empress of Mexico.

  Mikos, Charles, et al. The Imperial House of Iturbide.

  Museo Nacional de Arte. Testimonios artísticos de un episodio fugaz (1864-1867).

  Ortiz, Orlando. Diré adiós a los señores: Vida cotidiana en la época de Maximiliano y Carlota.

  Pani, Erika. El Segundo Imperio.

  Payno, Manuel. The Bandits from Río Frío. Translated by Alan Fluckey.

  Quirarte, Martín. Historiografía sobre el Imperio de Maximiliano.

  Ratz, Konrad, ed. Correspondencia inédita entre Maximilianoy Carlota.

  Ratz, Konrad. Tras las huellas de un desconocido.

  Reglamento para el servicio y ceremonial de la corte, 1865 and second edition, 1866.

  Ridley, Jasper. Maximilian and Juárez.

  Robertson, William Spence. Iturbide de México.