The Beauty of Her Age: A Tale of Sex, Scandal and Money in Victorian England

by Jenifer Roberts

  The post of military attaché was specifically created for Edward Claremont. He could no longer act as military commissioner because the war in the Crimea had ended, but his friendship with General Canrobert and other officers in the French army was useful to the Foreign Office.

  The change in title also involved a reduction in pay. From a salary of £1,500 a year as military commissioner, he was offered the greatly reduced sum of £555 as military attaché. Military commissioners served only in wartime; they were not accompanied by their wives and children, and there was no need to put on a show of uniform and equipage. As the first peacetime military attaché in history, Edward was breaking new ground.

  In 1857, he suggested that a salary of £800 a year might be more suitable. This was granted and, when he was promoted to full colonel the following year, he received a further £100. In 1859, his lodging allowance was increased by £200, bringing his total income to £1,100. This was still insufficient for his purposes, particularly in the opulent Second Empire of Louis-Napoleon.

  Since peace was declared in the Crimea, the French emperor had been making a concerted effort to build up his military muscle. This soon led to fears of invasion in England. Was Louis-Napoleon planning to do what his uncle had failed to achieve more than fifty years earlier? Edward submitted long, thoughtful and detailed reports on military and naval developments in France and came to the conclusion that there was no danger.

  ‘You have no idea how the public are frightened about this French invasion,’ he wrote to Lord Cowley on 15 June 1858 while on a fact-finding visit to London, ‘and how implicitly they believe it all. It is quite marvellous … can anything be more untrue … and yet people swallow it.’ Ten days later, he wrote again:

  Everyone seems so much alarmed that it is quite enough to shake the best-rooted convictions and I sometimes ask myself whether after all I may not be mistaken, yet I feel I am not … The completion of the railway to Cherbourg makes [men] see everything en noir, but what answer can one make to military men who tell one gravely that an army could be sent to the said Cherbourg and embarked there without our knowing anything about it … I dine at the Palace on Monday and I hope the Queen will give me an opportunity of also telling her the plain truth.4

  The dinner at Buckingham Palace on 28 June was a banquet for Leopold I of Belgium who was making a state visit to London. The following day, Edward wrote again to Lord Cowley:

  Last night I dined at the Palace and had an opportunity of telling Her Majesty that there was no actual ground for all the alarm that has been felt here with regard to France … her answer was rather a clue to me of the apparent exaggeration of the whole thing. She begged me not to say too much about the want of preparation on the other side and not to let people feel too secure here; she coughed when I said I would take the hint. It is evident that it is done in great measure to get up our own establishments.5

  Edward had another reason to talk to the queen. Cowley had instructed him to report on the invasion scare in England, but he was also working for Louis-Napoleon who had asked him to arrange a meeting with Victoria and Prince Albert. As the newspapers reported in mid-July:

  Colonel Claremont was the special envoy of the Emperor of the French for the purpose of inviting Her Majesty and the Prince Consort to Cherbourg, which accounts for the distinction with which he has been received, so different to what would be accorded to an ordinary officer of his rank. The Colonel has not only been most graciously received at Court, but has had an audience of the Earl of Derby, to see if he could prevail on the Premier to give that advice to Her Majesty which would bring the mission with which he was charged to a successful issue.

  Failing a visit to the Emperor himself, we believe there was an alternative suggested, of the Queen’s taking an excursion in the Royal yacht, with a numerous escort of British men-of-war, and just ‘dropping in’ at the port of Cherbourg while the Emperor was there, in order that there might be an exchange of courtesies between the two fleets.6

  His meeting with the prime minister took place in Downing Street on 5 July. The following day, he travelled to Aldershot where the queen and members of the royal family were attending a military review. He dined with them in the Royal Pavilion, the party including the Duke of Cambridge who had commanded a division during the Crimean War and was now commander-in-chief of the army.

  Edward’s negotiations were successful. The meeting of the monarchs took place in Cherbourg in early August. It was not a success and Victoria returned to England incandescent at the size and strength of the French navy. Eight months later, France did declare war, not on Britain but on Austria, a brief engagement known as the Italian Campaign.

  In July 1858, Louis-Napoleon signed a treaty of alliance with Sardinia-Piedmont. In exchange for the territories of Nice and Savoy, France would ally itself with Sardinia-Piedmont in the event of Austrian aggression. Sardinia-Piedmont then provoked Austria with a series of military manoeuvres close to the border. Austria issued an ultimatum on 23 April 1859 and, when there was no reply, declared war six days later.

  Edward was ordered to accompany the French army into the field. ‘As far as I am concerned,’ he wrote to Lord Cowley on 5 May, ‘a campaign in Italy will be only too interesting … I shall naturally be put to a great expense fitting myself out.’ He estimated that it would cost £600 to provide himself with horses, equipment and weaponry. ‘What compensation shall I receive?’7

  In mid-May, Louis-Napoleon took personal command of his army. On the 22nd, The Times correspondent in Marseilles sent a report to London:

  Colonel Claremont, who was with the French staff in the Crimea, arrived here last night and leaves today for Genoa, where he will proceed to join the headquarters of the French army … His arrival has been expected for some days past by many officers who had the pleasure of making his acquaintance in the Crimea, and who express the greatest delight at the prospect of renewing that acquaintance.

  During the campaign, Edward sent ‘most valuable reports’ to the Foreign Office in London, as well as several personal letters to Lord Cowley in Paris. ‘It is very hot already in the middle of the day,’ he wrote on 17 June, ‘and one is eaten up with vermin at night in the miserable villages where we put up. I would a thousand times rather be under canvas.’8

  Often riding at Louis-Napoleon’s side, Edward advised the emperor on military strategy during the battles of Magenta (4 June) and Solferino (24 June). The battle on the plain of Solferino was particularly bloody. More than 250,000 men took part and the battle lasted for more than nine hours. Edward wrote to Lord Cowley the following day:

  When I saw that all was well, I was obliged to ride back to Castiglione, for I felt so sick from the effects of the sun that I could hardly sit my horse … The heat is becoming almost insufferable and the villages we come to now are perfectly denuded of everything, the water hereabouts also scarce which adds to the men’s sufferings; the cries of the wounded for it yesterday were heart-breaking. It was really enough to make one look upon the whole thing with detestation … the Emperor looks vastly well, though a little tired.9

  On 30 June, the foreign secretary wrote about Solferino in his journal:

  Colonel Claremont … with the French army writes that it has lost 15,000 killed and wounded, among whom are two generals … He says also that the Austrians retreated in perfect order, and at that moment a tremendous storm came on; the sky was perfectly black, and the constant flash of the lightning, the hurricane, and deluge of rain and hail, all mingled with the roar of cannon, made the most awful scene that can be imagined. When the sun again shone forth, the Austrian columns were just visible in the distance.10

  The Italian Campaign lasted for less than three months. The armistice was signed on 11 July. At the end of the month, Edward travelled to London for debriefing by the Foreign Office and, on 7 August, he visited Queen Victoria in Osborne House. Ten days later, he received a letter from the foreign secretary congratulating him on ‘the manner in which you perf
ormed your duties at the headquarters of the French Army’.

  Almost as soon as the armistice was signed, Louis-Napoleon announced further measures to reform the army. This led to renewed invasion fears in England. When Edward joined him at a shooting party in Compiègne, the emperor complained ‘about the alarm which he understood was prevalent in England with regard to his intentions towards us. He said he was quite at a loss to think why.’11

  During the next two years, Edward wrote a number of despatches on the strength of the French army. He remained convinced that there was no danger. On 30 January 1861, he handed a despatch to Lord Cowley for onward transmission to the Foreign Office:

  Public opinion both in this country and abroad seems decidedly under the impression that the French government are making great preparations for war, and to a certain extent I can understand it, but I can say only that all the military men with whom I have made it a point to converse on the subject do not seriously think so … It is undeniable that the military resources of France are very great, and when such resources are in the hands and at the disposal of one man, it is quite natural that other countries … should feel uneasy.

  One must have followed up the matter very closely to see through the sort of halo and prestige which is purposely made to surround everything connected with the army … There is no doubt that France is able at any moment to make a brilliant dash, but I doubt very much whether she would be able to keep up long sustained efforts … That the French will always be an extremely awkward and dangerous enemy I do not attempt to deny, but cool stewardship will, I think, always get the better of them in the end.12

  Edward met Yolande for the first time a few weeks after writing this despatch. He was riding high in his career, both as an army officer and as a diplomat. He was well respected by the military and the Foreign Office, by the commander-in-chief of the army, and by Queen Victoria. In October 1862, when his relationship with Yolande had matured into a love affair and he was helping her settle into Lynford Hall, he was appointed groom of the privy chamber to the recently-widowed queen, an appointment-in-waiting which required him to attend functions at court.

  Victoria enjoyed Edward’s company. ‘When is Major Claremont expected here?’ she wrote after he returned from the Crimea. ‘The Queen would wish much to see him when he comes.’13

  13

  THE GRANDE DAME

  The salon … of a lady of fortune exceeds everything in splendour that one can venture to imagine.

  John Diprose, Life in Paris, 1871

  When Edward left Lynford Hall in December 1862, Yolande was left alone in the great Jacobean-style mansion. From the windows at the back of the house, she looked over the wide expanse of formal gardens laid out to the designs of William Andrews Nesfield, one of the finest garden designers in England. Beyond the gardens lay the park, its glades and woods receding into the distance as far as the eye could see.

  When spring came, she was eager to return to the Hôtel Molé and the arms of her lover. She arrived in Paris in early April, in time to attend a grand reception in the British Embassy to celebrate the marriage of the Prince of Wales. ‘The toilettes of the ladies were magnificent,’ wrote the correspondent of the London Evening Standard, ‘and the gentlemen were either in uniform or court-dress. No fewer than 1500 invitations had been issued and the whole of the state apartments were thrown open to receive the guests.’

  The Times described Paris in the early 1860s as ‘the glittering days when the Second Empire was in meridian splendour, when Paris was a name for all that was gay and pleasurable and luxurious’. It was a city where almost all men of society indulged in love affairs, from the emperor downwards; where Yolande’s sexual past was nothing to be ashamed of; where she encountered none of the ostracism she experienced in England.

  Edward’s friendship with Louis-Napoleon, forged during the Italian Campaign, brought her into court circles. She was introduced to the imperial couple and became one of the grandes dames of Paris. She was known for the richness of her furniture and furnishings in the Hôtel Molé; for the elegance of her barouche, drawn by two gleaming bay horses, in which she was seen every afternoon in the Bois de Boulogne; for her expensive jewellery and her elaborate dresses from Worth, the English couturier, the high priest of fashion in Second Empire Paris.

  Worth dressed the Empress Eugénie, as well as royal and aristocratic ladies from every country in Europe. His dresses were immensely expensive but their materials were rich, their designs intricate and their workmanship exquisite. His workforce of more than a thousand seamstresses was kept busy, for Louis-Napoleon had made it clear that any lady who appeared at the palace in the same dress twice would incur his ‘utmost displeasure’.

  The couturier employed a number of elegantly-dressed young men who pampered and flattered the customers in his showrooms in the Rue de la Paix. On the first floor, beyond the rooms displaying swathes of rich silks and velvets, was the Salon de Lumière, a room lined with mirrors. Thick drapes over the windows removed all natural light and the room was lit only by gas lights with modelling shades. When Yolande tried on her dresses here, she could see herself as she would appear at a candle-lit ball in the Tuileries.

  Edward introduced her to three of his English friends in the city: the banker Edward Blount, the Marquis of Hertford, and Hertford’s illegitimate son, Richard Wallace, who would inherit his father’s fortune as well as one of the finest private art collections in Europe. As Blount explained in his memoirs:

  Claremont … was a great friend of the Marquis and used to accompany him and Richard Wallace in their expeditions to the heights of Montmartre, or the Latin Quarter, in search of artistic treasures. It was possible in those days, during the latter days of the Empire, when … art dealers generally were not so well educated as to the merits and value of painters and sculptors … to pick up, in the most unlooked-for quarters, works of the greatest value for a mere nothing. The three friends were men of taste and connoisseurs, but Wallace was undoubtedly the best and safest of them and his opinion invariably used to prevail. In fact, the Marquis would never buy a picture without taking Wallace to see it and asking his opinion.

  The art auctions at the Rue Drouot Public Sale-rooms were … attended by them, and not a few of the gems of the Wallace Collection were purchased there. But Lord Hertford did not trust only to chance to put together his collection. He used to visit the dealers of the Rue Taitbout and the Rue Laffitte, and when he came across something which he considered worth having, he did not mind paying a good price for it.1

  In need of paintings to hang in the huge rooms of Lynford Hall, Yolande accompanied them to the auction rooms in the Hôtel Drouot and to private sales of great collections. With their advice, she bid successfully at several auctions during the latter half of the 1860s. Her purchases included three paintings by Velasquez, two by Murillo, a Rubens-Brueghel collaboration, and a full-length portrait of Cardinal Richelieu by Philippe de Champaigne.

  In 1867, she arrived in Paris in time to attend the grand opening of the Exposition Universelle on 1 April. The exhibition on the Champ-de-Mars covered almost 200 acres, with 50,000 exhibitors from around the world displaying their wares. Prussia flaunted a variety of military hardware, including a 50-ton steel cannon from the Krupp ironworks capable of firing 1,000-pound shells, the largest cannon ever seen.

  During the seven months of the exhibition, Paris was filled with dignitaries from all corners of the globe, many of whom were taken aloft by the photographer Nadar in his hydrogen-filled balloon. Balls were held several nights a week and Yolande was a guest at the Tuileries when Louis-Napoleon entertained the royalty of Europe, including the Prince of Wales, Tsar Alexander II of Russia and Kaiser Wilhelm I of Prussia, accompanied by his chancellor, Otto von Bismarck.

  Processions of imperial carriages were seen almost every day on the new wide boulevards of which Louis-Napoleon was so proud. The centre of Paris had been a construction site during much of the Second Empire as Baron Hau
ssmann, the city prefect, swept away a warren of narrow streets through which the cholera epidemic had spread so rapidly in 1832 and replaced them with long, straight, tree-lined streets of impressive width.

  Five weeks before the end of the exhibition, Louis Véron died in the Rue de Rivoli. He had sold his newspaper, Le Constitutionnel, in 1862, after which, crippled with arthritis and suffering from gout, he withdrew from society and lived quietly with the housekeeper he had inherited from Fanny Elssler more than twenty years before.

  While the public profile of one of Yolande’s lovers was sinking, another was rising in prominence. A year after their renewed love affair in 1841, Félix de La Valette had married Adeline Welles, a rich American widow. The marriage was, according to her family:

  Without doubt the occasion of some surprise and much solicitude to many of her friends, but in making this choice, Mrs Welles displayed her usual discernment, for while others beheld in the Marquis only a brilliant man of fashion, she recognised in him those commanding traits which raised him to the highest posts in the land.2

  With Adeline’s help, La Valette made a name for himself as a diplomat and politician. In 1842, he acted as consul-general in Egypt. After the revolution of 1848, he became friendly with Louis-Napoleon. In May 1851, he was appointed ambassador to Constantinople. His brief was to persuade Turkey to accept France as the sovereign authority over its Christian population, a policy which was a contributing factor in the outbreak of the Crimean War.

  Back in Paris ten years later, he was appointed minister of the interior in March 1865 and minister for foreign affairs in December 1868. He and Edward Claremont often spoke together on official occasions, and Yolande would have seen him at balls and other functions. Maybe they exchanged pleasantries about the change in both their fortunes; maybe they just eyed each other across the room.