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

by Jenifer Roberts

  By the end of the decade, Louis-Napoleon was sixty-one years old. He was tired and had become reliant on his ministers, particularly La Valette and Pierre Baroche, his minister of justice. ‘The Emperor and his government are wearing out,’ Edward wrote in January 1869. ‘People say France is now ruled by a trio consisting of the Empress, Baroche and La Valette. I am not sure that this last does not come number two, so well has he played his cards with His Majesty.’3

  Despite his friendship with the emperor, La Valette was unpopular in many quarters. The heir to the throne called him a canaille – a scoundrel – and according to an anonymous reporter in 1870:

  Justice demands that one should give La Valette the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately, those who know La Valette best are not disposed to give him that benefit … There is the constant preoccupation to appear le très grand seigneur … He has only conceit, impudence and cunning … and is irritating beyond endurance.4

  Louis-Napoleon took the waters at Vichy several times during the 1860s. Members of society followed suit, including his ministers and senior diplomatic staff, as well as Edward Claremont and his family. A photograph of Yolande was taken in Vichy in the summer of 1866. She is standing under a tree in one of Worth’s elaborate dresses, her arm around one of Edward’s young daughters.

  She had been introduced to the Claremont family as a friend. A story would circulate among Edward’s descendants that they first met after she had seen his children at play in the garden of his house in the Rue Lord Byron, a garden which was visible from the windows of her apartment in the Champs-Élysées. This story was invented later as a smokescreen, for not only did Yolande not move to the Champs-Élysées until 1875, but the frontage of Edward’s house faced the street some distance from her apartment: the garden would have been out of sight.

  His wife must have had her suspicions, not least because Edward spent several weeks in Lynford Hall every winter, ostensibly for the shooting but also for the pleasures of Yolande’s company and to hang the old master paintings she bought at auction in Paris. She rarely associated with the aristocracy and gentry in Norfolk, although she and Edward sometimes attended the annual ‘grand ball’ in Thetford Town Hall. They were treated as a couple at these events, the local newspapers referring to ‘Colonel Claremont and Mrs Lyne Stephens’ – without the customary comma between their names.

  Edward’s love of shooting at Lynford soon led to feuds with neighbouring farmers who complained about their land being overrun with hares bred for sport. He was present – as ‘the manager of her estates’ – at the Mundford Petty Sessions on 2 January 1866:

  The Court House in Mundford was crowded throughout the sitting, with a more than ordinarily respectable audience, doubtless attracted by the cause célèbre arising out of the unfortunate state of things between Mrs Lyne Stephens and the Reverend Augustus Sutton, one of the magistrates who has for the last sixteen years acted on this bench … Mr Sutton owns land at West Tofts over which Mrs Lyne Stephens has the exclusive right of shooting. So destructive is the game to the cropping of his land as to render it almost worthless … He has therefore adopted ways of reducing the head of game by means of trapping, and a very unpleasant state of feeling has been engendered, not only between the Reverend Mr Sutton and Mrs Lyne Stephens, but also between their servants.5

  Edward testified on Yolande’s behalf as two of her keepers were charged with assaulting a labourer who was laying traps on Sutton’s land. One had threatened the labourer with a weapon ‘which had a large knob on it and was about a foot in length’; the other had ‘assaulted and beaten him’. The Reverend Sutton was also charged with assault, having delivered ‘a good kicking’ to one of Yolande’s keepers as he was manhandled back over the fence.

  The following winter, Edward left Paris on 15 December after writing a cryptic note to Lord Cowley: ‘I have asked for no extension of leave as I would not do so without your previous sanction, so what can I do?’6 He stayed in Lynford over Christmas and was still with Yolande during an extremely cold spell during the first week of January. As her head gardener wrote to Messrs Sanders, Frewer and Co., manufacturers of patent glasshouses:

  I have had a good trial of your Patent Houses this week … They resisted thirty-seven degrees of frost without breaking one square or losing one plant; and I like them better and better every day. I certainly thought on Wednesday morning at half-past two o’clock … that something must give way, but all went off as if nothing had been the matter. I was interrogated by Mrs Lyne Stephens and Colonel Claremont the same day as to the frost and the Houses, and they appeared very satisfied.7

  Edward’s plans to return to Paris the following week were thwarted by massive falls of snow which began on the 11th and increased in intensity for several days. According to the Norfolk News:

  The appearance of the roads in the country districts was such as has not been witnessed for many years past … The most serious consequence of the storm was the stoppage of railway traffic … The blocking up of the railways in all parts of the district is described as beyond anything which has been experienced during the past twenty years.

  With snow drifts up to 9 feet high, Edward was detained in Norfolk until the weather cleared towards the end of the month. He was back in Paris in February, attending several functions at court and making preparations to welcome the Prince of Wales to the Exposition Universelle.

  14

  A MERE POINT OF ETIQUETTE

  Colonel Claremont is doing his best to look after the interests of my fellow-countrymen. He is a man of energy and good common sense, with very little of the pipeclay about him.

  Henry Labouchere, Paris, 8 October 1870

  Every year, Louis-Napoleon conducted a grand review of his army at which Edward Claremont, ‘whose scarlet tunic always produces the most striking effect at a French review’, represented the British nation. During the Exposition Universelle in 1867, the review was held on 6 June on the racecourse at Longchamp. Louis-Napoleon watched the proceedings from horseback, accompanied by Tsar Alexander and Kaiser Wilhelm, while the massed ranks of soldiers shouted ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ as they marched and rode past, their weapons gleaming.

  The final grand review of the Second Empire took place in the Bois de Boulogne on 7 May 1869. This time, the emperor was accompanied by Archduke Franz Joseph of Austria and the Prince of Wales, who looked ‘very striking’ in his uniform as colonel-in-chief of Stephens’s old regiment, the Tenth Hussars. During the summer, Edward was awarded the Légion d’Honneur (third class), an honour bestowed personally by Louis-Napoleon. He needed royal assent before he could wear the insignia, an assent granted by Queen Victoria in November when he was making his annual visit to Yolande in Lynford Hall.

  He returned to Paris in December. Seven months later, the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War would not only change the face of Europe, it would also have far-reaching consequences for Edward and Yolande. Once again, she will be absent from most of the next two chapters as events unfold to create a major change in both their lives.

  In 1867, as part of his plan to extend German unification, Bismarck had annexed adjoining German states to form the North German Confederation. Three years later, he set out to provoke France in an attempt to draw southern German states into alliance with the northern confederation. As he explained in his memoirs:

  I was convinced that the gulf … between the north and the south of Germany could not be better overcome than by a national war against the neighbouring people … I did not doubt that it was necessary to make a French-German war before the general reorganisation of Germany could be realised.1

  Bismarck provoked Louis-Napoleon by creating a diplomatic crisis over the succession to the Spanish throne. After a meeting on 13 July 1870 between Kaiser Wilhelm and the French ambassador to Prussia, he sent a carefully edited despatch to France which made it appear that the French emperor had been insulted. There was outrage in Paris when the despatch was published in the newspapers. People marc
hed through the streets with flags and banners, singing the Marseillaise and shouting ‘Vive la guerre!’

  Louis-Napoleon took the bait. On 19 July, he declared war on Prussia. ‘The Second Empire,’ commented the Illustrated London News, ‘goes to war on a mere point of etiquette.’ People were confident of a quick victory and the public was assured that the army was ‘ready down to the last gaiter button’. Only a few voices, Edward Claremont’s among them, made the point that – despite the glittering displays at his grand reviews – Louis-Napoleon’s army was ill-equipped and badly organised.

  The emperor’s health was failing. He had chronic pain in his legs and feet. He found it difficult to ride a horse and he walked slowly, often with a cane. He suffered from urinary problems which were treated with opium. In February, Edward wrote that he looked ‘fat and heavy’. In April, an English visitor found him ‘terribly changed and very ill’. In June, he was diagnosed with gallstones. On the outbreak of war, he told one of his generals that he felt too old for a military campaign.

  Edward sent his wife and children to safety in London; as soon as they left, he moved out of the Rue Lord Byron and into the Hôtel Molé. A few days later, he persuaded Yolande to leave the city with her servants and return to England. She left him installed in a wing of the Hôtel Molé (85 bis, Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré). The French government denied his request to accompany the army into the field, so he asked the Foreign Office for permission to return to England for the duration of the war. This too was refused.

  The mobilisation of the army was chaotic, with 200,000 soldiers converging on the long German border, choking the roads and the railways, without proper orders and finding it difficult to regroup in their regiments. On 28 July, Louis-Napoleon travelled by train to the front, leaving the Empress Eugénie to act as regent in Paris. On 2 August, he accompanied his troops across the border and won a minor skirmish; unable to ride, he supported himself during the engagement by leaning against a tree.

  There was dismay in Paris when news arrived on 7 August that the French had been defeated three times in battle. The prime minister resigned and the empress took charge of the government. There was a further setback in mid-August, followed by a major defeat at Sedan, near the Belgian border, on 1 September. Some 17,000 French soldiers were killed and 21,000 taken prisoner – including their commander, Louis-Napoleon.

  The following day, an English army surgeon, Charles Gordon, arrived in Paris with instructions to serve as a medical commissioner with the French army and report to the War Office in London. ‘An impression was in the air that all was not well,’ he wrote in his memoirs, ‘but beyond rumours more or less vague, nothing seemed to indicate knowledge of actual events.’ Next morning:

  Colonel Claremont … conducted me to the several offices, from one or other of which he expected that the necessary orders would be issued to enable me to carry out the mission assigned to me. Failing to obtain those orders … he made direct application to the Minister for War, but with no other result … It was evident that something very unusual had taken place or was in progress; the demeanour of the officials … indicated the fact with sufficient clearness. Colonel Claremont was in all probability made acquainted with the nature of the events in questions, for as we separated … his parting remark was, ‘I don’t expect now that you will go much beyond Paris.’2

  Edward was a few hours ahead of the crowd. When news of the surrender at Sedan became public at midnight, ‘the rage, excitement and indignation were indescribable’. ‘All through the night,’ wrote Charles Gordon, ‘there were sounds of movement in the streets: the tread of troops on the march, the heavy roll of guns, tumbrils, and wagons.’ Shortly after midnight, the Chamber of Deputies announced that the imperial regime had fallen. In the morning:

  A dense and tumultuous crowd filled the Place de la Concorde. In the Rue Royale and Faubourg Saint-Honoré, workmen were hauling down the imperial eagles by which public buildings were distinguished … the mob cheering them as they proceeded … The gates of the Tuileries were open, the gardens of the palace filled with people. Down the Rue de Rivoli and upwards towards the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs-Élysées, streams of people were in motion.3

  The Tuileries was surrounded and Eugénie, peering out of a window, heard ‘the menacing roar of the crowds’ and shouts of ‘Vive la République!’ She slipped out of a back door wearing a long cloak and a veil, and made her way to the house of Dr Thomas Evans, an American dentist who looked after the imperial teeth. Next morning, she and Evans set out on a two-day journey to Deauville, travelling in disguise as an Englishwoman in the care of her physician. In the harbour, Dr Evans found Sir John Burgoyne, owner of the yacht Gazelle, who agreed to take Eugénie across the Channel to safety.

  Prussian troops led by Wilhelm I were marching on Paris. Versailles was taken on 18 September and became the Prussian headquarters. On the same day, the provisional government left the city to relocate in Bordeaux, leaving one of Edward’s friends, General Trochu, in charge of the defence of Paris. On the 20th, the city was surrounded and the siege began.

  Lord Lyons, who had replaced Lord Cowley as British ambassador, had left Paris on the 17th, together with most of the embassy staff. In his opinion:

  The protection of our countrymen who might still remain could not be transferred to better hands than those of Colonel Claremont who, from … his large acquaintance among French military men and well-known influence with them, would have peculiar means of befriending and assisting British subjects if actual danger from military operations should be imminent.4

  On the 23rd, he wrote a personal letter to Edward, who had again asked to be relieved from duty in Paris: ‘Whether this letter will ever get to you, and if so when, I am unable to divine … I miss your morning visits very much … and have not the satisfaction of thinking that you are in a better place and that my loss is your gain.’ He had received a letter from the Foreign Office confirming that Edward should stay in Paris. If there was a bombardment, ‘that would be precisely the time that a military man could obtain most valuable information’.

  Communication with the outside world was erratic. Letters out of the city were despatched by hot-air balloons which flew over Prussian lines into the safety of unoccupied France. Incoming letters arrived by carrier pigeon. On 5 October, fifteen days after Paris was surrounded, Edward sent a despatch to Lord Lyons by balloon post:

  The feelings of the people here are getting so excited that it is almost unsafe to walk about the streets, and certainly to go on the line of the fortifications … The Red or Republican party are almost the only advocates for a serious resistance … The government is obliged in a great measure to yield to them for fear of having either to make way for them or to have civil war raging in the streets at the same time as they have to face the enemy outside. Altogether it is a most painful and unprecedented position and I am afraid we shall have to witness dreadful scenes.

  He continued with news of the availability of supplies: ‘Provisions that will not keep, such as fresh butter, eggs, fruit and vegetables, have already disappeared from the market. Poultry is getting scarce. I am afraid that the supply of meat will not hold out very long … Prices, of course, are on the rise.’5

  Towards the end of the month, he received a letter from Lord Lyons by pigeon post, enclosing a note from his wife and further news from the Foreign Office. The letter was dated 21 October:

  You will see what the Foreign Office says about your leaving Paris. They offered me some time ago an extra-mural Military Attaché, which I accepted, having no hope of your being able to come away so soon … I have given no opinion, my only preference among military men is for you – and that is a very decided preference indeed.

  ‘Colonel Claremont is doing his best to look after the interests of my fellow-countrymen,’ wrote Henry Labouchere, an English resident, on 8 October. ‘He is a man of energy and good common sense, with very little of the pipeclay about him.’

  By the end
of the month, it was agreed that British residents who wished to leave, together with the few remaining embassy staff, would be given laissez-passer through the opposing lines. Only Edward Claremont and the naval attaché, Captain Hore, would remain at their posts. ‘The English at last are about to leave,’ wrote Labouchere on 7 November:

  They are very indignant at having been, as they say, humbugged so long, and loud in their complaints against the Embassy. I do not think, however, that the delay has been the fault … of Colonel Claremont [who] did his best, but he was unable to get the Prussian and French authorities to agree upon a day of the exodus. On the one hand, to send to Versailles to receive an answer took forty-eight hours; on the other, from the fact that Britain had not recognised the Republic, General Trochu could not be approached officially. Colonel Claremont happens to be a personal friend of his, and it is thanks to his exertions … that the matter has at length been satisfactorily arranged.6

  Edward accompanied the first contingent, ‘two or three English gentlemen’, in the early morning of 8 November. Snow had fallen overnight and their carriage travelled along roads ‘deep in slush’. After they had passed safely through the lines, Edward returned to Paris, while a further seventy-five British residents made their way to Versailles, the wealthy in carriages, the poor on foot. Perhaps surprisingly, about 4,000 chose to remain in the city.

  On 19 November, Edward sent a despatch in cypher to Lord Lyons by balloon post: ‘There must be fighting soon. I have no great confidence in the army. I think that it will bring matters to a crisis which can hardly be done now without more bloodshed. We have food for nearly two months more.’7

  His instruction from the Foreign Office, included in Lord Lyons’s letter of 21 October, was brief: ‘As regards Colonel Claremont, he should follow the course adopted by the Military Attachés of other countries who may have remained in Paris.’ On 23 November, the military attaché at the Russian embassy, Prince Wittgenstein, received orders to leave the city, so Edward decided to join him. ‘Colonel Claremont and a porter now represent the British nation,’ wrote Labouchere: