Throughout changes in her life that inevitably resulted from marrying a ruling sovereign, Eugénie remained devoted to her mother and sister. Nobody could ever take their place as the confidantes of this deeply reserved woman. If for obvious reasons it was quite unthinkable that Doña Maria Manuela should stay in Paris, Paca was another matter, although there was plenty to keep her in Spain. Since she could not see them, Eugénie wrote often, long and revealing letters still preserved in the Alba family archives.
Her mother had had to leave Paris six weeks after Eugénie’s wedding, with the utmost reluctance. ‘I have two incurable faults, which will soon be found out,’ she had admitted before the marriage, ‘I am a foreigner and I am a mother-in-law.’ She might have added a third, that she was known all over Europe as a compulsive intriguer – her old friend Lord Clarendon warned her bluntly that she would find it difficult to stay in her son-in-law’s capital. Even so, she obviously hoped to remain at her daughter’s side. However, the emperor soon insisted that she must leave. He paid her off handsomely (if so indelicate an expression may be used) through three secret bank accounts, so that she went back to Spain even richer than before. Despite joking bravely about her enforced departure, she was resentful and once or twice in her letters to Mérimée refers slightingly to Napoleon as ‘Don Louis’ or ‘Don Isidore’.
Maria Manuela found an impeccable excuse for returning to France with Paca in the late autumn of 1855, however, which was to be present at her grandchild’s birth. She stayed in the Albas’ great house in Paris (long since demolished), just off the Champs Elysée and near today’s rue Lincoln. This was the former Hotel de Lauriston, which Eugénie had purchased for them from the Lauriston family and then refurbished luxuriously at her own expense. Republicans grumbled sourly that the empress was plundering the nation’s coffers for the sake of her relations.
After this Maria Manuela came back fairly regularly, although only for comparatively short visits. Brief as they were, she was seen as something of a joke by the Parisians, on account of her rather too splendid carriages, her stately, self-conscious promenades down the Champs Elysées accompanied by her maid and footman, and her excessively lavish parties in the ‘Hôtel Alba’ – which were invariably full of handsome male guests, even if they always included the indispensable Prosper Mérimée.
All the same, Maria Manuela was sufficiently nervous of her son-in-law to ration her visits to the Tuileries. Taking her cue from the Albas, she declined any special treatment, refusing to sit on red velvet chairs near the imperial couple, unlike Plon-Plon and Mathilde. Occasionally she was invited to stay at Biarritz, and sometimes Fontainebleau or – more rarely – to the séries at Compiègne.
However, Doña Maria Manuela found life at home in Spain far from disagreeable. Her position as mother of both the empress of the French and the Duchess of Alba made her one of the indisputable leaders of Madrid society, and her receptions at Casa Ariza and Carabanchel were attended with more enthusiasm than ever. Queen Isabella appointed her honorary Camera Mayor, which gave her considerable influence at court without any of the irksome duties of a mistress of the robes. Hers had been the sort of beauty that lasts, so that well into her seventies, tall, dignified and exquisitely dressed, she remained a splendid-looking woman.
Eventually, however, she lost the sight of her flashing dark eyes. ‘When my mother realised she was going blind, she made almost unbelievable efforts to conceal it, not just from strangers but even from herself’, Eugénie told Filon. ‘She would insist on finding her own way, besides telling others where they should go, so that she was always knocking over furniture, hurting herself against the walls she could not see and trying to walk through closed doors. It was simply impossible for her to acknowledge that she was beaten by a physical weakness.’
In many ways Paca had been altogether different from her mother and sister, in both looks and temperament, although despite harsher features she possessed a certain family resemblance to Eugénie. A thin brunette, she had always seemed frail and did not share their iron health. Everybody had liked her for her friendliness and sense of humour. Her son Jacobo – ‘James’ – and her daughters Maria and Louise (the future duchesses of Tamames and Medinacoeli) spent a good deal of time in Paris, where they were constantly at the Tuileries with their aunt.
Mme Carette had never seen Paca, who died before her appointment as a lady-in-waiting, but she had met many people who knew her. She describes her as ‘an adorable woman … for the empress such a sister really was the unfailingly affectionate comrade, the ultimate confidante and faithful heart which every human being needs during the trials of life.’ Gushingly expressed as this may be, it appears to have been the truth.
Paca had been unable to come to Paris as often as she would have liked because of her husband Jacobo’s demanding position in Spain and his enormous estates, in whose management he took a very serious interest. Although he had once broken her heart, by now Jacobo was Eugénie’s trusted friend, and he remained one as a widower. At her request, he lent her the letters between his ancestor, the great third Duke of Alba, and King Philip II – until her death she continued to be fascinated by Spanish history.
Despite everything that had happened, the bond between mother and daughter stayed as strong as ever, particularly after the loss of Paca – even if sometimes Eugénie still laughed at Doña Maria Manuela. Although she would never admit it, what made the bond so strong was that, as empress, she never really felt at ease with more than one or two Frenchwomen, however fond she may have been of her ladies.
A good deal of her remained Spanish, however much she tried to hide it. In April 1860 Cowley wrote to Lord John Russell that Eugénie had asked him if the British ambassador at Madrid could help ‘friends and relations’ who were in trouble after a Carlist plot. She would not do so herself, clearly anxious not to remind her French subjects of these friends and relations in Spain.