The imperial couple spent half the year away from Paris. After becoming empress, Eugénie never felt entirely at ease in the capital, while in any case the Tuileries was too hot and uncomfortable during the summer months. Even in winter they stayed at the château de Saint-Cloud, only forty minutes’ drive away but in open country. Elegantly rebuilt by Louis XIV, who gave it superb gardens, with lakes and avenues, the palace had been a favourite residence of both Marie-Antoinette and Napoleon I. The imperial couple played at country life here, receiving as few visitors as possible, strolling in the park or through the fields. The emperor stocked the park with fallow deer imported from England. ‘In the mornings. I often saw the empress driving in a pretty little dog-cart, after being installed in it by Gamble, the English groom who ran the stables’, Filon, who became the Prince Imperial’s tutor during the late sixties, recalls in his memoirs. In the afternoon she and her court would go for a drive in chars-à-bancs through the woods, to the model farm or to Malmaison. ‘Gentle, peaceful days alternated with the pomp of levees and receptions, but Saint-Cloud was not far enough away from Paris to stop politics intruding into the sovereigns’ lives’, Filon remembers:
Paris was always present in our eyes and minds and the great, frowning capital seemed like a silent enemy. Twice a week we saw a long procession of ministerial carriages drive slowly up the avenue and we knew as if by instinct that every carriage was bringing fresh problems …. in consequence, the empress’s life at Saint-Cloud was two entirely different worlds. She shared the simple pleasures with those around her – her very real worries could only be guessed from the odd word that she let slip from time to time.
Early in May, earlier if possible although it was a difficult place to heat, they went to Fontainebleau, loveliest and most romantic of all the French palaces. Despite the tragic memories that it evoked – Napoleon I had abdicated here in 1814 – Napoleon and Eugénie enjoyed the hilly, wooded country and, above all, the stag hunting. The imperial staghounds were kennelled at Fontainebleau, except in the autumn. ‘Traditional French hunting is unique, quite different from English hunting’, explains Princesse Metternich. ‘Everything is conducted according to ancient custom and you need to see harbourers using their lime-hounds to find a stag and watch those wonderful whips blowing their horns at full gallop to appreciate its skill and grace.’ Even the ungainly Achille Fould, ignoring a good deal of laughter, climbed onto a horse – nearly losing his life when an infuriated stag charged him.
Under the nominal direction of General Fleury as Master of the Horse, Eugénie’s stable usually contained about twenty animals, mainly English thoroughbreds bought for her by Baron de Pierres. Thanks to her Spanish upbringing, she had no difficulty in riding the most temperamental and hard-mouthed horse.
On hunting mornings, the empress put on a green riding habit with crimson facings and a gold-laced, three-cornered green hat. Gentlemen wore crimson-faced green coats, buckskin breeches, jackboots and tricornes, and carried swords. After a late breakfast she drove with her guests to a meet in the forest at noon, where horses were waiting, fast carriages being provided for those who did not ride. The pack moved off with feudal pomp through rows of liveried footmen, hunt servants blowing fanfares. Early in the morning alimier (harbourer) would find a runnable stag so that hunting began without delay, the field guided by signals from the great brass horns telling them along which woodland ride to gallop. For the rest of her life Eugénie wistfully recalled the horn music ringing through the forest:
‘J’aime le son du Cor, le soir, au fond des bois.’
She liked to see the stag at bay, fighting the hounds, even if normally she was kind to animals. The emperor killed it personally, dismounting and using a gun instead of a sword amid the whoops of the hallali. Often he got too close and once he nearly lost his life when the enraged stag charged him; he escaped by throwing himself flat on the ground. Watching, Eugénie was almost as shaken, but it did not stop them hunting.
The empress returned to an English tea with the guests, followed by a hip-bath – her dressing-room floor covered in hot towels, maids bringing huge jugs of hot water – before presiding over a hunter’s dinner. Afterwards, everyone went to the windows overlooking the Oval Courtyard to watch the courée, a re-enactment of the hunt. As flaming torches of tarred wood lit the courtyard below, the horns sounded and hounds rushed into the circle. Standing over the skin which held the entrails, the huntsman waved its antlered head at them, the snarling pack being beaten back twice until allowed to fight for its reward to the music of horns.
A sleepy little town, Fontainebleau welcomed the court’s visits. Since their visits were fairly brief, invitations to the palace were comparatively few and largely restricted to their inner circle.
Napoleon reviewed the garrison and decorated the officers while Eugénie inspected the local orphanage, attending its sports day and handing out sweets. On one occasion local workmen sang a chorus in the Jardin Anglais, ‘The Imperial Hunt’, and were given champagne by the emperor, who drank their health. Young people would dance country dances in a forest glade to entertain the empress.
The hounds met only twice a week so there were other amusements. These included sailing on the lake in front of the palace, in boats like tiny gondolas with sails, that were always capsizing – Eugénie was particularly proud of a real gondola rowed by a genuine Venetian gondolier. Roller-skating took place indoors, with footmen strategically positioned to stop crinolined ladies from crashing into the walls. There were plays in the minute theatre and surprise visits to the colony of painters who lived in the forest.
Octave Feuillet, the novelist and playwright who was the imperial librarian, describes a firework display organised by Eugénie:
All the town had been invited while people came from Paris. The courtyards, flowerbeds, terraces and paths round the lake were invaded by a huge crowd as soon as their majesties and their guests had crossed the Fountain court to stand in the English garden. Leaning over the fence between the garden and the courtyard, the empress chatted gaily with the delighted spectators, singling out a poor, ragged little urchin who was quite overwhelmed …
Suddenly the sky was lit by red, blue and silver light, by showers of gold, and (in Eugénie’s words) the château looked ‘like a picture by Gustave Doré’. The evening ended when
a legion of ghosts on horseback carrying torches came trotting down the avenue de Maintenon into the palace. It was the empress’s Régiment of Dragoons beating the retreat with flambeaux … they rode in a circle, hunting horns and cavalry bugles sounding alternately. It was strange, superb. In the setting of the old Palace, the horses, torches and helmets mingled as if in a tournament, seemed like some magnificent fête from Valois times.
More than once, Eugénie took her guests to see the animal painter Rosa Bonheur, a flamboyant lesbian. The court always dined in the great Galerie François I and when about to enter the room one evening, the empress and Napoleon heard shouting outside the palace. What seemed to be a fat man in a velvet suit was waving an invitation and demanding to be let in. When it turned out to be Rosa, both burst into uncontrollable laughter. Nevertheless, as will be seen, Eugénie had genuine admiration for her.
The empress descended without warning on another fine artist in the vicinity who painted animals, Gabriel Descamps. A third local artist taken up by the court was a M. Jadin, who was invited to hunt regularly. Inspired by Oudry’s tapestries, The Royal Hunts of Louis XV, Jadin produced a series of paintings of the imperial hounds which were tactfully applauded until the end of the Second Empire.
Among foreign royalties who came to stay at Fontainebleau was Maximilian II of Bavaria (father of mad King Ludwig) in 1857, the emperor driving him through the forest in a dog-cart to a picnic in the wild gorge at Apremont. The year after, the town cheered Queen Sofia of Holland, the Crown Prince of Württemberg and the Duke of Nassau’s brother – all of them close friends of the imperial family. In May 1861 Napoleon received an embassy from the Shah at Fontainebleau. For the first time Eugénie was present at a reception of envoys, she and her ladies appearing in their richest clothes and jewels. The Persians were so impressed that the emperor asked her to sit next to him when receiving an embassy here from the king of Siam in June the same year. The scene was immortalised in a vast canvas by Jean-Léon Gérôme, who shows the silken-robed Siamese crawling on their hands and knees along a red carpet towards Napoleon and Eugénie. The court had been warned not to laugh. Far from laughing, it was horrified at seeing human beings grovel like animals. Balancing a huge gold cup filled with gifts on his head, the leader crawled with such obvious pain that, rising from his throne, the emperor walked down to the man and gently raised him to his feet. ‘We might have fewer courtiers in France if they had to do that sort of thing’, he joked afterwards. ‘Perhaps that’s why the King of Siam likes it.’
Despite its beauty, Octave Feuillet had reservations about Fontainebleau. It was, he felt, a little too haunted, ‘a bit too sad and solemn’. (Nor, as a hypochondriac, did he care for being dragged by the empress through the mud on long, cross-country walks with the rest of the court, generally in the pouring rain, to see the picturesque ‘rocks’.) Yet Napoleon and Eugénie liked it the best of all their homes and during the later 1860s, when their régime was becoming unpopular, they planned to spend more time here than at Saint-Cloud – from whose terraces they could see an increasingly hostile Paris. New heating was installed, while the empress designed a new study for herself. However, they were overtaken by events.