Saturday Evening Gazette/June 7, 1856/Strolls About Town
Strolls About Town.
With the Dolce Fas.
An interesting topic, just now, being the conflicting accounts of the French Emperor’s conduct during his short visit to America, it is thought that a few additional hints may be gathered from the following narration.
In eighteen hundred and thirty-five, Geneva, in Switzerland, was the house of refuge for the politically proscribed of all colors and classes; and a concentration of remarkable talent, merit and rank was convened within the walls of that antiquated city. Amongst its varied attractions of social existence, arising from the presence of so many distinguished personages, royal and otherwise, nothing imparted more solid satisfaction and enjoyment than the visits of the fascinating Hortense Beauharnois, ex-Queen of Holland, then Dutchess of Saint Leu. Fame had widely spread the reputation of this enchanting woman and those who had fancied that the aureole of royalty might have imparted a certain seductive gilding to the good reports of her attractions, were fain to confess that such was not the case, but that Josephine’s mantle had surely fallen on her daughter.
Where first Hortense was seen,
By Leman’s waters met,
With bland and gracious mien,
Has time its signet set.
How well I call to mind
That Queen-like look and air,
And in my memory find
The brow so passing fair.
The sweetest voice and smile
Both dwell within my heart,
And beauty plays, the while,
An all absorbing part.
When down by Rousseau’s isle
She led a joyous band,
With charms, that lured the while,
Now fled to spirit land!
And through June’s roseate hours,
Its eve so soft and gray,
With glow-worms mid the flowers,
In quiet, gentle play.
And nightingales in bowers
That trolled the twilight song,
While proving music’s powers
She lingered late and long.
The birds now sing as gaily,
A sadness on my soul!
As when she wandered daily
Where bluest waters roll.
Thus earthly ties dissever
And those, who joined her train,
Believe that they shall never
Behold her like again.
The Duchess, proving quite irresistible to both men and women, was immediately surrounded by admirers of whose good faith and disinterestedness she was made fully aware by the total absence of all state and pageantry in her own domestic appointments, for nothing was ever more simple and unpretentious than her establishment. Two ladies in waiting sat with her, in the evening, in a plain and neatly furnished parlor which was reached by passing through an anteroom and dining room; the Hostess, reclining on a comfortable sofa, invited the first coming guest to be seated at her side and the rest of the company assembled, as best it could, around a table, which always stood before her, covered with books and fancy work. The society, composed of refugees, travellers, and a few Genevese, comprising some of the most notable names in Europe, conversed in the most brilliant and animated manner; the localities of the place being totally indifferent to them, the subjects were beyond description interesting, and nothing could be more entertaining and instructive that the discussions which arose, literary, political and otherwise, wherein all the graces of polished and intellectual conversation were fully displayed. The Duchess could be readily engaged, and was often, by Sismonde de Sismondi on the subject of the idol of her heart and imagination, Napoleon; and, also by the suggestions and entreaties of others, would fully descant on all the characteristics of that great man, and constantly finished by asserting again and again that he was as good as he was great, and, however many approbative adjectives she might have showered upon him, in her narrations, she ever pertinaciously declared him to be good.
Full of talent and cultivation, a delicious musician and composer, an artist, as albums teeming with admirable miniatures of her treasured friends testified, with captivating manners and a sweet musical voice in speaking, hours passed in her presence were as minutes and now that she has departed, alas! before she witnessed the wondrous rise and prosperity of her idolized son, a vision of surpassing beauty in all that remains of such a truly marvellous creature.
It was in this charmed circle that Louis Napoleon was seen to great advantage; he entered the presence of his lady mother, always attended by an Italian nobleman since deceased, and Doctor Conneau who has never left him; he approached her in the most deferential manner and after saluting her as if she were still on the throne of Holland, he stationed himself behind her and, with one hand on the sofa, joined in the general conversation quietly and composedly.
He was not eloquent; like that mother, he carried no one captive away with gift of tongue, but calm, dignified and profound, he acted well his part in a circle which required a man’s best means of fence in conversation to be developed and sustained.
To say that the Prince was exactly attractive would be imparting an unfair impression, but that he commanded a certain degree of respect, unusual in one of his age, is equally true. A hard student, his time was occupied with his books and he always appeared to have just emerged from long and protracted vigils. He led a very retired life, and Sismonde de Sismondi, on one of those delightful reunions, remarked to the writer of this article, “The Prince is dreaming of a crown and preparing himself for it.” But far, very far, indeed, was the admirable and excellent historian from believing that such an event would ever occur, or that the world would behold the marvellous exaltation which is truly more like the dream he then playfully attributed to Louis Napoleon than a positive reality, for he believed that to be a dream
“Begot of nothing but vain fantasy;
Which is as thin of substance as the air;
And more unconstant than the wind, which woos
Even in the frozen bosom of the north,
And, being angered, puffs away from thence,
Turning his face to the dew-dropping south.”
With his days devoted to a preparation for the throne of France, with rather defiant and unapproachable manners, with the fixed idea of a crown which he ever saw before him and always well supplied with money, (an important consideration, under the circumstances), it seems quite monstrous that the present French Emperor should have become so transformed by a few weeks’ residence in New York as to entirely falsify all his antecedents, all previous conceptions of his character, so well known by persons who were constantly with his mother, and who heard from her own lips what his views and pursuits were! That the slightly regal air, which had become with him a second nature, should have been laid aside on touching our Republican soil is truly extraordinary, and that his dominant and all absorbing love for his native land should have been abandoned to the degree that he should have forgotten that he was Napoleon’s nephew, for while he remembered him it is certain he could never have demeaned or degraded himself,—all these conflicting views pass human belief. The Rev. Mr. Stewart, a gentleman of the highest respectability, has nobly come to the rescue of the Prince’s reputation during his sojourn in America, as well as M. Finelli, another defender. And if any reasoning from analogy is necessary to a knowledge of his character, acquired by relations of a most engaging and endearing nature with a mother whose memory is embalmed in the hearts of all who ever enjoyed the happiness of an intercourse with her, there is in this unpretending article some slight colloteral evidence proffered, in contradistinction to the statements which have elsewhere appeared derogatory to the honor and dignity of the French Emperor, by