Thornton Butterworth first edition - 1928
I first read the name Maurice Paléologue towards the end of Hester Chapman's novel [see my 13th May Blog] on the Empress Eugénie. I looked him up on the Internet and, inevitably, bought this book which detailed the account of his conversations with the Empress between 8th June 1901 and 8th December 1919. In other words, he knew her from her mid seventies until just before her death aged 95 on Sunday, 11th July 1920 - possibly the term 'faded glory' could be applied to this image of her.
Maurice Paléologue
As is often the case, the author can be nearly as interesting as the subject. Paléologue was a French diplomat, essayist and historian. He was born in Paris in 1859, the son of Alexandru Paleologu, a Wallachian Romanian revolutionary who had escaped to France after attempting to assassinate Prince Bibescu during the 1848 Wallachian revolution. The name became Paléologue in French language spellings. Graduating in law, Maurice joined the French Foreign Ministry in 1880, becoming Embassy Secretary at Tangiers, then in Beijing and later in Italy. A Minister Plenipotentiary in 1901, he represented France in Bulgaria (1907-1912) and the Tsar's Russia (1914-1917). He became General Secretary of the Foreign Ministry in the Millerand cabinet. His most important role came when he was the French ambassador to Russia in July 1914. He hated the Kaiser's Germany and was sure that Russia and France had to be close allies against the former. He promised France's unconditional support to Russia - did he exceed his instructions? He also warned the Tsar that reforms were necessary to pre-empt a revolution. Ignored, he witnessed the February Revolution of 1917, before returning to France. He later wrote several works on Russia, including an intimate portrait of the last tsaritsa, Alexandra. He was called on to give his testimony during the Dreyfus affair and left important notes on the topic.
In the Preliminary chapter on The Tragic Empress Eugénie, he wrote: The notes which follow were set down whilst I was under the immediate impression left by the conversations which they reproduce. My own recollections will thus be found in their first form and their original animation; and for their exactness this is the best warranty. Maurice was seemingly possessed with a remarkable memory and ear for dialogue. Before accepting everything he wrote at face value, it is worth repeating what two contemporaries recalled about his personality.
An Austrian diplomat in 1911: ...about 50 years old, unmarried, [he is] prominent, vivacious, well educated, but displays a fantastic imagination and is an author of novels. [He] permits his novelist's imagination to run away with him when he interprets insignificant military or political events, and, for those who do not know him well, he is therefore dangerous as a source of information...
The British ambassador to Moscow in 1914: He is a very cultivated man, a writer of light romances, as well as books of a more serious vein; but...his vivid imagination is apt to run away with him and disposes him to take a fanciful and exaggerated view of the political questions with which he has to deal.
So, a pinch of salt might be needed when reading the exactness of his conversations with the Empress. Certainly, Hester Chapman used a fair amount of his account to give substance to her portrait.
There is more than a touch of the novelist in his descriptions of the Empress over the eighteen years he met up with her. In 1901, [she] still retains the traces of her former beauty. The face has kept its fineness, with the modelling of the features clean-cut as on a medal...the lively, close-set eyes shine with a hard, sombre gleam, where one detects the artifice of the black pencilling that underlines the rim of the faded eyelashes. Her rigid and erectly-held shoulders, do not so much touch the back of the arm-chair...from her whole person, in fact, there springs a curious impression of majesty, of something hieratic, and of ruin. In 1919, I was struck by her shattered physique. She is now ninety-three and a half, and so is entering on the last lap of the earthly cycle. Under the crown of snow-white hair, the colour of her face is livid, the skin wrinkled and deeply furrowed, and the cheeks hang loose; the lips are colourless, the nostrils pinched, the eyes deep-sunk in their sockets, and the eyeballs glassy and fixed; her neck is fleshless, her hands are the hands of a skeleton. But I could see at once that this pitiful frame was still dominated by a spirit at once energetic, tenacious and proud.
Empress Eugénie in 1920
The conversations ranged over the events of the last eighty years as, increasingly, the Empress sought to explain Napoleon III's and her decisions on the great debated topics of the original coup d'état and the subsequent Second Empire. If Maurice did not embellish or add, then her memory was superb and her knowledge of contemporary politics and leading figures exemplary. Of course, she tried to justify her husband's and her actions, but often admitted their mistakes - particularly hers. Always at the forefront was her dedication, not just to the Emperor, but to the honour of France. That is what made the events of 1870 so tragic in her eyes and why she hailed the defeat of the Kaiser. She could say I must do the Republic this justice: it was better prepared for the events of 1914 that we were for those of 1870... She clearly adored her son, the Prince Imperial, and was shattered by his death in South Africa. Equally clearly, she hated Prince Napoleon (Plon Plon) and despised the Kaiser William II - he is incorrigible. He listens to nobody; he only listens to himself; he intoxicates himself with his own words...Oh, how he hates England! On the other hand, she revered Queen Victoria and Delcassé.
After reading Paléologue's book, I felt I 'knew' the Empress much better, but I recalled the comments about the author's imagination running away with him and the fact that the Empress had been dead over half a decade, so could not proof read it!
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