QUEEN HORTENSE.*
HORTENSE DE BEALTHARNAIS, stepdaughter and sister-in-law of the great Napoleon, was probably the most attractive among the mock Royalties with whom it pleased him to surround himself. She was less of a parvenue than many of the ladies of his Court and family. She had noble French blood in her veins. Her father, the Vicomte de Beauharnais, though, like so many of his fellow-nobles, he was ready to give up his birthright and to welcome the Revolution, was certainly more than the equal of Josephine Tascher de la Pagerie, and not only because of the doubtful connexion of her family with his own. But Josephine on her side, light and frivolous, brought up in second-rate and provincial sur- roundings, had the valuable qualities of amiability and charm. Hortense inherited these from her mother, while the kind of distinction she seems to have possessed may have filtered down from old French sources forgotten and unfashionable in her day. When Hortense de Beauharnais was young French people were doing their best to ignore their ancestors,—a necessary, if unscientific, consequence of the doctrines of Rousseau.
As we know, the foolish and unhappy Beauharnais paid for his Republicanism with his life, and upon his grave, as Miss Taylor puts it, Josephine's future fortunes were built. The storm at its darkest suddenly cleared away with the death of Robespierre. The two Beauharnais children, Eugene and Hortense, were no longer to be little citizens learning trades. Their education for society began. Hortense was sent to the "Institution Nationale de Saint-Germain," and remained there for some time under the care of that remarkably sensible woman, Madame Campan, who, with some of the qualities of the far-famed Vicar of Bray, adapted herself to a new world, and tried to teach its young barbarians something of the wisdom and the manners of the old. It was while Hortense, with the sweetness of character which gained her so many friends, was winning the hearts of teachers and schoolfellows at Saint-Germain, that her mother accepted the rising young General Napoleon Bonaparte, thus deciding not only her • Queen Hortense and her Friends : 1783-1837. By I. A. Taylor. With 24 Full-page Illustrations and 2 Photogravure Plates. 2 vols. London : Hutchinson and Co. [248. net.1 children's future fate, but the development of French history
which ended, so far as one can see, at Sedan.
In those early days both Josephine and Hortense were strongly Royalist in their sympathies. It is amusing to be reminded how the women most closely connected with Napoleon saw him, in their imagination, playing "a greater part than that of Monk." Hortense, we are told, shrank back from the prominent position of the First Consul's step- daughter, and preferred to his "novel greatnesses" what Paris could supply of Royalist society. It was mostly romantic fancy, no doubt, strengthened by certain hereditary drawings. The touch of melancholy sentiment in Hortense's character always inclined her to the losing side. Her biographer, who throughout the book touches her failings very tenderly, and dwells upon her sorrows with extreme sym- pathy, gives an attractive picture of her in these days, before Napoleon, at Josephine's instigation, forced her and his brother Louis into the loveless marriage which spoiled both their lives :— " Though possessing no positive beauty or regularity of feature, she had both attraction and grace. Her face, framed in her fair curling hair, had the freshness of a flower. Her eyes were dark blue, her complexion was pale, faintly tinted with rose-colour, her figure at once slight and rounded; she held her head erect In character she was both gentle and gay—' par- faitement bonne,' says the Duchesse d'Abrantes—with sufficient keen-wittedness to save her conversation from the charge of insipidity."
Madame de Remusat, who knew Hortense well and loved her truly, considered her
"an idealist who, with a natural bent towards goodness and purity, had created a sphere of her own, whose laws she alone recognised as of binding force. Pure, upright, and 'with an absolute ignorance of the world,' the morality built upon social usage was a dead letter so far as she was concerned. She never learnt to bring her life into conformity with those conventions which shield a woman from her enemies, and save, if not her character, at least her reputation."
It does not say much for Madame Campan's system of
education. But the truth is that the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century found all moral safeguards at their weakest. France had thrown away her traditions, religious and social, and Hortense de Beauharnais was not the only young girl launched upon life without pilot or guide. Her position exposed her to more dangers than most of her contemporaries had to face, and "Madame Louis s'est toujours trouvee sans guide." These words of Madame de Remusat's were true not only of Hortense's youth, but of her whole life. A person singularly ill-qualified to judge for herself, dreamy, generous, fanciful, it was her fate either to walk alone in foolish paths or to be driven by circumstances too often unhappy. In spite of "purity, uprightness, idealism," she ran the risk of making a worse affair of life than she really did. The more scandalous tales told of her were certainly not true.
It has always been difficult, for those who read dispassion- ately the Queen of Holland's story, not to feel the fascination which gained her so many friends in her lifetime, and which has influenced, even made a conquest of, her latest biographer. Few women, perhaps, had more bitter enemies or more affectionate friends; and when a person is either adored or hated, it is at least a witness to a strong individuality. Hortense stood quite apart from the other Bonaparte ladies. She seems to have escaped the tinge of vulgarity which they shared with the Emperor. No one ever cared less to be a Queen.
The chief events of Hortense's life are traced at length in these two volumes by a biographer almost too discreet and conscientious for a task which leads her through such worlds of gossip, of back-stair politics, of queer people and gimcrack pretenders. Hortense was married in 1802 to the respectable and disagreeable Louis Bonaparte. He was made King of Holland in 1806, by which time they had already two boys : Napoleon Charles, a charming little child, the Emperor's favourite and intended heir, whose death at four years old
brought about the divorce from Josephine and the marriage with the Archduchess ; and Napoleon Louis, who lived to grow up and marry, and died in 1830 on his campaign against the Austrians in Italy. A. record of domestic quarrels, of a
certain disregard for "conventional morality" on Hortense's part, and dislike and jealous suspicion on that of her husband,
is broken in upon by the birth of the youngest son, Louis Napoleon. There appears to be no real ground for any scandal on this point, though, reading both sides, one can hardly be surprised at its existence. As much, of course, cannot be said of the birth of the child afterwards Due de Morny, which took place after the King of Holland had abdicated, and when the husband and wife had finally separated, though they were never legally divorced.
The fall of the Empire, the Restoration, the Hundred Days, brought Hortense some curious experiences. Miss Taylor is almost more Imperialist than the Queen herself, who had made terms with restored Royalty, and had accepted, to Napoleon's indignation, letters patent securing to her the title of Duchesse de Saint-Leu, which she bore for the rest of her life. Hortense's biographer seems to catch the thrill which ran through France when Napoleon landed from Elba. That sky-rocket of enthusiasm soon fell and died, for France was tired of war and had no more use just then for conquerors. But Napoleon still has, always will have, the power to cast a spell over many minds.
The last twenty years of Queen Hortense's life were mainly spent at the home she made for herself at Areuenberg, on the Lake of Constance. Here she brought up her sons, here she returned from occasional visits to Italy—one of which, in the year of Revolution, saw the sad death of her elder son—and from a somewhat adventurous journey through France to England. The kindness of King Louis Philippe saved her from any disagreeable consequence of breaking the law which forbade any of the Bonaparte family to cross the French frontier. From Arenenberg Hortense looked on at the first attempts of her son, Louis Napoleon, to establish himself as a claimant of the throne of France. It certainly adds excite- ment and interest to the concluding chapters of Hortense's biography that they throw some new light on the early days of Napoleon III. Her affection for him was the strongest feeling of her later life. She had not much in the way of worldly success or worldly goods to leave her son; but on considering the two characters in the light of kindness and truth which Miss Taylor throws upon the woman she treats so gently, we seem to see that Louis Napoleon owed to his mother the faculty of gaining and keeping friends, the amiability which still makes people say who knew him, "L'Empereur etait bon," and which went a certain way to redeem what was in essentials a depraved character.
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