Eugenie: The Empress and her Empire

Abstract

This sympathetic and lively biography of the Empress Eugénie claims not to be a definitive study based on new source material, but a reinterpretation based in the main (though by no means exclusively) on published documents and studies. It is well informed, wide-ranging, fair in its judgments, and intensely readable. Seward conjures up an image of the Second Empire as France's version of the high Victorian age, and he shows that, in a period of huge prosperity and social progress, Eugénie wielded more power and influence than any woman in France since the sixteenth century. Despised by many as a meddler in the affairs of State, frequently belittled as ‘the Spanish woman’ or disparaged as a temperamental gold-digger who married above her station, Eugénie none the less comes across as someone who had a responsible and highly tuned interest in political policy, and who also felt a natural sympathy for the feminist cause. Understandably, Seward concentrates much of his attention on the glamorous, glitzy years of the Second Empire, but there are also excellent sections here on the days prior to Napoléon III's abdication, and in particular on the years spent in exile in England, first at Chiselhurst and then in Farnborough. As one might expect of a biography that aims for a wide readership, there is sometimes (especially in the early pages) a temptation to supply a compelling narrative where the material itself is deficient. The detailed account of the wedding of Eugénie to Louis Napoléon in January 1853, for example, says much that is unverifiable, though it certainly ‘tells a good story’. However, this small defect is also testimony to the liveliness and persuasiveness of Seward's style, and in any case, his account becomes noticeably more nuanced as he warms to his subject. His use of unpublished sources gives this biography genuine authority (for example, various correspondences held in the Archives Nationales and, for the English phase of Eugénie's life, the Royal Archives at Windsor and the Public Record Office at Kew). It is further enhanced by a number of fascinating cameo portraits. Stendhal, Mérimée, George Sand, Rosa Bonheur, Mr Worth the couturier and Dr Evans the influential dentist, all shimmer briefly yet convincingly into life here, along with many others. The excellent final pages of this study are a reminder that, for all the judgments that may have been proffered, the complex and charismatic figure of Eugénie continues to defy historians' attempts to pigeonhole her.