Eugénie
The courtiers at the Tuileries used to say that no other woman who then sat on a throne could display so small a foot or so dainty a hand as Empress Eugénie. Her stature was less than middle height, or about the same as the Emperor’s; her figure was lithe and supple, and her arms, shoulders and bust, while ample, were delicately moulded. Her long neck, with its gentle curves, was pronounced by not a few painters to be a model which the old Greeks might have envied in their conceptions of female grace. Her carriage in its lightness and quickness betokened a compact, muscular strength, and there were few women of her court who surpassed her in physical endurance.
Despite the general smallness of her head it was more than usually high and broad above the eyes, and this served to impart to her oval face an expression of mental power. The eyes were variously described by writers of the time as blue, as dark blue, as grayish-blue and as dark gray. But all agreed in ascribing to them a remarkable crystal-like lustre under the shade of sweeping lashes. In truth, their color appears to have taken on different hues at different times, and the peculiarly fine arching of the brows framed them with something like a piquant outline. The nose, slightly inclined to be aquiline, and the small mouth and chin were perhaps the least striking of the features. But the teeth when she smiled shone with a sort of dazzling whiteness, and, indeed, gave rise to a fashion of wearing false ones like them. Her skin, which was of a slightly olive tinge, was so smooth and velvety that the most envious women who surrounded her thought that in neither gaslight nor sunlight was it less clear and pure, and that no art could bring it nearer perfection. Her profusion of light brown hair, which was often described as golden, and which it was thought she artificially colored, was looked upon by many as her chief charm. It was her custom to wear violets in it; in her childhood a fortune-teller had told her that the violet was the flower of the Bonapartes and that time would make it hers, too; and so it was that it long became the favorite of every beauty in the civilized world who thought that she looked like Eugénie, or who made Eugénie her standard of fashion.
The Countess Montijo before her marriage to Napoleon III. was a picturesque figure. She frequented the bull fights at Madrid in odd fancy costumes, she galloped through the streets of the city of an afternoon on a horse without a saddle, and smoking a cigar or cigarette, and she often appeared in man’s attire. The gilded youths of Madrid raved about her, fluttered round her—but not one of them wanted to marry her. Here is a picture set forth by one who saw her at one of her favorite bull fights:
Her slender figure is well defined by a costly bodice which enhances her beauty and elegance. Her dainty hand is armed with a riding whip, instead of a fan, for she generally arrives at the circus on a wild Andalusian horse, and in her belt she carries a sharp-pointed dagger. Her little feet are incased in red satin boots. Her head is crowned with her broad, golden plaits, interwoven with pearls and real flowers; her clear brow shines with youth and beauty and her gentle blue eyes sparkle from beneath the long lashes which almost conceal them. Her exquisitely formed nose, her mouth, fresher than a rosebud; the perfect oval of her face, the loveliness of which is only equalled by her graceful bearing, arouses the admiration of all. She is the recognized queen of beauty. It is she who crowns the victorious toreador, and her white hands present him with the prize due to his courage or agility, while she accompanies the gift with her most captivating smile.
In the early years of her married life the Empress was heartily admired by the French people. She was certainly beautiful, and she filled her position with unexpected dignity and grace. Her kindness of heart was great and unaffected, and she inaugurated notable charitable enterprises with a judgment remarkably good. In most directions she was a better wife than Napoleon III. deserved, and she was an excellent mother. If the Court over which she presided was a frivolous, corrupt, and vulgar one, it was perhaps not altogether her fault. The Paris tradesmen assuredly had no reason to turn against her, for her craze for dress and show kept a stream of gold running through their shops, and there was always something on the carpet with which to amuse the crowd. The Church, too, had reason to think well of her, for she was ever its devout, not to say bigoted, adherent. Whenever she meddled with politics she was mischievous, even absurd. She was bitter in her hatreds, and foolish in many of her friendships. It is to her credit that she always showed great respect for brains, and admired even those who attacked her in print if they did it cleverly. Her literary tastes were not profound nor otherwise unusual, but they were far from contemptible. She had some taste in art—but not enough, be it remembered, to prevent her from introducing the most hideous abomination of modern times, the enormous crinoline. She set the pace in fashion towards the novel rather than the beautiful, and the feminine world has not yet, in truth, fallen out of step. She was never a thoroughly happy woman, even when the world seemed to offer her most. The sharpest thorn in her lot was her consciousness that she was not born in the purple, and she felt to the depths of her being the slights she received from those more fortunately placed. Her grandfather, Kirkpatrick, who hailed from the north of Ireland, settled in Malaga, and engaged in a large grocery trade. Eventually he married Mlle. Grevigny, the daughter of a wealthy grocer of Bruges, Belgium. They had two remarkably handsome daughters, one of whom married Count de Teba, afterward Count Montijo. The Montijos are a very ancient Spanish house. The origin of the family goes back farther than the institution of nobility in Spain, and among its ancestors are Alfonso Perez de Guzman, that hero of the thirteenth century whose exploits are still recounted by Spanish peasants, as well as Gonsalvo de Cordova, the great general and friend of Columbus.