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Empress Eugenie: Her Secret Revealed

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The author, Joyce Cartlidge,has produced a most fascinating book, which can only have been achieved by painstaking research over a long period of time. The clever linking together of the extensive detail achieved as a result of that research is most evident the more the reader gets into the book. The linking of Empress Eugenie to Queen Victoria and to her own husband's family is expertly done. Not only is that "linking" of great interest to readers, but the book also enlightened me very much about Napoloeon III. I should imagine that most people know of the first Emperor Napoleon, and his adversary the Duke of Wellington, but like me not many would perhaps know of the third Emperor Napoleon. The book achieves what the author intended, and in a most admirable way, being the revealing of the secret referred to in its ttle, but at the same it wetted my appetite for knowing more of Napoleon III.

Empress Eugenie: Her Secret Revealed

The title is the best part of the entire book that at best is tedious to read, in particular the endless chapters about the author's relatives. Empress Eugenie was an amazing woman of great intelligence. Queen Victoria was her intimate friend and this alone speaks volumes about her. Mrs. Cartlidge chooses to weave a story around missing correspondence but in my opinion fails to prove her theory. The author ignores many very telling signs from early on in the book. Eugenie was the spitting image of her Father who died in 1839, the year before her alleged pregnancy. The existing correspondence of her Mother's with Prosper Merimee, a notorious womanizer who had dalliances with Victor Hugo's wife and fathered one of her younger daughters, if anything points to an "amitie amoureuse" between them. Her Mother never denied her affair with the Earl of Clarendon who some thought to be Eugenie's father. If Maria, Condesa de Montijo, who was quite charming and obviously made friends easily with men, became pregnant after her husband's recent death it could have damaged both her grown daughters' marriage prospects. Could this illegitimate child have been Eugenie's sister rather than her daughter? If the photographs reproduced in the book are anything to go by, Margaret's features certainly resemble Merimee's, not Eugenie nor Pepe Alcanices, Duque de Sexto, both of who had downturned eyes. Eugenie went on a trip to England immediately following her sister Paca's death. Could Eugenie, saddened by Paca's death, have wanted to know the fate of her younger half sister, Margaret? Yes, Eugenie did have a secret but it is very doubtful from the "proof" presented by Mrs. Cartlidge that it was an illegitimate daughter.

Joyce Cartlidge's revelations about the Duke of Sesto were among those that inspired my book, Imperial Wedding of Old Paris. Eugenie's mysterious trip to Scotland and England is dealt with in Ms. Cartlidge's book; but at least one letter that Eugenie exchanged with the Duke of Sesto, whose text is in my next book Imperial Triangle, shows the reason for the trip, and that was for her to hint that they should meet up in London. She wanted to be beyond the Imperial censors and correspond directly with Sesto after her sister Paca died. She hoped to win his affection. She also wanted to tell him that her sister Paca had given her Sesto's photograph which inspired her to redouble her affection for Sesto. The photograph was found in the Tuileries after she left the palace. Does anyone know where this photograph is? On the back are the words "Hay que amar en secreto." I doubt that Eugenie had an illegitimate child because of all the kidney trouble she had after she actually had a child, the Imperial Prince. If she'd already had one before, I don't think she would have had so many medical problems after the Prince Imperial was born. She almost died. Nancy Becker.Napoleon III, Empress Eugenie and Her Secret Duke of Sesto: Imperial Wedding of Old Paris- Personal History of Second Empire France Entwined with ... Compiegne, Fontainebleau and Versailles