The Princess Mathilde
Joanna Richardson describes how the gifted cousin of the Emperor Napoleon III acted as an all-powerful intermediary between the studio and the palace.
‘I was born in exile—civically dead—at Trieste, on May 27th, 1820.’
So Princess Mathilde began her memoirs. She was the daughter of Jerome, the ex-King of Westphalia, the youngest brother of Napoleon. When Mathilde was born, the Emperor was ending his prodigious life on St. Helena, and the Bonapartes were banned from France.
Jerome was obliged to use the derisory title of Prince de Montfort; and he was living far beyond his straitened means, in the style he felt befitting for a Bonaparte and a former sovereign. His most precious asset was undoubtedly his devoted wife: Catherine, the daughter of Frederick I of Wurtemberg.
Laetitia-Mathilde-Frederique-Aloissia-Elisabeth thus inherited a double prestige. Indeed, her names proclaimed her remarkable ancestry and when Caroline Murat, the niece of Princess Mathilde, published her memoirs in 1910, she made some comments that compel attention.
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