Two Bonaparte Princes and the Actress: Whatever Happened on the Train to Manchester?

It is August 1847.

The celebrated French tragédienne Rachel ( Elisabeth Rachel Félix,1821-1858) has just finished four highly acclaimed performances at the St. James Theatre in London.

Everybody who is anybody has seen her - including Queen Victoria, the Duke of Wellington, and Prince Louis Napoleon. The latter, one of her numerous lovers, is soon to return to France and assume the title of Napoleon III.

So, after her London success, Rachel is now headed on the train to Manchester to make her debut in the English provinces.

Accompanying her are Louis Napoleon and his cousin Prince Napoléon.

Napoléon Joseph Charles Paul Bonaparte, 1822-1891

- who according to some bears a physical resemblance to his more famous uncle

- but is to acquire during the Crimean War the rather unflattering nickname for a Bonaparte of "Plon Plon" (derived from Craint-plon - fear of bullets).

Picture the scene in the carriage.

Rachel and Louis Napoleon begin the journey sitting together. Prince Napoléon sits opposite. The three have the carriage to themselves.

Louis Napoleon apparently falls asleep, so what else is Rachel to do but go and sit beside his cousin?

Unfortunately Louis Napoleon is not asleep.

For some time, through half shut eyes, he watches Rachel and his cousin kiss and cuddle.

He then begins to simulate the process of awakening.

By the time he is fully "awake" Rachel is back sitting beside him, and Prince Napoléon is examining the English countryside through the carriage window as avidly as if he has never seen trees before.

Louis Napoleon says nothing, but he is irritated by the duplicity. He stays in Manchester one night only, and returns to London the following day. That appears to have been the end of that particular affair (1)

Rachel at the Theatre Royal

Rachel's destination was Manchester's new Theatre Royal, with its white marble sculpture of Shakespeare on the facade. (2)

The theatre still stands, although it has lost its former glory.

In recent decades it has been variously cinema, bingo hall and night club.

Hopefully better times await it again.

A refurbishment costing £150 million has been announced, and when completed it will be the new home of the Manchester Library Theatre Company.

Presumably 160 years of grime will be removed from the Shakespeare sculpture and the marble will be revealed again.

Back to August 1847.

Rachel appeared on four nights in four different plays: Les Horaces, Phèdre,Virginie and Jeanne d'Arc .

In those days two or even three plays were performed on the same night, and on occasion Rachel would be taking her final curtain call not much before midnight.

On her final benefit night her sister, Mademoiselle Dinah Felix, made an appearance, reciting "Le Chene et le Roseau" and "La Belete". One wonders what the good merchants of Manchester made of that.

Rachel's performances were a resounding artistic success.

The Observer said there was no mistaking here the presence of the highest histrionic genius.

The Examiner noted the

enthusiasm of the audience, both during the course and at the close of the performance, when Rachel was called for and received with showers of bouquets.

The Manchester Guardian contrasted French actors favourably with English actors:

English actors think it sufficient to know what to say on the stage, French actors learn what to say and what to do.

Those attending were apparently able to buy scripts of the plays being performed with French and English in parallel lines, but despite this the size of the audiences was a disappointment. The Courier noted that for one performance the dress circle (10/6) the pit stalls (5/-) and the pit (3/-) were full, but the upper circle (5/-) gallery (2/-) and upper gallery (1/-) contained no more than 50 people.

The Manchester Times , with characteristic Victorian optimism, had expected that

our Athenæum, our Mechanics' Institute, and other educational institutions, would have been preparing, through their language classes, large numbers who could have understood and enjoyed a performance of this nature.

One wonders how many today would turn out to watch a play performed in French. I don't think it would need a very large theatre!

Rachel was followed by Jenny Lind, the "Swedish Nightingale". Miss Lind commanded an enormous fee for her appearances at the Theatre Royal, and had no trouble filling it. For her the best seats were priced at £1-11s-6d - three times the cost of seats for the French plays. (3)

On one night she was indisposed and the performance was postponed twenty four hours. The news was communicated to various stations on the line of railway by means of the electric telegraph. (4)

As always Manchester was at the cutting edge of technology.

Update 25/11/2010

I understand that plans to house the Library Theatre in the old Theatre Royal building have had to be shelved because of the high cost of renovation. A pity, but I can't say that I am surprised. I wonder what will happen to the building now.
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1. Roman Golicz The English Life of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte: The Life of Napoleon III in the context of Anglo-French Relations - available online.

2. This was the third Theatre Royal - the previous two were burnt down - a common occurrence given the dependence on candle light. The insurers insisted that the new Theatre Royal had a huge tank containing thousands of gallons of water installed over the stage. My thanks to Roy Rogers for this and other insights into the surprising history of Manchester Theatre

3. Rachel should have learned lessons from her and Jenny Lind's differing receptions in Manchester. Hearing that Jenny Lind had made 2 million francs on an American visit, Rachel followed her there, with predictably poor results. "Music is enjoyed by human beings everywhere, while French classical plays, even though acted by a genius like Rachel, could be rightly understood only by a French- speaking people." Famous Affinities of History by Lyndon Orr, The Story of Rachel

4. Manchester Theatre Royal Playbills, May-Sept 1847. Arts Library, Manchester Central Library. Unfortunately this excellent collection, which contains press cuttings as well as playbills, will soon be unavailable to researchers for three or four years while the library is being renovated.

Rachel: "I prefer renters to owners"

Elisabeth Rachel Félix, French tragédienne, 1821-1858

- first a great Jewess, second a great actress, and third a great lover (1)


- two sons and no husband, innumerable lovers, a million and a quarter francs, and a reputation as a tragic actress which has never been overshadowed (2)

She was born in Switzerland to travelling pedlars.

A slight Piaf like figure, she was spotted with her sister when they were sent to sing and recite in Paris cafes.

She appeared at the Théâtre-Français at the age of 17, and soon reached the top of her profession.

She performed in London and was received by Queen Victoria; she also toured Belgium, Holland, Prussia, Russia and latterly the United States.

But for my research on the Bertrand family I probably would never have come across Rachel, nor James Agate who, in a characteristic turn of phrase, remarks that ambition sent her rummaging among imperial debris. (3)

Indeed, among her many lovers were Napoleon III, Napoleon's natural son, the then widowed Count Walewski (with whom she had a son, Alexandre Antoine Colonne Walewski 1844-1898) and Prince Napoleon (Napoléon Joseph Charles Paul Bonaparte). But that was not all.

Rachel and the Belle Poule

She also had relationships with two members of the Belle Poule expedition that brought Napoleon's body back to France in 1840. First was the leader of the expedition, the Prince of Joinville (1818-1900), son of Louis Philippe, who sent Rachel a visiting card on which he had written:

Ou? - Quand? - Combien?

Her reply was equally short and to the point:

Chez toi - Ce soir. - Pour rien.

More significant was her relationship with Arthur Bertrand, who had been born on St Helena in 1817, and as a young child had been a favourite of Napoleon in his latter years. Arthur returned to St Helena with his father to get Napoleon's body in 1840. His mother had died a few years earlier.

Agate describes Arthur thus:

the gambler broken at twenty-two, with a baby face which could blush as easily as a girl's and the habit of borrowing from his mistresses the money to pay his debts. (4)

At the age of 17 Arthur had begun a relationship with the comedienne Pauline-Virginie Déjazet, who was 36. His mother Fanny approved of this relationship, and had sent her another of those locks of Napoleon's hair! This affair appears to have lasted until he met Rachel in 1840.

Arthur's relationship with Rachel lasted after a fashion for eight years. They had a son Gabriel Victor Felix who was born in 1848. Unlike Count Walewski, Arthur never acknowledged the son as his. He never married and died in 1871. Gabriel fought in the Franco-German war, and died in 1889 in Brazzaville where he was serving as the French Consul .

Rachel and Mlle George

Mlle George, herself a leading actress, and the former lover of Napoleon and Wellington had by the 1840's fallen on hard times, so she went to see Rachel to ask her to perform in a benefit. Rachel refused to see her, but asked her to write instead, to which Mlle George responded:

I have been as big an actress as Rachel and as great
a whore. It's true that I'm starving, that I owe ten francs to my porter, that I've sold the Emperor's diamonds to my pawnbroker ..But I will not write to Rachel.(5)

In the event Rachel did agree to appear at the benefit, but on stage the older actress deliberately set out to humiliate the young pretender. Most of the audience hissed Rachel, and she left the theatre without even taking a curtain call!

Rachel's Waterloo

Rachel's final tour was to the United States. It was not a success. American audiences had little appreciation of French tragedy, and her health was failing. She moved on to Havana from where in 1855 she wrote using Napoleonic imagery:

Thus it comes about that I must bring my poor routed army back to the Seine. It is in my mind that I am coming home to die and, like Napoleon, shall come to the Invalides to demand a stone whereon to lay my head." (6)

On her return she wrote to a journalist denying that she was going to marry:

I am thirty-two, my face tells me I am fifty, and we won't say anything about the rest. Eigthteen years of classical tirades, scamperings from one end of the world to the other, retreats from Moscow and betrayals at Waterloo .. (7)

She made her last journey on Prince Napoleon's yacht from Marseilles to le Cannet. She died of consumption in 1858. Despite rumours to the contrary she remained a Jewess, although she had had both her sons baptised as Catholics.

So ends my rummaging amongst the imperial debris. Others may wish to explore the Walewski/Felix descendants on the family website.

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NOTES

1. James Agate, Rachel (NY/London 1924, Reissued 1969) p. 14. Agate was a distinguished British theatre critic in the first half of the twentieth century. This book is clearly the product of a less politically correct age e.g. " a Jewess she was to her bone and marrow, a Jewess in the worst and the best sense." (p. 91)
2. Agate p 15
3. Agate p. 81.
4. Agate p. 79.
5. Agate p. 75
6. Agate p 86.
7. Agate p. 87