Mathilde-Létizia Bonaparte

See also: Bonaparte

Mathilde-Létizia Wilhelmine Bonaparte , known as the princess Mathilde , was born with Trieste (Italy) the May 27th 1820 and died in Paris the January 2nd 1904.

Biography

Girl of Jerome Bonaparte, ex-king of Westphalia, and his second wife, Catherine of Wurtemberg, the Mathilde princess is high in Rome and Florence. She is initially promised in marriage to her cousin Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, future Napoleon III.

She marries on November 1st 1840 with Florence the count Anatole Demidoff, created little before the marriage “prince de San Donato” by the large-duke of Tuscany (title not recognized in Russia). This marriage - remained without posterity - was never happy. Demidoff, fabulously rich but violent one, refused to leave his mistress, Valentine of Holy-Aldegonde. Mathilde flees for Paris by carrying the jewels which were supposed to constitute its dowry, but that Jerome Bonaparte, always with money course, had sold in Demidoff before the marriage. In spite of that, Demidoff was condemned by the court of Saint-Pétersbourg to pour in Mathilde a pension of 200.000 francs per annum and could never recover its jewels. Ultimately, the husbands were authorized to separate in 1847 on personal decision from the Tsar from Russia Nicolas Ier.

It settles in Paris in 1846 at the end of the reign of Louis-Philippe near his lover the count Émilien de Nieuwerkerke, met a few years before with San Donato. But it is with the accession of his/her cousin to the Presidency of the Republic, then with the imperial dignity, which she plays truly a leading role.

Under the Second Empire and the Third Republic, it holds in Paris an important literary living room. Itself convinced Bonapartist - without Napoleon i, had it habit to say, it would have sold oranges in the streets of Ajaccio - receives at it writers of any political color. Enemy of any label, “ it accommodated all its visitors , according to Abel Hermant, with a sansfaçon which was the extreme refinement of condescension and the courtesy. ”

In 1868, Théophile Gautier, with which it maintains the friendly bonds, becomes her librarian.

The Mathilde princess endeavors to maintain close links with the court of Russia. After the death of its first husband and the fall of the Empire in 1870, it exiled some time in Belgium then returned to France. It remaria in December 1873 with the poet Claudius Popelin. Died in 1904, it is buried with Saint-Gratien (Val-d'Oise).

Residences

In Paris, the Mathilde princess occupies initially a private mansion n° 10 Rue of Courcelles (which always exists) before moving in a private mansion Rue of Berri (destroyed today), close to the Fields-Élysées. “ Its house of the street of Berri, papered of cuddly toy and furnished with the Napoleonean mode, was hideous. ” (Profit of Castellane)

Each summer, the Mathilde Princess remains initially with the Pavillon of Breteuil to Sevres, of 1849 with 1853. Then it rents with the marquis de Custine the Château Catinat with Saint-Gratien (Val-d'Oise), before acquiring in 1855 of a castle from now on called Château of the princess Mathilde, where it spends from now on the summer in company of her friends writers.

Portraits

Correspondence

  • the painter and the princess: correspondence enters the princess Mathilde Bonaparte and the painter Ernest Hébert: 1863-1904 (published by Isabelle Julia). Paris: Editions of the Meeting of the National museums, coll “Notes and documents of the Museums of France” n° 38, 2004. 397 p., 27 cm. ISBN 2-7118-4747-0.

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