Background
She was a daughter of Napoleon"s brother Jérôme Bonaparte and his second wife, Catharina of Württemberg, daughter of King Frederick I of Württemberg.
painter socialite salon-holder
She was a daughter of Napoleon"s brother Jérôme Bonaparte and his second wife, Catharina of Württemberg, daughter of King Frederick I of Württemberg.
Born in Trieste, Mathilde Bonaparte was raised in Florence and Rome. Anatole was raised to the station of Prince by Grand Duke Leopold II of Tuscany shortly before the wedding to fulfill the wishes of Mathilde"s father and to preserve Mathilde"s station as Princess. Anatole"s princely title was never recognised in Russia.
They had no children.
The marriage between these two strong and prominent personalities was stormy. Prince Demidoff insisted on keeping his lover, Valentine de Street Aldegonde, which of course was fiercely resisted by Mathilde.
In 1846, Mathilde fled the household for Paris with her new lover Émilien de Nieuwerkerke and with Anatole"s jewelry. The jewelry constituted the dowry that Anatole was forced to bankroll for his father-in-law so it formed the property of Anatole.
Princess Mathilde"s mother was Emperor Nicholas I of Russia"s first cousin, and the emperor supported Mathilde in her clashes with her spouse, a Russian subject.
As consequence, Anatole chose to live much of his remaining life outside Russia. The terms of the separation announced by the Tribunal in St. Petersburg forced Anatole to pay annual alimony of 200,000 French francs. Anatole vigorously pursued the return of his property, which led Mathilde and her strong circle of literary friends to mount highly personal and unfair counter-attacks using the public media.
In the end, Anatole"s heirs never recovered his property since Mathilde"s last will was altered towards the end of her life.
She disliked etiquette, but welcomed her visitors, according to Abel Hermant, with an extreme refinement of snobbery and politeness. Théophile Gautier was employed as her librarian in 1868.
At the fall of the monarchy in 1870, she lived in Belgium for a while, but soon returned to Paris. She died in Paris in 1904, aged 83.
An aged Princess Mathilde makes a brief appearance in Proust"s À l"ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (In the Shadow of Young Girls In Flower), the second volume of In Search of Lost Time.
She mentions that if she wants to visit les Invalides, she does not need an invitation: she has her own set of keys.
Princess Mathilde lived in a mansion in Paris, where she was a prominent member of the new aristocracy during and after the Second French Empire as a hostess to men of arts and letters as a salon holder. She was the only member of the Bonaparte family to stay in France after May 1886, when the French Republic expelled the princes of the former ruling dynasties.