A Conversation with M.M. McAllen About Her Book, Maximilian and Carlota

Happy New Year! Just posted: A Conversation with M.M. McAllen, which is number 8 in my occasional podcast series "Conversations with Other Writers," about her magnificent narrative history Maximilian and Carlota: Europe's Last Empire in Mexico, published by Trinity University Press in 2014.

My blurb: 

"A deeply researched book about a period of Mexican history that, while vital for understanding modern Mexico and its relations with the United States and Europe, is of perhaps unparalleled cultural, political, and military complexity for such a short period."

William H. Beezeley, coeditor of The Oxford History of Mexico says:

"A thorough, complete history of Mexico's second empire. The author leaves nothing untouched."

And Luis Alberto Urrea says:

"M.M. McAllen has written an important book that not only reads like a novel of fantastic inventions but is key to understanding the soul of Mexico today."

> Listen in to this podcast any time here.

I'll be posting a complete transcript shortly.

>Visit M.M. McAllen at her website www.mmmcallen.com

> Listen in to all the other Conversations with Other Writers and/or read their transcripts here.

Carlota's Visit to Yucatán: VIAJE A YUCATAN por Carlota de Bélgica, prólogo de José N. Iturriaga

VIAJE A YUCATAN
Por Carlota de Bélgica
Prólogo de José N. Iturriaga
CONACULTA, México, 2011
ISBN 978-607-455-680-3
[You should be able to find a copy on amazon.com and/or look it up on World Cat.]

Ever since it was published in 2011 I have been meaning to post a note about this handsome little book-- little indeed at a mere 75 pages, but nonetheless a vital contribution to the literature on the period.

In November of 1865, for the monarchists, the political and military circumstances in Mexico had begun to deteriorate to such degree that Maximilian could not leave the capital for the few weeks his much-anticipated state visit to Yucatán would have required. In his stead he sent his empress, Carlota. 

Less than a year from when she would suffer a permanent psychotic breakdown, Carlota reported on this exotic, politically crucial and physically dangerous journey-- a report I had the privilege to read in her own remarkably clear and steady handwriting, preserved in the archives in Vienna and, by the way, in a copy in the Library of Congress in Washington DC [where you will find it there under "Kaiser Maximilian von Mexiko" in the Manuscripts Division]. 

It always seemed strange to me that Carlota's report on the Yucatán languished in the archives. I was glad indeed to see this edition brought out by Mexico's CONACULTA and with a thoughtful introduction by Mexican historian José N. Iturriaga. 

(Stranger still to me was a visit to Brussels about a decade ago, to an exhibition of Aztec and Mayan artworks where I found not a single mention of Carlota's visit, nor of her report.)

Here is my translation of the book's back cover:

María Carlota Amalia Agustina Victoria Clementina Leopoldina de Saxe-Coburg y Orleáns Boubon- Deux-Siciles y de Habsbourg-Lorraine, daughter of King Leopold I and Queen Louise of Belgium, was born on June 7, 1840. Carlota was the first cousin of Queen Victoria of English and, on her mother's side, granddaughter of King Louis Philippe of France. In 1857 Carlota married the Archduke Maximilian of Austria. She arrived in Mexico with him in 1864.

Summa Mexicana here presents a series of 24 texts written by Carlota between 1865 and 1866 in which she describes her visit as Empress of Mexico to the Yucatán peninsula.

In telegrams, speeches, reports, letters and notes, some to her husband and others to diplomats and family members, we discover the personality, at times simple, of a singular woman who is remembered in Mexico in myriad ways.

Carlota of Belgium died on January 19, 1927 at almost 87 years of age in the country of her birth.

More anon. 

The Twin Mermaid Fountains in Veracruz, Mexico and Concepción, Chile

It turns out that the mermaid fountain in Concepción Chile is an exact copy of the one Carlota gave to the city of Veracruz (destroyed in 1915). Read all about it (in Spanish) and view pictures over at the Veracruz Antiguo blog. (Hat tip to Carmen Boone de Aguilar).

My Recollections of Maximilian by Marie de la Fere

A free book-- download it here. It's been in rough form on-line for sometime but I've updated the introduction and formatted it as an ebook. (Tip: If you're using an iPad, click on "open in iBooks.")

From the new introduction:

It was the distinguished historian of Mexico, Robert Ryal Miller, who told me about this circa 1910 English language handwritten manuscript long-languishing in the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. Very generously, as was his way, he wrote to me, knowing that I was doing archival research for my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, and recommended that I look it up on my next visit to the Bancroft.

There is always something magical about touching old paper, running one's finger along the faded ink, but it turned out that I had to read "My Recollections of Maximilian" on microfiche-- reeling a tape through a cranky old machine in a dark room. The handwriting appeared to be that of an older person, elegant but cramped, smallish, and set down in a first draft, as if jotted one afternoon on whatever paper might have been handy, and only after being repeatedly pressed by some younger friend. In places, here a word, there a sentence fragment, were impossible to make out. But reading it was well worth the trouble, for, among so many other things, it gave me insight into the Mexican monarchists' passionate feelings for their unlikely emperor,Maximilian von Habsburg.

Younger brother of Austria's Kaiser Franz Josef, Maximilian was shanghaied by pie-in-the-sky promises into serving as the puppet emperor of Louis Napoleon's so-called Mexican Expedition. For Mexicans, this Austrian with the beautiful uniforms and splendid red beard who ended his young life in 1867 before a firing squad in Querétaro, shouting, "Viva México!" is a figure of endless fascination, ridicule, scholarly reconsidersations, gossip, paintings, operas, musicals, movies, and, of course, novels. Adding to the beguilement, his wife, the arrogantly beautiful Carlota—granddaughter of France's King Louis Philippe (the one who abdicated in 1848), daughter of King Leopold of Belgium, sister of Leopold II (of Congo fame), and first cousin to Queen Victoria— went raving mad in the Vatican and spent the rest of her long life—she died in 1927— sequestered in a castle in Belgium. >>READ MORE

Joan Haslip's The Crown of Mexico: Maximilian and His Empress Carlota

In the decades after the publication of Maximilian und Charlotte von Mexiko, Conte Corti's 1924 magnum opus, the first to rely on Maximilian's archives, several works covering the same period and personalities were published in English. The best of them is Joan Haslip's The Crown of Mexico: Maximilian and His Empress Carlota (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971).

From the dust jacket:

Joan Haslip is the daughter of the late George Ernest Haslip. M.D., the original planner of the British Health Service. She was educated privately in London and on the Continent and grew up in Florence. During the Second World War, she was editor in the Italian section of the European Service of the BBC. Miss Haslip has traveled extensively in Europe, the United States, and the Middle East and has lectured for the British Council in Italy and the Middle East. She is the author of Out of Focus, Lady Hester Stanhope, Parnell, Portrait of Pamela, Lucrezia Borgia, and The Lonely Empress.

Haslip died in Florence in 1994 at the age of 82. (Read an obituary here.)

Alas, I'm away from my files and shelves for the summer; I'll have more to say about this splendid book after Labor Day.

Next post: October 11, 2011.

Carlota's Piano

So far readers have alerted me to a crystal flute, a saddle, a set of mirrors, and a diamond ring-- and now, Carlota's piano. A fun connection: writer John Randolph Bennett was writing to interview me about Dancing Chiva Literary Arts, my new venture in publishing, among other things, Maximiliana, and in his e-mail he wrote:

[When] I was a boy growing up in San Jose, CA, we used to buy sheet music as a store called Reid's Music. Somehow they had acquired Empress Carlotta's piano, and they displayed it on a dais in the center of their store. They called it the Empress Carlotta Grand. I remember it being ornate; it may have been painted a brassy gold. I think I got to play it once.

In response to further questioning:

"I just Googled 'Empress Carlotta Grande Piano' and found a listing in an auction house from 2010. This is how I remember the piano looking. Look at the golden color of that wood! Hard to imagine it sitting on a platform by the escalators in a big store in a shopping mall in San Jose."

Here's the result of that "google": M.S. Rau of New Orleans is offering the piano for sale for USD $225,000. From the on-line catalog:

Royal provenance and superior craftsmanship culminate in this highly important grand piano, owned by the Empress Carlota of Mexico and made by the famed London firm of Collard & Collard. The piano was given to the Empress by her brother-in-law, Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, on the occasion of her 25th birthday in 1865.

The piano itself is a work of art. The body is crafted of luxurious birds-eye maple, polished to a sleek, smooth finish and complemented with scrolling gold gilt wood accents. Three shimmering gold gilt wood legs, hand-carved in the Rococo style, support the entire structure, which, despite its impressive size, seemingly floats in its space. Additional highlights include original ivory and ebony keys, original "certificate of authenticity" by Collard & Collard, and a plaque stating this magnificent instrument was a gift to the Empress.

This piano was housed in the Empress' private quarters in Chapultepec Castle, where she would often sit and play her favorite classical compositions. When the rule of the Empress and her husband, Emperor Maximillian I, ended in 1867, a few pieces of the castle's contents (including this piano) became the property of Mexican government officials.... CONTINUE READING

One of the very few liberties I took with historical facts in my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, had to do, precisely, with this piano. For the chapter set in September of 1865, I wanted to introduce the two grandsons of the Emperor Iturbide, Salvador and Agustín (the prince of the novel's title), apart from their family, and show the strangeness of their having been brought into Maximilian's household. I set the scene for the two boys, one an adolescent, the other only 2 and 1/2, in Chapultepec Castle, the Imperial residence, where they come upon the piano. In fact, Salvador had already been taken to school in Paris-- but this was a small liberty, and worth taking for narrative integrity, I think. I also imagined the piano being dark--wrong I was! That will be corrected in the next edition.

I'll be on a brief blog vacation, so next the post will be on Tuesday April 19th.

If you'd like news about Dancing Chiva's forthcoming ebooks on Maximiliana, we'd love to have you join the mailing list. We hate spam, too, so the newsletter goes out only 5 - 6 times a year, and you can opt out at any time.

My Recollections of Maximilian by Marie de la Fère: A Rare English Language Eyewitness Memoir

The historian Robert Ryal Miller mentioned this rare manuscript, a circa 1910 English language handwritten eyewitness memoir of Maximilian, in a letter to me some years ago. He had found it at the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, and was preparing an edited and annotated version for publication. Alas, Miller died in 2004 without, as far as I know, having published it. I have not seen what Miller wrote, I am sad to say, for I understand he had identified the author whose name was not — as I too, immediately suspected -- "Marie de la Fère." When I visited the Bancroft as part of my own research for my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, I dutifully looked up this manuscript. I was glad I did, for, among so many other things, it gave me insight into the strong feelings of the monarchists and Maximilian's character.

After Miller's death, as I felt this memoir deserved more readers than we intrepid few who have eyes for microfiches, I wrote to the Bancroft for permission to print it here. This was granted in 2006.

Would that I could offer a more detailed introduction, but this extraordinary memoir has been waiting in my files long enough. (For those of you looking for a basic introduction to Maximilian and the Second Mexican Empire, I can suggest my book, as well as others on the "Maximilian" webpage's links and my own bibliography. Also, Robert Ryal Miller's Mexico: A History gives a brief but fine and very readable overview of the French Intervention / Second Empire.) I have corrected some misspellings and punctuation, though in some places, where it reveals the author's charming linguistic melange, I have left it intact. A few notes appear in brackets rather than footnotes, for ease in reading on-line. In a few places the handwriting was unreadable; these I have noted with brackets around a question mark.

Aside from such very minor blemishes, here, dear reader, is a true literary treasure of the Second Empire.

It seems almost impossible that forty three years have passed since I was a witness and participator in the events connected with Maximilian's reign three brief years in Mexico. My father was a retired American banker and while traveling in Mexico had met and married my mother, who is of Spanish and French descent. When Maximilian landed at Veracruz, I was but seventeen years old. I was old enough to realize and know that Mexican affairs both political and financially were in terrible straights. My father conversed very freely to us in English regarding the status of affairs. His money he trusted to no Mexican bank; everything we had was in New Orleans and he lived on the income accruing from his investments there. When Juarez left the city and we learned that the French troops were steadily advancing in [?] first Orizaba, Puebla and were almost in Mexico City, father wished us to all leave and embark either for New Orleans or Europe, but my mother would not listen to it. Monseñor Labastida, who was always a welcome visitor, had thoroughly imbued her with his ideas of Mexico's coming greatness as soon as the Church party got control of affairs and she was determined to see it out. And again a letter from France notified us that our relative, Mama's uncle, an officer, was coming with the "Interventionists."

On June 10th 1863 my father came home in a hurry saying that the French troops were entering the city, which he had scarcely finished before the cannon commenced their salutes, also the bells of all the churches began ringing, the crowds in the streets were [?] Triumphal arches with pictures of Napoleon and Eugenia wreathed in flowers were in Plateros and San Francisco streets at the Cathedral a Te Deum was chanted in honor of the entrance of General Forey and Saligny with the French troops. In the evening a large reception was given by the Ayuntamiento at the Nacional [sic] Palace in honor of the French officers. CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING

Dr. J. Marion Sims (January 25, 1813 - November 12, 1883)

One of the enduring mysteries of Mexico's Second Empire is why, after several years of marriage, Maximilian and Carlota could not have children. In my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, which is based on the true story of the scandal of Maximilian's "adoption" of the Emperor Iturbide's grandsons, I leave the reader to continue contemplating the mystery, for there were (and are), so many contradictory theories, many from murky sources and / or clearly and merely malicious gossip and propaganda, and not one of them do I find completely convincing.

That said, there is a theory I favor. I found it in the personal diary of John Bigelow, 1882, which I consulted in the Manuscripts Division of the New York Public Library. The U.S. Minister to France during Mexico's Second Empire / French Intervention, Bigelow later visited Mexico City as a tourist, and there he interviewed Doña Alicia Green de Iturbide, the mother of Agustín de Iturbide y Green, the "last prince." She told Bigelow that Maximilian had tried to engage a Dr Sims of New York to come to Mexico and perform an operation on Carlota, but Dr Sims asked for 30,000 dollars, a staggering sum at that time, and General Almonte refused to support such an expenditure.

Is it true? In all my forays in the archives, I have been unable to find any correspondence with Dr Sims (nor anyone else) on such a matter. However, it can be said that Doña Alicia de Iturbide is a far more credible source than most, for she knew General Almonte (he was the guest honor at her wedding to Angel de Iturbide in 1855, and, in Paris in the summer of 1866, the Almontes and the Iturbides would have been hovering together around the Grand Hotel, in wait for Carlota) and, of course, Doña Alicia herself signed the contract in which the childless Maximilian took custody of her son and nephew in 1865.

In a visit to the New York Historical Society, I did find out this: had Carlota needed surgery, the ideal candidate would have been, indeed, Dr. Sims of New York, for he was the leading gynecologist of his time, well known in Brussels, Vienna, and Paris. Originally from the south, Sims had moved to New York for his health. During the Civil War, he sided with the Confederacy and spent the duration in Paris, where one of his patients was none other than the Empress Eugenie.

Further reading about Dr. J. Marion Sims:

American National Biography, vol. 20, pp. 25-26, Oxford University Press, 1999

The Story of My Life by J. Marion Sims, edited by his son, H. Marion Sims (1884); republished in 1968 with a new preface by C. Lee Burton

Sexual Surgery and the Origins of Gynecology: J. Marion Sims, His Hospital and His Patients, by Deborah Kuhn McGregor, 1990

Women's Surgeon: The Life Story of J. Marion Sims, by Seale Harris, 1950.

And here is a photo and some information about his statue in New York's Central Park.

More anon.

UPDATE: J.C. Hallman has published a detailed essay about the controversy surrounding New York City's the statue of Dr. J. Marion Sims, "Monumenal Error," Harper's, November 2017.

Susanne Igler's Carlota de México

Carlota de México, Dr Susanne Igler's excellent biography of Mexico's Empress Carlota was published in Spanish by Planeta in 2002 as part of the Grandes protagonistas de la historia Mexicana series edited by Mexican historian José Manuel Villalpando. It offers a complete overview of Carlota's life, from her childhood as the princess of Belgium; her marriage to the Austrian Archduke Maximilian; brief reign as Empress of Mexico; psychotic breakdown in the Vatican; and the long years of her widowhood as a mad yet coddled recluse in Belgium. Igler's biography opens thus (my translation):

A Fairytale Princess

Mexican history is rich in surprising, dramatic, and even grotesque personalities, yet few have so excited the imagination, both collective and artistic, as the woman who, for a fleeting moment, was the Empress of Mexico. Today, more than 130 years after the Mexican State's struggle to define itself, there is abundance of films, soap operas, artistic testimonies, novels, plays, historical debates and -- yes!--- even restaurants named apropos of Maximilian's empire; more than the fleeting and superficial nature of this historical episode would suggest...

The work is amply illustrated with reproductions of portraits (including a charming one of Carlota as an toddler by Winterhalther), and photographs, and includes a chronology and bibliography. This is an important addition to any collection on the Second Empire.

P.S. A bibliography for The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, my novel about the Second Empire, is here.

Originally posted at Madam Mayo blog.