Marie Bonaparte-Wyse
 | This article includes a list of generalreferences,butit lacks sufficient correspondinginline citations.(January 2021) |
| Marie Bonaparte-Wyse | |
|---|---|
| Princess de Solms | |
 | |
| Born | 25 April 1831 Waterford,Ireland |
| Died | 6 February 1902 Paris |
| Burial | Aix-les-Bains |
| Spouse | Frédéric Joseph de Solms Urbano Rattazzi |
| Issue | Alexis de Solms Romana Rattazzi Teresa de Rute Dolores de Rute |
| House | House of Bonaparte |
| Father | Thomas Wyse |
| Mother | Princess Letizia Bonaparte |
Marie-Lætitia de SolmsnéeBonaparte-Wyse(25 April 1831 – 6 February 1902), was aFrenchauthor andliterary hostess.
Biography
[edit]She was born inWaterford,Ireland, a granddaughter ofLucien Bonaparte(making her EmperorNapoleon I's great-niece) byhis second wife,through the marriage of his daughter Letizia toSirThomas Wyse,an Irishman, British plenipotentiary at Athens, and Member of Parliament. However, she was born after her mother had been separated from Wyse for three years, and her biological father was British Army officer CaptainStudholme John Hodgson.[1]
She was educated inParis.In December 1848, aged seventeen, Marie (secretly called Marie-Studholmine) married Frédéric Joseph de Solms (1815–63), a rich gentleman fromStrasbourgwho soon left her to go to America. Marie, known as the "Princess de Solms", remained with her mother, who kept a brilliantsalonin Paris frequented byVictor Hugo,Eugène Sue,the youngerAlexandre Dumas,and other writers.
In the early 1850s Marie had an affair with Count Alexis de Pommereu that produced a son in 1852. In February 1853, French authorities ordered her expulsion from theEmpire,after accusations that she had illegally borne the name Bonaparte and had stirred up "scandalous disorders". There were however reports that EmperorNapoleon IIIhad secretly paid his beautiful young cousin a number of visits, that the jealousEmpress Eugeniehad learned of the visits and told her husband that Marie maintained a salon ofsubversives,and that he had thereafter ordered her expulsion.
In August 1853 Marie settled atAix-les-BainsinSavoy,then part of theKingdom of Sardinia,where her lover (Pommereu) built her achaletthat soon became the center of a new literary salon. She went often toTurin,the kingdom's capital, where she established yet another salon at the Hôtel Feder. She maintained friendships with Hugo, Sue, Dumas and others, includingLajos Kossuth,Alphonse de Lamartine,Félicité Robert de Lamennais,Henri Rochefort,Tony Revillon,and the United States minister to Sardinia,John Moncure Daniel.
In 1859 Napoleon III's profligate cousin,Prince Napoleon,was betrothed toClotilde,the fifteen-year-old daughter of KingVittorio Emanuele IIof Sardinia. This was done as part of an agreement concluded by the king's prime minister,Count Cavour,to guarantee French support for Sardinia in the oncoming war to free northern Italy from Austrian occupation. (The king, openly unhappy with the betrothal, was secretly pleased.) Turin society was scandalized when the Princess de Solms flouted the emperor by appearing at the betrothal ball on the arm of U.S. Minister Daniel.
She was an early woman journalist, and throughSainte-Beuve,Marie contributed toLe Constitutionnelunder thepen name"Baron de Stock". She also wrote for thePaysand theTurf.After Savoy was annexed to France (1860) as another part of the agreement between Napoleon III and Cavour, Marie went back to Paris where she played a prominent part in the literary and social events of the time. She gathered in her salon men of all shades of opinion. In 1863, her husband having died, she remarried thePiedmontesestatesmanUrbano Rattazzi,and lived with him in Italy where she was known as "DivinaFanciulla".After his death in June 1873, Madame Rattazzi returned to Paris, and a few months later married her Spanish friend,under-secretaryDonLuis de Rute y Ginez (1844–89), whom she also outlived. Marie died a widow in 1902 in Paris.
She had one son, Alexis de Solms (1852–1927), fathered by her lover, Count Alexis de Pommereu; one daughter, Romana Rattazzi (1871–1943), by her second husband; and two adopted daughters, Teresa de Rute (1883–89) and Dolores de Rute (1885–88), with her third husband.
She was buried in Aix-les-Bains (France).
Writings
[edit]Her writings consist of miscellaneous sketches, verses, plays, and novels, such asSi j'etais reine(1868) andLes mariages de la créole(1866), reprinted under the titleLa chanteuse(1870). Her 1867 novelBicheville,a thinly disguised attack on the society ofFlorence,capital of the newKingdom of Italy,caused serious embarrassment to Rattazzi, who was serving as prime minister of the recently established kingdom. She also wroteL'Aventurier des colonies(1885), a drama; and the volume of talesEnigme sans clef(1894).
In 1881 she editedRattazzi et son temps,and in the last two or three years of her life published two volumes of her own memoirs, and edited theNouvelle revue internationale,to which she also contributed a significant amount.
References
[edit]- ^D. G. Paz, "Wyse, Sir Thomas (1791–1862)",Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008accessed 7 Nov 2011
Literature
- Bridges, Peter. Pen of Fire: John Moncure Daniel (Kent, Oh.: Kent State University Press, 2002)
- Dictionnaire du Second Empire (Paris: Librairie Artheme Fayard, 1995), 1205
- Grand Dictionnaire Universel du XIX Siecle (Larouse) (Paris: Slatkine, 1982), 13:730
- Grierson,Parisian Portraits(New York, 1913)
- Rines, George Edwin, ed. (1920)..Encyclopedia Americana.
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain:Chisholm, Hugh,ed. (1911). "Rattazzi, Urbano".Encyclopædia Britannica.Vol. 22 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 919.
External links
[edit]- Madame Rattazzi (1873).Cara patria.Paris: Librairie des bibliophiles. p.1.
- Marie de Solms (1858).Eugène Sue, photographié par lui-même.Geneva: C.-L. Sabot.
- Marie Rattazzi (1866).Les mariages de la créole.Brussels: s.n. p.5.
