Back around last Christmas, friend phones and says come down to the golf club for a ‘light ale’, you’ll love the panalled dining room Napoleon put in when he had the gaff.
I couldn’t go and the opportunity passed – I’ll stick my head in some time just to look at the room, though. Anyway, it got me a little intrigued.
Google suggests a Napoleon did live at what is now known as Chislehurst golf club and used to be called Camden Place, Chislehurst - somewhere around there, Eliizabeth I’s great powerbroker Walsingham was also born, which I find even more interesting, but I digress. But otherwise, Google isn’t a great deal of help.
Best I can see is that Napolean III fled to England to escape something sharp with a basket at the end of it way back when, maybe in the 1870’s. It looks like he came with the Empress Eugenie and son.
I am, however, extremely ill-informed on the doings of the French during the 19th century (well, after 1815, obviously) , so I have three questions:
– What led to Napolean III (son of Boney, I believe) living in my manor and, more pointedly, the Manor House.
What was afoot politically; why did the English give shelter to the famile Napoleon (undesired as they were across the channel) and to what political end ?
Napoleon III, also called “Napoleon the Little” to distinguish him from his uncle, ran into some serious trouble with the Prussians in 1870 after a career of rabble rousing populist politics based on a revival of the glories of the Empire, a questionable election (fifty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong) and a reign of reckless adventureism including an attempt to turn Mexico into a French dependent. He was captured at Sedan with the main French army and sent into exile. Victoria accepted him and Mrs Bonaparte (who the Queen was quite fond of) joined him in England. He died shortly after. His son, the Prince Imperial was killed while serving with the British Army in South Africa during the Zulu War in about 1879. The Emperor may well have lived at your country club.
Thanks for the input and sorry you didn’t escape the sharp end as Napoleon III appears to have done, ** Spavined Gelding**.
So, this particular little bundle of energy was the cousin of the rather more troublesome, and better known, Boney. I presume the trouble with the Prussians wasn’t over a game of Poker … ?
I know people aren’t exactly queuing at the door to get at this one but any other info about his residence in Chislehurst would be positively spiffing …
Btw, not my ‘country club’. Must be a nice place to have as a home, though, if the back garden is big enough to now sport a golf course – and, I believe, a rather imposing folly. Not a bad result for someone who had a little trouble with the Prussians…
No, it wasn’t poker: the Spanish were in want of a King, the German prince who wanted the gig was unacceptable to the French and then Bismarck did some spin-doctoring with punctuation. A slightly more serious summary of the Franco-Prussian War. More broadly, German unification is one of those endlessly complicated topics that historians find lots to disagree over in.
As for Camden Place, it gets an entry in Weinreb and Hibbert’s The London Encyclopaedia, the relevant part of which is:
Incidentally, a pair of earlier owners had been killed by one of their servants in 1813.
It’s not about the house, but this paper describes Eugenie’s attempts to build a suitably grand memorial chapel for her husband and son. May be of some local interest.
Well, thanks for that link, it covers a little about the family and the area, and puts it in an historical context. Nicely handy!
… so they’re arrival in these parts was all to do with the collapse of the second French empire (and the rise of the Third Republic). Victoria gave the family refuge – despite them being catholic - and this guy Nathaniel Strode (a name straight out of Dickens) coughed up Camden Palace for them – you obviously got a better class of refugee in those days ….
Then I see Napoleon III died after an operation in 1873 and his son, the Imperial Prince, died in the British in 1879 (the Zulu wars in South Africa), leaving Eugenie on her lonesome.
Also, the story of how her husband and sons mausoleum came to be sited elsewhere (after a decade of Church related problems) made for an interesting read.
With all due respect to you and your local, I’m sure the view is tremendous but you’re about 9’ tall, Kent, you can see most of Europe from anywhere you want …
… actually, I’d forgotten you were down in Farnborough. I suppose this Abbey can’t be far from the A3 …
I wonder if Weinreb and Hibbert’s comment that Strode ‘had connections with the court of Napoleon III’ isn’t a bit too bland. According to this website (which is in French), Strode had previously been acting in some unspecified capacity for one of the Emperor’s ex-mistresses, the late Harriet Howard, comtesse de Beauregard.
