A brush with royalty

An exiled prince, a heartbroken empress, and a dodgy duchess all passed through Durban from 1879 to 1880. Only one got home alive. We look at the curious consequences of the French Prince Imperial’s visit.

Pictured left: Prince Imperial fooling around shortly before death –  he’s the one who survived the mock duel – of course (click to see full image).

Napoleon Bonaparte’s great nephew, Prince Napoleon Eugene Louis Jean Joseph Bonaparte, came here looking for a fight. Exiled to England with his mother, the Empress Eugenie, after his father Napoleon III’s disastrous war with Prussia in 1871, Louis graduated from the British military academy at Woolwich and was in urgent need of a good war to earn his spurs and, hopefully, the respect of his countrymen. This, he hoped, would help him reclaim the French throne.

When the British and the Zulus went to war in 1879, he used his mother’s friendship with Queen Victoria to secure himself a role, supposedly as an observer, with the British army. Once here, driven by his need for glory, he soon managed to get himself killedin a needless skirmish at a Zulu kraal near Nqutu.

Louis’ body returned to Durban amidst a huge display of public grief. Church bells tolled along the crowded route, shops were closed and flags flew at half-mast throughout the city. The Prince Imperial’s departure across the sea to England caused a considerably greater stir than his arrival two months earlier.

Durban was soon a-twitter with excitement at the news that Empress Eugenie was to visit the scene of her son’s death in Zululand one year on. Bored as they were with the monotony of their day-to-day existence in one of Britain’s most distant colonies, the impending arrival of the Empress, by far the most important person ever to visit Durban, was a major event. Unfortunately, nobody knew how to handle the occasion.

In his excellent Ladies In The Veld, Brian Roberts catches the mood in the town perfectly. “As the time for the Empress’s arrival drew near and the form of the town’s welcome was still undecided, many of its citizens became quite agitated.”

The town council held late-night meetings in smoke-filled rooms, while various groups of excited Durbanites hatched their own plans, despite the dearth of information about what was expected from them.

A local company advertised that it had stocks of “half-mourning bonnets, specially trimmed and forwarded so as to be in time for the arrival of the Empress Eugenie.” Bottle stores advertised large stocks of Courvoisier Cognac, “the only brandy supplied to the late Emperor Napoleon III” and one opportunistic citizen opened a “Eugenie” restaurant.

Not until the Soccer World Cup 130 years later would Durban’s inhabitants again be so bamboozled by hype. A fundraising committee prepared to finance a memorial to the late Louis, and passed a resolution that “subject to her Majesty the Empress’s approval, a deputation of the Executive Committee wait upon her to acquaint her with the progress of the movement and to solicit any approval thereto.”

It was, alas, all in vain. The Empress arrived ashore at night, surrounded by policemen, and was spirited off to the Governor’s home, where she stayed in privacy until her sad little procession ventured forth to visit the scene of her son’s death.

The next character to stride onstage in this tragic Victorian drama was a striking middle-aged woman calling herself the Viscountess Avonmore, who arrived in Durban on May 1, 1880, soon after the departure of the Empress. Following the reluctance of Eugenie to appear in public, the media leapt at the opportunity to interview a more forthcoming celebrity.

They were later to discover that Lady Avonmore had achieved considerable notoriety years earlier, under the name of Mrs Yelverton. Born Theresa Longworth in 1833, she married a Major Yelverton under dubious circumstances in 1857. A year later she was bemused to hear that the major had subsequently married a wealthy widow. The ensuing scandal and court case dominated the news in the UK for months, and despite the public having enormous sympathy for her plight, Theresa eventually lost her eight-year fight to have her marriage recognised.

Nevertheless, when Major Yelverton inherited his title in 1870, she renamed herself the Viscountess Avonmore and claimed that right for the rest of her days.

Theresa earned her keep as a travel writer, and when she heard that the Empress Eugenie was coming to South Africa she made a dart for the nearest ship and set off in hot pursuit, hoping to ingratiate herself with the mourning woman, write some articles on their African adventures, and possibly even research a biography on Louis himself. Once here she pulled the wool over the eyes of the British officials and the media, claiming that she was a friend and ex-secretary of the Empress, who urgently needed to catch up with her en route to the scene of Louis’ death.

People fell over themselves to help Lady Avonmore console the grieving Empress, who had never even met her before, and gave her a police escort for herself, along with a wagon, horses and provisions to help her on her way. While travelling she told the young troopers who escorted her that she had secretly married the Prince Imperial, who was half her age. One trooper, at least, said afterwards that he thought she was a little mad.

Unfortunately for Yelverton, Sir Evelyn Wood, who headed the Empress’s party, got wind of the stalker’s activities and managed to stop her getting within 100m of Eugenie, although she camped within sight of the party most nights.

The Empress returned to exile in England, and Yelverton, penniless and in poor health, settled in Pietermaritzburg where she earned her living writing vitriolic columns for The Natal Witness. She died in the city in 1881.

Story by Gavin Foster