Calle Real Plaque (1987)
It starts with a house in the heart of the French Quarter in New Orleans; or rather, it starts with a baby born in that house in 1858, because doesn’t every story begin with a baby?
BY MEG FREER
IMAGE COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
It starts with a house in the heart of the French Quarter in New Orleans; or rather, it starts with a baby born in that house in 1858, because doesn’t every story begin with a baby? And not just any baby (for there were many generations born in that house), but a girl who would become a princess.
*
Let’s jump ahead, though, to another baby—a boy. Nearly a hundred years after the baby girl’s birth, he is also born in the Vieux Carré, in the 900 block of Royal Street. When he is older, however, he realizes his mother never shared anything about that time in her early married life. There are no details of how the young couple came to live, if only briefly, in this historic house in the French Quarter, and a lack of reliable records results in a family legend that the brick mansion the boy’s parents occupied was, for a time, home to Joséphine Bonaparte.
This legend I heard as a child seems plausible, though, since most of the French and Creole populations in New Orleans at that time were sympathetic to Napoléon. There had also been a “plot” to rescue Napoléon from exile and allow him to take refuge in New Orleans, but since he died in 1821, he never did make it to the beautiful Crescent City, built at a sharp bend in the Mississippi River. Joséphine was never in New Orleans, and the story is not true.
Decades later, when the boy has grown up, a household move reveals an envelope yellowed by time, just like in the fantasy books I used to read. Typed on the outside is the following:
Madame la Princess de Monaco, nee Alice Heine.
rue Royale 910,
Nouvelle Orleans,
La Louisiane,
Etat-Unis.
Inside, there is a one-page letter (with many typing errors, misspellings, and corrections) that contains a brief biography of the woman named on the envelope: Alice Heine, born in 1858 at 910 Royal St., the only child of wealthy Parisian banker Michel Heine and his wife, Amélie Miltenberger. The letter also details a bit of history regarding three attached brick houses constructed in the 900 block of Royal Street in 1838, one of which was built for Alice’s grandfather.
I have held this document in my hands and have read and reread it, for it belongs in my family—the baby boy in this tale will go on to become my father.
Listen again to those words typed on the envelope: “Madame la Princess de Monaco, nee Alice Heine.” The boy appears to have been born in the same block of houses as a future princess. Alice Heine, according to the letter, “became the wife of the Duc de Richelieu.” The letter goes on to say, in a long sentence, that “in 1882 after the death of her titled husband, and while she was the dower-duchess of Richelieu, Alice Heine, the New Orleans born girl, married the Prince of Monaco, the first American girl to sit on any Europen [sic] throne, and accepted by all the crowned heads of Europe, including Queen Victoria of England, as their equal and in all their correspondence to her, addresser [sic] her as ‘cousin,’ the official appelation [sic] by which all crowned heads in Europe are known.”
What a fascinating story for me to tell future generations, with these tidbits of tantalizing information about Alice. Firstly, she “became the wife of the Duc de Richelieu.” I am intrigued by this link to Louis XIII’s Cardinal Richelieu, a lead character in Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers, one of my favourite books.
She also “married the Prince of Monaco” and was “the first American girl” on a European throne. Even better. An American-born princess before Grace Kelly, the more famous Princess of Monaco during my childhood. Finally, she was “accepted by all the crowned heads of Europe, including Queen Victoria of England, as their equal and … [addressed] as cousin.” The letter states that after Alice’s marriage ended, Queen Victoria “offered her a home and haven in one of the royal palaces of the English royal family.”
At the bottom of the page is an address for Alice’s cousin, a Miss Lucia Miltenberger, with a note that anyone wishing to contact her could do so to verify the information on the paper, which appears not to be a letter after all. It is not typed on fancy letterhead and is not addressed to anyone; there is no stamp or postmark, and the address on the envelope is simply a title for the contents. It was written so long ago that it is impossible to know if the recipient ever contacted this cousin—who was, I discovered through further research, well-known and influential in the New Orleans chapter of the Red Cross during World War I.
The name Heine piques my interest, and it turns out that, unbelievably, Alice’s father was first cousins with the German-Jewish Romantic poet and philosopher Heinrich Heine. A connection to a famous poet whose poems were set to music by some of my favourite composers, such as Schubert and Schumann. To add to the intrigue, there is a Napoléon connection after all, even though our family legend is not true; Alice’s godparents were Emperor Napoléon III and Empress Eugénie, and her father’s banking family financed the emperor’s war against the Prussians.
This single page has the power to transport an imaginative reader into another world, where one can almost feel the oppressive humidity, smell the heady scent of magnolias from courtyard gardens and fragrant cooking aromas from open windows, and hear Alice herself speaking French and Spanish, maybe tinged with a southern accent. But who would have typed up the information, and for whom? The spelling errors and syntax indicate it was someone whose native tongue was probably French, not English.
However, there is another, perhaps even more significant clue to the author’s identity; also in the envelope is a postage-stamp-sized photo of a tall woman in riding breeches and boots, posing in a tropical setting that could be a garden in New Orleans, with a date (possibly 1940 or 1948) written in blue ink in one corner. I like to think that the photo’s subject could be Alice’s daughter, who herself married into royalty and became first Countess, then Princess, de La Rochefoucauld of the Kingdom of Bavaria and whose full name rolls off the tongue with elegance: Odile Marie Auguste Septimanie Chapelle de Jumilhac.
I can only presume that the writer thought it important enough that this unique family history be passed on. So, she typed up the information, enclosed her photo, and gave the envelope to someone she thought would appreciate it—my father’s mother. Fortunately, my grandmother remembered to give it to her son when he got married, but it was put away and forgotten until recently. It seems appropriate that the document leaves many unanswered questions, as the atmosphere of old New Orleans, even for locals—its haunted and secret rooms, lost treasure, voodoo shrines, and aboveground graveyards—is one of mystery.
*
Let’s backtrack, though, and finish the story of the first baby, the girl who became a princess. This baby is Alice, and at sixteen, she is blond and beautiful and mingles with her banker father’s high-society acquaintances in Paris, her parents having moved back to their native country when she was a young child. She has numerous wealthy bachelors begging for her hand in marriage, including Duke Armand de Richelieu, ten years her senior, whom she marries at age seventeen. They have two children, but then he dies after only five years of marriage, leaving her the huge sum of seventeen million francs. Her salon in Paris becomes a magnet for writers like Marcel Proust, who may have used her as a model for the Princesse de Luxembourg in À la recherche du temps perdu. Yet another literary connection to fuel my interest. Her life is already the stuff of fairy tales, and it only gets more interesting.
On a trip to Madeira, she meets the future Prince Albert I of Monaco, and it is said the attraction is immediate and mutual. Prince Albert is divorced and heir to the throne, but the dowager duchess and the prince must wait to be married until Albert’s father dies since he is opposed to the union. Upon his father’s death, Albert becomes the new monarch, and he and Alice wed, with Alice bringing precious jewels and six million dollars to the marriage. She also brings a new level of sophistication to the principality of Monaco; not only does Alice turn out to be financially savvy enough to stabilize the monarchy’s finances, but her wealth and talent for business negotiations also help her to revive and promote the theatre, opera, and ballet, turning Monaco into the elegant cultural destination it is today.
Albert is an oceanographer and off at sea much of the year. Alice spends much of her time at the ballet and opera and becomes infatuated with the English singer-composer Isidore de Lara, whose operas are popular at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo. When Prince Albert returns from a trip and discovers Alice has a lover, he is livid. He accuses her of infidelity and slaps her in full view of the audience on opening night at the opera house. They separate, she leaves Monaco, and while the marriage is effectively over, they remain married until Albert (who also reportedly had affairs) dies 20 years later.
The scandal does not diminish her status in society, however. She moves to England, becomes good friends with Queen Alexandra, Queen Victoria’s daughter-in-law, and continues to entertain and patronize the arts until her death in Paris in 1925. Her legacy is lasting, and in 1980, she is honoured by Monaco with a national postage stamp.
*
A January 2017 Google Maps street-view image taken near 910 Royal St. showed a man sitting on a chair by a lamppost, playing the trumpet (jazz, no doubt), a cup beside him for coins, as two people pass by on the sidewalk. The musician is gone from the scene when I check the updated Google Maps view, but the popular Café Amelie, named after Princess Alice’s mother, is still next door at 912. Its interior is a modernized version of what it might have looked like in the 1800s, with period furniture and chandeliers, exposed brick walls, tall windows, and French doors. In the back, the Princess of Monaco Courtyard is lush and inviting with original fountains, wrought-iron benches, palm trees, and tropical plants.
I am also pleased to see that down the sidewalk, at 900 Royal St., a decorative plaque that I photographed on a conference trip back in the late 1980s is still on the brick wall below the balcony—one of those iconic New Orleans balconies in the Vieux Carré encircled by an intricate, cast-iron gallery. I am able to find out that Princess Alice’s grandfather was an enterprising cast-iron importer who was influential in starting the trend of installing extensive iron galleries on French Quarter houses.
Does it matter that I don’t know in which of the three houses on the block my father was born and whether that same one was once the birthplace of a future princess? Not a bit. Does it matter that I will never know for certain who the woman is in the miniature photo accompanying the letter about Alice Heine and whether she is indeed the one who gave the letter to my father’s mother? It doesn’t, because the plaque at 900 rue Royale reads, “When New Orleans was the Capital of the Spanish Province of Luisiana. [sic] 1762 ~ 1803 This street bore the name CALLE REAL.”
The word “real” has two meanings in Spanish. It can mean either “royal” or “real,” making the possibility of my father being born in the same house on rue Royale in New Orleans where Alice Heine was born much more real to me. Fairy tales were an important part of the culture in which I grew up, and I am captivated by this modern fairy tale, set in a place I have always found enchanting and wanted to know better. Because my father once wanted his remains scattered in the mouth of the Mississippi River, I also know that, for him, New Orleans held his roots.
Meg Freer teaches piano and writes in Kingston, Ontario. Her photos, short prose, and poems have appeared in many North American journals, and she has published two poetry chapbooks. She holds a Graduate Certificate with Distinction in Creative Writing from the Humber School for Writers.
Image courtesy of the author.
Edited for publication by Kaitlyn Lonnee, as part of the Creative Book Publishing program.
HLR Spotlight is a collaboration between the Faculty of Media & Creative Arts and the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences and Innovative Learning at Humber College in Toronto, Ontario. This project is funded by Humber’s Office of Research & Innovation.