It is not perhaps known to one person in a hundred that Louis Napoleon was ever in New York. But he was in this city for some time, and had a lot of ups and downs in it, just like other people. Among other things, he managed to get into jail in New York, and into love, two things which are more alike, after all, than most people imagine.
You see, Louis Napoleon was sent over to this country for the good of his political health, and the ship which he sailed in went to Brazil first, and then stopped at New York. It was a long voyage–there were no steamships in those days–but Napoleon stood it well and never got seasick. He kept pacin’ up and down the deck of the ship, talkin’ to himself, and he kept everybody else busy thinkin’ what on earth he was thinkin’ about. But he never told anybody his thoughts–he wasn’t a man of that kind–and all the ship’s crew and the passengers liked him for his politeness.
He landed in New York right at the Battery, and two young Frenchmen, Achille and Lucien Murat, were on hand to meet him. These young Frenchmen were the descendants of the great Murat, king of Naples, who had been first pastry cook and then the handsomest king and the best soldier in Europe. One of them had a colonelcy in the army, and the other had some position in the civil service. They were thought a great deal of, and went into the very tip-top society of New York, Washington and Baltimore.
They were very glad to see Prince Louis Napoleon, and the three Frenchmen, wishin’ to avoid any fuss, went and took dinner at a restaurant near where the Stevens house is now.
But of course Louis Napoleon got at once right among the bigbugs here. All the houses of all the leadin’ citizens were thrown open to him, and everybody was only too glad to receive him.
For about a week he behaved himself first-class. Then he got tired of polite society, and havin’ pretty well exhausted it, he went one night on a tare and wound up in a lock-up, where old Jacob Hayes put him without knowin’ who he was, takin’ him for some drunken Frenchman. The young Murats looked for him the next mornin’, and found the future Emperor of France snorin’ off his drunk in a New York lock-up.
At one time Louis Napoleon got hard up for money. His mother, Queen Hortense, wasn’t regular in her remittances, so he borrowed some five or six hundred dollars from one of the old merchants of New York. He didn’t pay the five or six hundred dollars back at the time appointed, and the old merchant, who was a man of business, got a warrant out against him, bein’ a foreigner, and had him locked up in the debtors’ prison, in Eldridge street, where he spent his time in smokin’ and dreamin’, about the only two things he did.
While in the old Eldridge Street Jail he got some letters from France which didn’t have very encouragin’ news as to his future prospects, so he didn’t care much at that time whether he ever got back to France again or not. At any rate, he didn’t bother about gettin’ out of Eldridge Street Jail; he didn’t even write to his friends, the Murats (who were then in Washington), about his trouble, but he sat, and dreamed, and smoked, and talked a little, till one day an old farmer called Wrisley, livin’ in New York State somewhere, came to the jail to get a nephew of his out of it who was in a scrape. This old farmer saw Louis Napoleon loafin’ about, took a fancy to him and made his acquaintance. Then, before he got through, he paid all of Louis Napoleon’s debt out of his own pocket, and had the satisfaction of seein’ the Prince set free.
Louis Napoleon had a long memory, and he never forgot a slight or a favor. About twenty years after this Eldridge Street jail business, old farmer Wrisley and his wife, who got rich through a streak of luck, having “struck ile,” started off for Paris, and registered their names at one of the big hotels.
They didn’t know anybody and didn’t expect that anybody knew ‘em, but they were mistaken. One afternoon a splendid carriage drove up to their hotel door, and an equerry, all fixed up in high style, asked for Monsieur and Madame Wrisley.
Down came the Wrisleys, frightened out of their wits, takin’ it for granted that they had been arrested by the French police, of which they had read so much, and solemnly protestin’ their innocence of everythin’. But instead of being arrested they were driven right to the Tuileries, where they were ushered into the presence of the Emperor.
The Emperor was heartily glad to see the old couple, shook hands with his old friend the farmer, kissed the farmer’s dame on the cheek, and made ‘em make the Tuileries their home while they were in Paris.
Well, after getting out of the Eldridge Street Jail, Louis Napoleon got into other scrapes, and at last came across the inevitable woman.
One night, along with a French refugee called Antoine Bartol (who afterward enjoyed the favor of the President of the French Republic, though he died of delirium tremens before the President became Emperor), Louis Napoleon went to a saloon in Grand Street, near the Bowery, kept by a woman named Mercier.
Mercier’s place was a sort of “fast” and “loose” kind of a place, and was patronized chiefly by foreigners. A number of very pretty girls came to her saloon, and among ‘em was a dark, splendidly formed woman, said to be a Spanish Jewess, but whose name was then Josephine Ballabo.
Josephine was quite ladylike in her manners, and wore lots of jewelry and swell clothes. Napoleon was smitten with her, and got chattin’ and drinkin’ with her quite sociable. Within a week they got on the most intimate terms.
At first she laughed at the stores she heard ‘round town of her lover bein’ a real Napoleon and havin’ designs on France. But when one day she found out these reports were true from Napoleon himself, she “felt her oats,” as the sayin’ is, she acted as if she was a queen already. This rather amused Louis Napoleon, and just to tickle her vanity, he got talkin’ big of what he would do for her when he got back to France–if he ever got back. Of course he was only funnin’, but Josephine swallowed in every word as true.
She really got to love Louis Napoleon, and was true to him, in her way, and he seemed to care a good deal for her, though he wasn’t true, and didn’t pretend to be. Pnce he was taken sick at her room in Prince street, and she nursed him splendidly, sittin’ up with him night and day, and the doctor who was called in to attend the case said the man would never have recovered if it hadn’t been for the first-class nursing he received.
Of course when he got well again Louis Napoleon got more attached to the faithful Spanish Jewess than ever. She used to say afterward that at one time he had some notion of marryin’ her, but I guess this was a yarn, where, as they say, the wish was father to the thought, and probably nothin’ was farther from the thought of Napoleon than marryin’ anybody just then.
But at any rate it was very strikin’ and very strange, this future greatest man in all Europe–perhaps at one time of his life in all the world–lyin’ sick in a girl’s room in Prince street, New York, and bein’ saved by a woman whose very existence has been forgotten.
Napoleon was very liberal with money when he had it, and havin’ received some big remittance from Queen Hortense, his mother, he treated Josephine very nicely. But of course he felt and acted all the time like a man that was only stayin’ in New York till he could leave it, and one day he received a letter from his mother callin’ him right back to Europe again.
So he made all of his preparations to depart, called upon several of the bigbugs here who had been kind to him, and then stopped at Josephine’s room, to bid her good-bye. It was a sad partin’–sad on both sides–for even Napoleon had by this time got to be really attached to Josephine, as well as grateful to her.
The girl wanted to leave New York and go over the ocean with him at once, but that didn’t suit Napoleon’s purposes at all. So he bade her a tender good-bye, presented her with a flamin’ red silk scarf, and left in her hand a good deal of money, enough to get to carry her along pretty comfortable for some time. He promised to “send for her some day,” and with his promise he departed.
Josephine remained as true to him after his departure as before, kept herself quite lofty and exclusive, and kept waiting for Louis Napoleon to send for her. But she got older and older, and he never sent. She held on to the money as long as she could, and kept straight while it lasted. But it could not last forever, so she had to go back to her old life again. The Mercier woman was dead by this time and her saloon was turned into a grocery store. So she got into the Howard street shebangs, and settled down at Patty Wilson’s. But she was never very popular with her female companions. She couldn’t forget she had been the lover of a Napoleon, and though the other women laughed at her airs, she kept on airin’ herself. It was about the only satisfaction she could get out of her life.
She had learned to talk French by this time, and she was called by some of the men who hung around Howard street “The Frenchwoman.” This title kind of pleased her, but if any of the people to whom she would tell her Napoleon story doubted it, and, of course, some of ‘em would, she got so angry that she would almost have a fit. Altogether she got “cranky” and “queer,” and, spite of her style and good looks, didn’t do as well as she might have otherwise have done.
She sank lower and lower in New York, while the man who had once loved her and whose life she had saved was risin’ higher and higher in Paris. And she read all about President Louis Napoleon and the Emperor Napoleon III, and the empress Eugenie, and she waited and worried along, but she was never sent for.
She took to drinkin’ at last and became a common vagrant, a station house revolver, and one night while the Emperor of the French was, I suppose, with the Empress headin’ some magnificent court ball, his former mistress died of rum and want together at Blackwell’s Island.
But the next year came Sedan, and in a little while Louis Napoleon was as dead as Josephine Ballabo.
[Editor’s Notes: The source for this story was an article, “Is It a Mystery?”, published in the January, 1858 edition of Graham’s Illustrated Magazine. No author was indicated. While the premise of the column above is all too plausible–Louis Napoleon was a well-known womanizer, with many mistresses–the source article goes further and presents an outrageous theory: Louis Napoleon died while in the care of Josefina Ballabo, and his place was taken by a near double, an American named “Lyman Cloflin Bowen.”
Conveniently, so few clues are given to the existence of Josephine/Josefina Ballabo, Lyman Cloflin Bowen, and even Louise Mercier (who the author says related all these facts), that it is more probably a total fabrication.]
