In the rough, dizzying, and tumultuous days of September 1870, following France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and the capture of Emperor Napoleon III, a woman in a carriage in Lisieux stunned onlookers by standing up and, addressing a policeman who was abusing his authority, declaring, “I am the Empress, and I order you to let that man go.” A gentleman beside her in the carriage made signs to the witnesses that the woman was, of course, mad, and after that no one paid any more attention to the carriage or its eccentric passenger.
Only the woman wasn’t mad. She was, in fact, Empress Eugénie, wife of French Emperor Napoleon III, and she was fleeing for her life. The incident with the policeman was a faux pas in which she momentarily forgot herself and the need for disguise. She forgot the recent days of swirling sorrow, danger, and constant fear, forgot the juggernaut of the Prussian army, forgot her husband’s military disaster at Sedan, forgot the revolutionaries who took advantage of it all to topple the Empire and establish the Third Republic, forgot the Paris mob who wanted her head, and forgot the unknown fate of her son. She was, for a moment, once again, simply the Empress, mistress of France and Regent in her husband’s absence, seeking to end the injustice of an overzealous policeman.
Fortunately, her companion who invented the explanation of madness on the spot, was less forgetful. He was a quick-thinking, energetic, level-headed, and loyal man, her unlikely protector in the darkest hour of her life, and, of all things, an American dentist named Thomas W. Evans.
The Hour of Need
How was it that the wife of Emperor Napoleon III turned to a foreign-born dentist, not a general, diplomat, or spy to get her out of a France bubbling with instability, the threat of bloodshed, and a renewed hatred for all things monarchical? The answer was that he was one of the few people she could trust during that utter extremity of need. Others, such as the Gen. Louis Trochu, had already betrayed her. As the French government unraveled, friends abandoned the Empress. Her own servants had begun unabashedly stealing things in front of her nose. Virtually no one came to her aid.But the American dentist was a friend of hers, a man whose skill and professionalism had won him the respect of many European monarchs and aristocrats, and a man with a reputation of being trustworthy. And so after a harrowing exit from the Tuileries Palace—with the Paris mob in their blood-red caps surging at the gates and shouting “To the guillotine!”—she made one last final gamble and showed up unexpectedly at the doctor’s residence in Paris, accompanied by one faithful courtier.
She stood there shaken but undaunted, beautiful and battered, yet unbroken. She maintained her sense of duty and dignity even with her world crumbling about her shoulders. She said to him, “Monsieur Evans, I have no friends left but you. I come as a fugitive to beg your help. I am no longer fortunate. The evil days have come, and I am left alone.”
She had come to the right man.
Dentist Extraordinaire
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In 1847, the ambitious young Dr. Evans, coming from a Philadelphia Quaker family, traveled to France with his wife to take up a position with a premier dental practice run by Dr. Cyrus Brewster in Paris. Brewster’s clients were the elite of the city, and Evans quickly became connected with the upper echelons of society.
He pioneered the use of nitrous oxide and gold fillings, as well as better sanitation procedures in field hospitals for wounded soldiers. His reputation soared when he successfully treated the toothache of Louis Napoleon (the future Napoleon III) and received his endorsement. Soon, other European heads of state, including the Prussian and Russian imperial families and British royals, sought his services—and his confidence. The doctor had a talent for discretion, not to mention a neutrality when it came to European politics, since he was American.
He became an unofficial diplomat and a back door of communication between governments that wanted things kept off the record. John Bigelow, the U.S. Consul General at Paris, reported that “It sometimes happens, when the crowned-heads of Europe wish to communicate with one another without any responsibility, they send for Dr. Evans to fix their teeth.”
Evans didn’t charge his illustrious clients for their dental work, but they nevertheless paid him in the form of extravagant gifts. This is one reason Evans accumulated quite a collection of art and jewelry by the end of his life. On top of all that, he helped found the first American newspaper published in Paris.
The Escape
Perhaps it was Evans’s connections in high places that allowed him to predict the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War and warn other Americans at a large party on July 4, 1870. The French grossly overestimated their own readiness and ability to defeat the well-disciplined, well-equipped, machine-like Prussian military. Through clever maneuvering, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck goaded the pugnacious French into attacking in July 1870, and total defeat quickly followed for the French, culminating in the capture of the French army and its emperor, Napoleon III, at Sedan.It was at this point that France—which had careened giddily back and forth between republic and monarchy since the French Revolution in 1789—revolted once again to end the Second Empire and establish the Third Republic. A republic, of course, couldn’t have an emperor or empress. The grisly fate of previous French monarchs Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI was well-known. Empress Eugénie now faced the same danger.
So there she was, pleading for help from the American dentist, who, as a man of honor, could never refuse to give aid. He set to work immediately planning their escape—even as guests for his dinner party arrived. With the help of his friend Dr. Edward Crane, Evans excused himself from the dinner and hatched a plan to get the empress to Deauville in Normandy, and from there, across the channel to England.
Providentially, Evans had a pass from the British Embassy that had been created for a British doctor and his female patient. This would be their cover: Crane would be the doctor, Eugénie his patient, Evans the patient’s brother, and Madame Lebreton, Eugénie’s one attendant, the nurse.
With these disguises, they set off the next morning, Evans carefully placed Eugénie in the least visible section of the carriage, which helped them get past the guards at the city gates. During the harrowing 100-mile journey, they decided to switch carriages a few times and traveled a short distance by train. There were several close calls. In addition to the incident with the policeman, a stationmaster gazed intently at the Empress when she pulled back her veil on the train; they feared a drunken unit of the Gardes Mobiles had discovered them (but he turned out to be oblivious), and a police agent searched the yacht that took them to England not long before the Empress boarded it.
This yacht belonged to an Englishman, Sir John Burgoyne, whom Evans and Crane approached once they reached the channel. Evans explained the delicate situation they were in and tried to play upon Burgoyne’s sense of chivalry. In the end, Burgoyne reluctantly agreed to give them passage to England, and his wife proved to be a hospitable hostess to the former Regent of France. A major storm buffeted and beat upon the little yacht, a fitting emblem of the stormy days that the imperial family had suffered. But the ship held true, and safely came to rest at Rye Roads, Isle of Wight. Safe at last, the little party drank a toast to the Empress.
Living on After the End
Evans arranged for housing for the Empress in a country house called Camden Place, which was similar to a French chateau and located near London. Eventually, Eugénie’s husband and son joined her in exile, but life would never be the same. The gilded galleries, the jewels flashing with fire, the bowing courtiers, the smiling sovereigns, the rich embroidery, the fine gowns spooling out upon the floor, and the banquets of sumptuous delicacies—the entire world of elegance and courtly behavior was gone forever. In a few short years, Eugénie would lose what was even more precious: her family. First, her husband died of illness in 1873, then her son died adventuring in Africa during the Zulu War of 1879.She passed into the veil of grief and mourning, a woman living on, as she herself intimated, long after her time. She was a ghost of a vanished world, wearing black and fading from memory, her face becoming indistinguishable from the crowd, like the contours of a landscape as evening falls.
But she held onto one thing all the way to the end: the friendship and the memory of a courageous man who risked so much when he had nothing to gain for himself. When Empress Eugénie was invited to the laying of the cornerstone of the Evans building—part of Evans’s endowment to the University of Pennsylvania for a dental school—she said, “I am reminded of his sincerity, the proof of which he gave me in the darkest hours of my life.”
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