432
NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. iv. NOV. 25, 1911.
down in a little house in the Rue du Cirque,
near the Elysee Palace, which was the
President's residence. Here the President
spent the evenings when he could escape
from the Elysee, in company with Fleury and
his intimates, including a few Englishmen,
such as the Marquess of Hertford. When
Louis Napoleon, in the months preceding
the proclamation of the Empire, removed
to the Chateau St. Cloud, Miss Howard
created great scandal by insisting on follow-
ing him, and she clung very closely to him.
Count Horace de Viel - Castel, in his spiteful ' Memoirs ' (vol. i. p. 123), notes under date of 30 Oct., 1852, that there was a State performance at the Opera, at which the President was well received, adding :
" Better-disposed persons were shocked to see the President's mistress, Mrs. Howard, covered with diamonds, in one of the principal boxes ; it had a very bad effect."
In the following January Napoleon married, and it required large payments, much diplomacy, and even threats of police action to quiet the furious anger of the lady who had aspired to share the highest dignity of the Empire. She received the title of Countess de Beauregard, and up to the beginning of 1855 had been paid 218,OOOL, but still demanded more. She met in Italy a young Englishman, Mr. Clarence Trelawney, son of Mr. Brereton Trelawney, one of the Cheshire Trelawneys. Clarence Trelawney, who had been an officer in the Austrian Hussars, married her at Florence on 16 May, 1854. The settlement quoted in the Chan- cery Court was made upon the Countess de Beauregard, her husband Clarence Tre- lawney, and upon their children, as she should by will appoint.
The marriage was an unhappy one ; there were no children, and after her hus- band's death in 1861, the Countess de Beau- regard left these funds upon trust for her son, Martin Constantine Haryett, Count de Bechevet, for life.
The Count de Bechevet was generally supposed to be a son of Louis Napoleon, who was induced to confer a title upon him, but there is some doubt whether he was not the son of Major Mountjoyj Martin, the lady's earlier " protector."
During the winter of 1864 the Countess de Beauregard, still furious at her desertion by the Emperor, made herself notorious in Paris by driving her superb bays in the Bois de Boulogne, so as to meet and stare at the Emperor and Empress, and by turning her opera-glasses too frequently upon them at public theatrical performances. She died
on 19 Aug., 1865, at her chateau of Beaure-
gard. Two years later her son, the Count
de Bechevet, married Mile, de Csuzy, of a
noble Hungarian house. He died in 1907,
leaving behind him a son, Count Richard
Martin de Bechevet, and two daughters,
Madame Ann Haryett de Freminville and
Countess Charlotte Grizille de Bechevet.
All these children were living at the time of
the Chancery litigation of 1909.
ROBT. S. PENGELLY. Clapham Park.
Miss Howard was the assumed name of Elizabeth Anne Hargett. She was born in England about 1817, and became notorious in London as a courtesan of great beauty. Prince Charles Louis Napoleon first met her when he came to London after his expulsion from Switzerland in 1838 ; she was his mistress in London, 1838 to 1840, when she lent him all her savings (40,OOOZ.) towards the equipment of his historic adven- ture at Boulogne. The security for this loan was a mortgage on the estate of Civita Nuova in the March of Ancona, which the Prince had inherited from his mother's husband. The mortgage was annulled by payment to her of 40,OOOZ., 24 March, 1853. She is said to have corresponded with the Prince during his imprisonment at Ham,. Oct., 1840, to May, 1846, when he escaped, and the liaison was renewed. She resided in Paris from 1848, at first in the Hotel Meurice in the Rue de Rivoli, and, when the Prince became President, at 14, Rue du Cirque, close to the Elysee Palace. She is said to have lent the Prince 8,000,000fr. at the time of his election as President. He became Emperor of the French, 2 Dec., 1852, and married Eugenie, Countess of Teba, 29 Jan., 1853, the day after which he created Miss Howard Countess de Beauregard, and handed her the title-deeds of an estate on the Versailles road called Beauregard. She received from the Emperor down to 1 Jan., 1855, 218,000?., including the 40,OOOZ. mortgage paid off. She married at St. James's, Piccadilly, 16 May, 1854, Clarence Trelawny, an officer in the Austrian Hussars. He obtained a divorce in Paris, February, 1865. To defy the Empress, Miss Howard drove in the Bois de Boulogne in an open carriage with servants in the imperial livery. For some time all Paris was diverted by the presence of the two Empresses. This caper was costly to Miss Howard, as she was (it is said) smothered or strangled in her bed by the police, acting under orders, at the Chateau de Beauregard, Paris, 20 Aug., 1865. Her son
