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Saturday 15 April 1893
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I -
Monte Carlo.
THE MEN WHO RUN IT.
THE principal and managing partner of the concern is M. Edmond' Blanc, chevalier of the Legion of Honor, Mayor of La Celle St. Cloud, and the proprietor of one of the principal racing stables of France. His wife,., still a beautiful woman, being mayoress, is at present at the head of the local charities, and president of an import
La Salle du Trente et Quarante," Monte Carlo.
ant district school directed by a number of
nuns.
The latter, good and holy women that they are, merely see in Mme. Edmond Blanc a pious benefactress, and have manifestly never set their eyes on the peculiar decollete photographs of the lady
which are still to be found in the out-of-the way shops in Paris.
For Mme. Edmond Blanc was formerly known in the demi-monde of the French capital by the name of Alice Marot. For a few months she acted subordinate parts at the Palais Royal Theatre ; but her histri- onic powers had evidently not at that time attained their present high state of development, since she was dismissed for incompetency.
In 1886, or thereabouts, she made the acquaintance of M. Edmond Blanc, and at once took up her abode with him, but it was not until a couple of years ago that she succeeded in getting him to marry her,
the wedding taking place on January 9,
1890.
M. Edmond Blanc himself is indebted for his cross of the Legion of Honor to the fact that he invested £5000 in the newspaper LA. PETITE FRANCE, owned by M. Daniel Wilson, the son-in-law of President Grévy ; that is to say, he acquired the decoration by purchase, since all the payments to M. Wilson for crosses of the order which he sold were made under the guise of subscriptions to LA PETITE FRANCE.
Henri Rochefort, whose passion for the turf is as well known as the sharpness of his tongue and pen, on being asked why M. Blanc had been decorated, replied wittily : *' Oh, I suppose it was for having stopped a horse." The hidden meaning of this will become apparent when I explain that M. Edmond Blanc has on more than one occasion been nearly lynched on the metropolitan and suburban racecourses of Paris for having caused the favorite to be
pulled.
The first time that he exposed himself to a charge of thia kind was at a race at Auteuil some years ago at which I happened to be present. M. Blanc on that occasion entered two of his horses for one and the same race, one described as Sphynx un dei his own name, the other, Kapural, undei the name of his trainer. Sphynx, famous as the winner of many great races, was the popular favorite, whereas Kapural equally though far less favorably known was regarded as an outsider.
From the very start Sphynx led the field
and would assuredly have won the race had not his jockey deliberately pulled him, in order to permit Kapural to pass' by and win the race. The popular tumult which ensued on the course and in the enclosure was indescribable, and increased tenfold when it was learned from the bookmakers that all M. Blanc's bets had been made on Kapural instead of Sphynx.
The Jockey Club stewards at once ordered an investigation, which resulted in Kapural being disqualified from thenceforth upon
both the French and the English turf, and in the "warning off the course" for ever of M. Blanc's trainer, who had taken upon himself the entire blame of the affair. He now lives in Germany, a pensioner on the bounty of M. Blanc.
A similar incident with analagous re- sults took place at the Beauville races a.
year or two ago.
The same thing took place at the Grand Prix last summer, when M. Blanc's Reuil, a horse which had been held back so as to come in last but one at the Epsom Derby, and which was therefore regarded as an outsider by the innocent public, won the the race. Presumably, it was due to these peculiar manouvres of M. Blanc that M. Carnot refused to comply, either in
1891 or in 1892, with that cus- tom which re-
quires that the Sovereign or President of the republic should give his audi- ence at the palace to the
winner of the Grand Prix on
the day after
the race.
Prince Con- stantine Rad
ziwill, part proprietor of the Monte Carlo e stablishmen t, and brother-in law of M. Ed- mond Blanc, owes his entire
fortune to hiß marriage with Mlle. Sophie Blanc. . Of illustrious Russian descent (his ' family possesses the titular dukedom of Olika Nieswiez, Duhinski and Birze),he is, nevertheless, the least respectable and least respected of the four part proprietors of the gambling establishment.
The younger son of an impoverished branch of his family, he lived the life of a disreputable adventurer until marriage, dependent for a living, like Prado and Pranzini, upon the bounties of the frailer portion of the fair sex. His means of livelihood, indeed, appeared so very questionable to the police authorities of Brussels, where he resided for a time prior to his marriage, that he was politely invited to take his departure from Belgium.
It is hardly necessary for me to add that Prince Constantine, and, of course, his wife as well, are completely ostracised by all the best Parisian society, as -well as by the foreign diplomatic corps, and not- withstanding his. Russian birth and titles, neither the Prince nor yet the Princess Constantine Radziwill have eyer yet been permitted to set their foot inside the Russian embassy at Paris. In the same manner the Court and Society of Berlin, Vienna, St. Petersburg, and, indeed, of
capital of Europe, have closed their doors against them.
Prince Roland
Bonaparte, the third member of the firm which owns the
Monte Carlo gamb- ling establishment, is, like his brother in-law, Prince Rad ziwill, indebted to his union with Ed- mond Blanc's sister, Marie, for his pres- ent affluence, since at the time of his marriage he was absolutely penni-
less.
Unlike Prince Radziwill, however, he possesses neither . illustrious birth and ancestry nor yet authentic birth ; for, as I stated above, he is neither entitled to assume
the title of prince
nor the name of
Bonaparte. His
mother was not married to his father at the time of his birth, which took place at Paris in 1858, for, riot
?OTif.hfttandinfi'' the
fact that the ordinary correct ALMANACK DE OOTHA gives the date of their union as March 22, 1853, the marriage was really celebrated for the first time on December 30, 1861, at the French Legation at
Brussels.
Roland's father was the Prince Peter Bonaparte, who was famed as being the the most' disreputable member of Napoleon II L's family. In his young days he had been obliged to flee from Italy in conse- quence of -his murder of a gamekeeper who had attempted to prevent him from poach- ing on private property.
Nor was this the only blood with which his hands were stained, for in January, 1870, he shot down in his own house at Paris the French journalist, Victor Noir,
The Tèrrace of the Casino, Monte Carlo.
who, together with M. de Fon vielle, had called ¿or the purpose of making the final arrangements for a duel which was to take place between their friend, M. Grossett, and the Prince. It Was this last crime of Prince Peter which precipitated the over- throw of the Empire in France. So much
for Roland's father.
His'mother was the daughter of a plumber, and became acquainted with Prince' Peter Bonaparte for the first time in 1853, when not only she, but also her sister Eliza, became attached to the Prince's household. Both bore children to the
Princë. *
Both' sisters remained with the Prince until 1869, when the Prince succeeded in marrying off Eliza to an official of the
Octroi, ór metropolitan Customs adminis- tration. The marriage, however, did not turn out well. The couple are now divorced, and Roland'* aunt lives on a pension he allows her.
After the war of 1870 Prince Peter lost the allowance of £5000 which, he had received up to that time from his cousin, the Emperor Napoleon III., and, having no longer any means of subsistence, pro-, ceeded to desert his two children and Justine, who had meanwhile become his
wife.
The Prince is now endeavoring to secure the hand of Princess Letitia, daughter of the late Prince Napoleon, and widow of King Humbert's brother, the late Duke of Aosta. Should that marriage ever take place, Prince Roland oonsiders that he will be in a position to put forward his claim to the chieftaincy of the Bonapartist
party.
In 1891 he received as his share of the profits a net sum of £40,000.
In addition to this, the firm, in accord- ance with the terms of its contract, paid to him his civil list of £20,000, and de- frayed the entire expenses both of his household and of his Government. A careful perusal of the contract between the Prince» as ruler of Monaco, and the firm of Monte Carlo, will show conclusively that he has the power and the right to termin- ate the lease at any time. He should, therefore, bear the full moral responsibility of ail the iniquities, practised at Monte
Carlo.
The Prince's present wife, the widowed Duchesse de Richelieu, a daughter of the Parisian Hebrew banker, Heine, did not bear the very best of reputations previous to her marriage. She has been the heroine of several sensational scandals, and is known not only to have lived with the Prince of Monaco, but also to have borne him two children previous to her being united to him in the bonds of matrimony.
Her character, indeed, was so notorious . that the Prince's father, the late Charles 1 III. of Monaco, would not hear of the match, which he pronounced as in every way unworthy even for his son, and it
waB not until several weeks after his death that the wedding took place.
Although the Prince possesses a long string of titles, and is received with the honors due to a crowned head at certain of the courts of Europe, yet the blood that runs in his veins is of a very plebeian character, and his grandmother, Marie Louise Gilbert, was the daughter of a sm all shopkeeper in Paris, while his grandfather was an actor at the Ambiguë Theatre in the French metropolis.
His existence as a reigning sovereign tends to bring royalty into contempt and ridicule, while his life as an individual is of a character almost as ignoble as that of Prince Constantine Radziwill, whose vices are of the most indescribable character.