According to her Wikipedia article, her ancestry was interesting and her life was even more interesting:
“...She was born in Waterford, Ireland, a granddaughter of Lucien Bonaparte (making her Emperor Napoleon I's great-niece) by his second wife, through the marriage of his daughter Letizia to Sir Thomas Wyse, an Irishman, British plenipotentiary at Athens, and Member of Parliament. However, she was born after her mother had been separated from Wyse for three years, and her biological father was British Army officer Captain Studholm John Hodgson (1805–90).
She was educated in Paris. In December 1848, aged seventeen, Marie (secretly called Marie-Studholmine) married Frédéric Joseph de Solms (1815–63), a rich gentleman from Strasbourg who soon left her to go to America. Marie, known as the "Princess de Solms", remained with her mother, who kept a brilliant salon in Paris frequented by Victor Hugo, Eugène Sue, the younger Alexandre Dumas, and other writers.
In the early 1850s Marie had an affair with Count Alexis de Pommereu that produced a son in 1852. In February 1853, French authorities ordered her expulsion from the Empire, after accusations that she had illegally bore the name Bonaparte and had stirred up "scandalous disorders." There were however reports that Emperor Napoleon III had secretly paid his beautiful young cousin a number of visits, that the jealous Empress Eugénie had learned of the visits and told her husband that Marie maintained a salon of subversives, and that he had thereafter ordered her expulsion.
In August 1853 Marie settled at Aix-les-Bains in Savoy, then part of the Kingdom of Sardinia, where her lover (Pommereu) built her a chalet that soon became the center of a new literary salon. She went often to Turin, the kingdom's capital, where she established yet another salon at the Hôtel Feder. She maintained friendships with Hugo, Sue, Dumas and others, including Lajos Kossuth, Alphonse de Lamartine, Félicité Robert de Lamennais, Henri Rochefort, Tony Revillon, and the United States minister to Sardinia, John Moncure Daniel.
In 1859 Napoleon III's profligate cousin, Prince Napoleon, was betrothed to Clotilde, the fifteen-year-old daughter of King Vittorio Emanuele II of Sardinia. This was done as part of an agreement concluded by the king's prime minister, Count Cavour, to guarantee French support for Sardinia in the oncoming war to free northern Italy from Austrian occupation. (The king, openly unhappy with the betrothal, was secretly pleased.) Turin society was scandalized when the Princess de Solms flouted the emperor by appearing at the betrothal ball on the arm of U.S. Minister Daniel.
She was an early woman journalist, and through Sainte-Beuve, Marie contributed to Le Constitutionnel under the pen name "Baron de Stock". She also wrote for the Pays and the Turf. After Savoy was annexed to France (1860) as another part of the agreement between Napoleon III and Cavour, Marie went back to Paris where she played a prominent part in the literary and social events of the time. She gathered in her salon men of all shades of opinion. In 1863, her husband having died, she remarried the Piedmontese statesman Urbano Rattazzi, and lived with him in Italy where she was known as "Divina Fanciulla". After his death in June 1873, Madame Rattazzi returned to Paris, and a few months later married her Spanish friend, under-secretary Don Luis de Rute y Ginez (1844–89), whom she also outlived. Marie died a widow in 1902 in Paris.
She had one son, Alexis de Solms (1852–1927), fathered by her lover, Count Alexis de Pommereu; one daughter, Romana Rattazzi (1871–1943), by her second husband; and two adopted daughters, Teresa de Rute (1883–89) and Dolores de Rute (1885–88), with her third husband…”
“But," as USA television advertisements often intone, “wait! There’s more!”
According to the article "Mariae Letizia Studolmina Wyse Rattazzi" posted to Rocaille on 9 June 2013 (not well-translated by Google so errors in who plotted what may exist) a trial was held in December 1891 in Angoulêmefor attempted (?) murder involving Maria de Rute (née Bonaparte-Wyse, the subject of this Subalbum), Charlotte Mortier Bouly de Lesdain, and Bouly de Lesdain. Charlotte worked at Matinées Espagnoles, Marie Laeticia’s publication.
The Google translation is approximately: "Who was Charlotte Mortier Bouly de Lesdain? Also according to Milletti's research, from which this information is drawn, the newspapers of the time describe her as a maid, a lady who followed Rattazzi everywhere, and her secretary 'with a salary of one hundred francs a month, besides lodging, clothing and the intimate friendship of the princess, who could no longer live without her’ - ‘a skinny-blonde figurine, with big clear and deep eyes, with a disdainful look, who always brought, with a marked preference, the first cup of tea to her mistress.’ Charlotte's father entrusted her to the princess when she was 23, de Rute was 50, and ‘in a short space of time, Carlotte became the intimate friend, inseparable companion, the business manager, the princess's jack-of-all-trades, who could not even leave at night and did not allow her to sleep anywhere but in her bed... When the two friends who, despite sex and age disparity, lived like two lovers, did not get along ...the princess recalled to the order Carlotta with some arguments... accompanied by lashes and slaps.’
In 1886 a husband of convenience was found for Charlotte, Bouly de Lesdain, who married with a pact that they remained far away "so as not to disturb the secretary of the Matinées Espagnoles in her delicate occupations.” This did not happen - two children were born, although they lived only a few months. Madame Rattazzi (Bonaparte-Wyse) was very jealous of de Lesdain and of Delbeuf, presumed lover of Charlotte. So de Rute, jealous to insanity, tried to have Delbeuf and Charlotte murdered. Her husband, warning him of an affair between the two, sent him a railroad ticket, a revolver, and fifty francs.”
Several images in this Subalbum come from this Rocaille article.
