Catherine Mansell, known professionally as C. M. Mayo, is an American literary journalist, novelist, memoirist, short story writer, poet, podcaster and noted literary translator of contemporary Mexican fiction and poetry.

C. M. Mayo: It’s really fascinating what you said early on how the history of Alamos, when it comes to this time especially with so many Americans. This ties in very much with the true story behind this novel (The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire) which is very much how…. I’ve begun to think of Mexican history as the subject over here under a glass dome and then American history is this subject over here under another glass dome, whereas in fact they interrelate very closely. This particular period of the novel which is the Second Empire which is roughly, roughly overlapping with our U. S. Civil War, the 1860’s. In Mexico this really was a transnational period. We really can’t think of it as purely Mexican because what it really was - you have all heard of Cinco de Mayo, I am sure. Which a lot of people who do not live in Mexico confuse with independence. This was actually the temporary defeat of the French imperial army. In the 1850’s, early 1860’s it was the greatest army in the world, the imperial army, decides it’s time to invade Mexico. It’s economy, not African style economy. Something much more ambitious, much more visionary, a crucial time, with the support of the church. If you have the support of the Catholic Church it’s not just for an invasion, it is something absolutely fundamental. It permeated all other aspects of society. With the support of the Church, the Vatican. So with other imperial Monarchies. I am not saying they enjoyed it certainly, but an important part of Mexican conservative society, the French Army invaded Mexico. At that time it is arguable that many people viewed it as a failed state. It was a modern ??. So the French in Veracruz started marching towards Mexico City. You couldn’t control the country if you didn’t control the city. The Mexico, the capitol, Mexico City. The problem is that they got on as far as Puebla, and it was a surprise, the army of the Mexican Republic defeating them. That is Cinco de Mayo. But here they are with reinforcements from France. The French retook the left, marched into Mexico City, occupied it without any serious resistance, took most of the country, not all, but most. In the Spring of 1864, brought over Maximilian von Hapsburg and his wife Carlota as Emperor and Empress of Mexico. So that was Mexico’s second empire. It was very brief. It unfortunately did not last. Well, fortunately I guess we should say. I am not, I am not, I am not a pure Maximilian person. Unfortunately it did end up in a very ugly way with his execution in Queretaro. Now the story of the novel is basically a true one. I did about 7 years of original research into it. If you read Maximillian and Juarez by Jasper Ridley, which is a wonderful book, I warmly recommend it. I loved it, but I have to tell you the chapter about the prince is all wrong. I spent 7 years researching. I lost a couple years going about dead ends and closed alleys, because a lot of what was said in there was not true. It was saying that people were married to people and they were born … it wasn’t true. The basic - I think what I’ll do is just launch into my presentation, but I’ll leave plenty of time at the end for you to questions about the research, but briefly I’ll tell you, that the family of Mexico’s first emperor, Augustin de Iturbide who also was executed in the 1820’s. His family, the widow and eight children, were exiled to the United States, and they lived in Washington, D. C. and also later Philadelphia, but mainly Washington, and this is why the archives of the Emperor Iturbide and of the Iturbide family are in the Library of Congress. They are not here in Mexico. Also the Prince - his mother was an American from a very important and very old Washington family. Mexican historians have not been aware of that. I’ve used my original research. They in turn did not know what to make of that, but I went into the Library of Congress; The Daughters of the American Revolution Society in Cincinnati; the Historical Society of Washington, D. C.; the Peabody Room at the Georgetown Library - a long list of Washington, D. C. specialists’ collections and found that her family was in fact a very important family. That explains a lot about what happened that is otherwise not something that’s really understandable. Certainly if you read the main histories like Jasper Ridley’s. Well, there are several others. None of them will really tell you what happened, because the research on the Prince had not been done. So who is the Prince? What is all this stuff? Some of you have this handout. It’s this picture. This is a slightly larger picture. I’ll pass it around so you can get a closer look. His name was Augustin de Iturbide. His grandfather was Mexico’s first emperor Augustin Iturbide. The one who was executed in the 1820’s. His father was Angelo de Iturbide, the second son of the emperor, and his mother was this American. I am going to tell you a little bit more about. He was born in Mexico City in 1863. Some of the histories say that he was born in Washington. Most of the histories say that he was born earlier, but this is simply not true. I verified this in the family archives, so anyhow, pass it around. This is a photograph called the carte-de-visite, a collectible photograph which was taken circa 1865 when he was two and a half years old and had been named a royal highness, an Imperial highness, by the Emperor Maximilian. On your handouts the first thing is just to give you a little bit closer view of the picture and also to note that on the website, cmmayo.com, I invite you to come visit if you have curiosity or want to find more on there. It’s really chock o’ block of stuff, including if you didn’t get one of the geneologies. This is also on the web page. Just as I realize it is very confusing, all these different emperors. Especially if you are not familiar with 19th century history. So you can see on here very clearly really who is related to who and how did that work. Finally, I have a list of books. I know many of you are interested in the period, and you’ll find on this list some of the main works. But I really should warn you, other than Conte Corti all of them have, when it comes to the prince, have serious errors, very serious errors. In the epilogue of my novel, I talk about the actual research and the literature of where some of the misunderstandings and mistakes are and why I think they happened. It’s attributed that I think if you …, many of you who have lived here for awhile probably already know this. If you have the material and you look at it awhile, it kind of starts to make sense. Why is this kind of mysterious, and I think the reason is that the monarchy was defeated by the Republican forces. Mexico is in fact a republic, and it should sort of go without saying, that for many years, the idea of a ?? resurgence was kind of threatening to the state. Now that we’re in the 21st century the idea of a very established monarchy seems kind of ridiculous, but let’s not forget this was something supported by the church. This was also, Mexico also lived through the very terrible period of ?? dominance. The conflict between church and state and conservatives and liberals has been something that’s kind of gone through Mexican history for a very long time, and it is quite understandable that the modern state, particularly following a revolution, did not want to go on celebrate the second empire. So the story, what it’s really about, is the foreign invasion. They were all a bunch foreigners, and they were all very bad. Nobody wants to go into it more than that. And when you look at the people who gave eye witness accounts or more pro-Maximilian histories, the whole thing with the Prince is an embarrassment. It was not something people wanted to look at very carefully, so they just kind of glossed over it really quickly or put it in a footnote. Mexican historians have not really had access to the English language archives as much as they might have gone into them. In fact when I went into the Prince’s personal archive, which is in the Catholic University ?? which is in Washington, D. C., I think I was probably one of the first people to go into it in twenty years. People haven’t looked at it. Now if you google. Augustin de Iturbide or the Prince, on all these websites, including mine, when I started my research back in the late 1990’s it took seven years, because it was on and off, but a total of seven years, but I spent more than ten years. There was nothing. Absolutely nothing. It was just. Except there were things like the chapter in Jasper Ridley’s Maximilian and Juarez or others that are full of mistakes. Anyway, what I’d like to do is just read to you a little bit from the opening of the novel, which is all based on my research. It will give you a flavor of the novel, but it’s also nonfiction. And if you have been to Washington, D. C., I assume many of you have been to Washington, D. C., and you’ve seen the National Cathedral which is up on Wisconsin Avenue. That block and a half behind that is Rosedale, and Rosedale is where the Prince’s mother was born and grew up. You wouldn’t realize what is there now. It's a really nice neighborhood of lobbyists and lawyers and doctors and the like, but back then it was one of the most important original estates in the District of Columbia, and of course, it was all farm land. So I’ll just read to you this opening section to give you a sense of who she was and who her family was.

B. K.: If we move that table when you go through your book, would that help you?

C. M. Mayo: I think I can manage it.

B. K.: With just two hands ….

C. M. Mayo: I think I can manage it. It’s just a brief bit. It’s called Rosedale.

(Reading from her book - Pages 3 - 4)

“Once upon a time there was a little girl named Alice Green who lived on what people who don't know any better would call a farm, but which her family called their country estate. Rosedale's main house was not especially fine, a clapboard box with a center hall and, upstairs, a warren of bedrooms (one of the smallest of which Alice shared with two sisters). However, it had fireplaces in every room, a gleaming piano in the parlor, and Hepplewhite-style chairs in the dining room. It was said that Pierre L'Enfant, who laid out the plan of the city of Washington, had advised with the landscaping. There were avenues of dogwood and ornamental hedges; peach, pear, cherry, fig, and apple orchards, grape arbors, strawberry bushes, vegetable patches, including sensationally prolific asparagus beds. ("O Moses," Alice's mother, Mrs Green, would lament each spring with scarcely disguised pride. "What am I to do with all this asparagus?") One might also mention their chickens, ducks, geese, prize hogs and feeding on the hilly pastures that, here and there dropped down to the wooded canyon of Rock Creek, a herd of scrupulously tended milk cows. As was common in those days, the family owned slaves; these had their dowdy little cabins out back behind the stables so as not to ruin the pleasing view from the main driveway. Rosedale crowned the heights above Georgetown, the then nearly century-old tobacco port town that had been drawn into the western corner of the District of Columbia. From the dormer window of her bedroom, Alice could see hills undulating down for the few miles yonder to the one they called Rome, where the national capitol sat: then no more than a tooth of a building. To the south, below, lay the Potomac, with its jerry-built wharves and, shooting out from the foot of the Francis Scott Key house, the rickety-looking Aqueduct Bridge. On the opposite shore, in the blue distance: the chip that was Arlington House, with its back to the fields and forests of Virginia. Alas, oftentimes this vista was sullied by smoke from one of Georgetown's paper mills or bone factories.

Rosedale had been founded by Alice's maternal grandfather, General Uriah Forrest, who had served with General Washington and, famously, lost a leg in the Battle of Brandywine. Her maternal grandmother was a Plater who had grown up at Sotterley, one of the grandest of the Maryland Tidewater tobacco plantations. But so much had been lost by the time Alice was born: decades earlier, General Forrest had been bankrupted. As for Sotterley, the story went, it had slipped from a great uncle's fingers in a game of dice.”

(End of reading)

This is absolutely crucial to understanding what happened. Mostly historians who see the name Green, and they assume she was just a ??, a middle class obscure American, and they don’t understand that in that time and that place, she was of the elite. This is enormously important in understanding how she married Augustin Iturbide and how she got involved with Maximilian von. The upshot of all this which I should have mentioned in the beginning is what makes the story very dramatic, is that Maximilian took their child. He did not adopt the child. This is what you’ll find on the internet or Wikipedia page. Maximilian did not adopt her child. He basically took him and appointed him, gave him status as a member of the household, of the royal household, and made him an imperial highness. So the question really was, how did the mother, why did she do that, why would she do that? Even having done all the research, the reason I wrote it as a novel was that I realized that none of this makes sense without understanding the emotional and family dynamics involved. So we see Alice came from a family with status; a place and a time where family with status was very important, but they didn’t have much money, so things get kind interesting from there. I would like to leave a lot of time for your questions, because I am sure, many of you are well read historians, and I would like to make sure you get to ask them to me. But I would like to do is just read you two more brief scenes to give you a certain sense of who she was, and who her husband was, and why they would get mixed up in this. This is a scene later which takes place in the White House which might seem a little exotic, but actually in Washington, in the 1850’s which is when this takes place, this was a very common event. The White House levee or Big Open House, opened the Winter social season in Washington, and of course, Washington then was a very small town. The social elite would interact with the diplomatic corp much more that they do today. Of course Americans have always had a bit of a complex about Europeans, but it was much more pronounced back in the 1850’s, we can be sure. So this scene takes place in the White House in the 1850’s.

(Reading from her book - Pages 11 - 13)

“So Alice did go to the White House levee, and in her emerald green, her grandmother’s rope of pearls around her swan-like neck, and a camellia in her hair. With her sisters and mother, she joined the throng that snaked from the foyer into the reception room. They greeted President and Mrs. Pearce, and then moved into the East Room. Anyone and everyone, but outright vagabonds and Negros, it seemed, had crowded in: there by the window tete a tete, were Senators Jefferson and Slidell; an elfin gentleman in a plug-hat and his frumpy wife admiring the chandelier; His Excellency the Baron de Bodisco, Mrs. Tayloe and Mrs. Riggs, and Mrs. Lee, and her daughter in the fleeciest of gowns and a wreath of white rosebuds. There was the usual slew of middies and army boys, and also, gawkers of which the most rustic were the Congressmen from the West (one could spot them from a country mile, and their wives in such gauche and badly made clothes.)

Leaving their mother with Mrs. Tayloe, Alice and her sisters pushed through the crowd. They moved slowly, yet somehow, she became separated from the others. For a time she wandered, shyly fanning herself. In the Green Room, the air greeted her with a freshness that hinted of long-off spring, for it was filled with a veritable forest of palm trees and ferns and staggering bouquets of hot house blossoms that camouflaged there, a pair of tres distingue gentlemen, and there, what she supposed were junior Senate clerks, and chittering away on a green and gold sofa, their wives. No one paid her the least attention, not even the waiter who bumped her and caused her to drop her fan. No gentleman stepped forward to pick it up; she had to retrieve it herself; no small feat whilst encased in crinolines. As she waded through the crowds from room to room, she was beginning to feel angry - yes, that was it. Why should she play the ghost before all these nobodies, not worth a glance from Miss Alice Green of Rosedale? She swiped a glass of punch off the next tray that came floating by; she sipped it, found it too sour, and poured the rest into a potted fern.

She had just about fixed her mind on going back outside to wait out this annoying party in the carriage, when, nerving the door, she was stopped in her tracks by an excrescence of attar of roses. Its source was known to her: an acquaintance, a new member of the parish, Madame Almonte, wife of the as-yet-to-be-seen Mexican ambassador. It seemed the poor lady had found no one to talk to either (had she just been looking out the window?). Her tired old face, at the sight of Alice, dropped its mask of anxious decorum.

‘Meez Green!,’ she said, “ in her atrociously accented English which none the less came out with the authority of a head mistress. ‘I introduced you.’ Gripping Alice firmly by the arm, Madame Almonte steered her into the crowd, around the punch bowl, and with a push at the small of her back, right in between two gentleman. Madame Almonte tugged the older man, who had the top heavy aspect of a pestle, on the sleeve.

‘I introduce you! Miss Green.’ Then, to Alice, she said, ‘His Excellency General Juan Almonte.’

And beneath heavy dark brows, two obsidian eyes now fixed themselves upon Miss Green, in nonchalant appraisal. A shade swarthier than his wife, this hawk-nosed gentleman had unmistakably Indian features, though these were compensated by side-burns well along in the process of turning a distinguished silver. He wore full court dress with gold braid (buttons straining somewhat down his middle). He bowed deeply (the fringe on his epaulettes swinging) and, with expert grace, kissed her hand.

General Almonte: Alice had heard (she forgot where) that Mexico’s ambassador had been in the Alamo with Santa Anna. He had a powerful charisma and what seemed to Alice a most peculiar sense of humor: for no reason she could fathom, he gave her a lopsided smile and then winked at his wife.

Still gripping Alice’s arm, Madame Almonte turned to the younger gentleman who had been conversing with the general. ‘Meez Green, you know our legation’s Secretary?’

There before her, also in full court dress, stood Mr. Iturbide. They recognized each other from church, but it happened that they had not yet been formally introduced.

Alice, demurely, offered her hand and curtsied. ‘Enchantee, she said,’ and Mr. Iturbide’s mustache brushed the back of her glove.

Mr. Iturbide wore the most attractive and unusual fragrance; it had (was that it?) a hint of vanilla and lime. As all Georgetown …”

(End of Reading)

(Still reading from her book)

"… knew, Mr. Iturbide was one of the sons of Mexico’s George Washington, as it were. Unlike General Washington, however, General Iturbide had set himself up as emperor. His brief reign ended with his abdication, exile to Europe, and when he, soon after, very providently returned to Mexico, his execution before a firing squad. It was under the protection of the Holy Roman Church that his widow and her children had come to Washington, to live on Georgetown’s Holy Hill, in the Jesuit College and Visitation Convent. Though the Iturbides could have, they did not use their royal titles. Having arrived here as a small boy, Mr. Iturbide spoke English just like a Yankee, and he looked, with his pallor, his sad eyes, raven-black hair and broad and thoughtful forehead, the very twin of Edgar Allen Poe. Unlike the famous writer, the debonair Mr. Iturbide gave no indication of being anything other than an exemplar of rectitude.

It was, as the French said, a coup de foudre.

(End of reading)

C. M. Mayo: So, actually if you have seen the picture of Iturbide, he really did look like Edgar Allen Poe. (Laughter) This I think - one of the most interesting things I found in the archive of the family was that, or really the archive of the Prince, was that General Almonte, who was in fact the Ambassador at that time, was the guest of honor at the wedding which was performed by a priest in the front parlor of Rosedale. Get back to the 1850’s, in Antebellum Washington, Almonte did not wait??. That’s pretty amazing. We forget that. Things are very different today. One of the really fun things, challenging things, as well, about writing this novel, was in having the Prince’s view of people in such different times was there are different values and of course that scene was written from Alice’s point of view, so from her, you know, like you are at the White House levee. Then they don’t let black people in, they don’t let colored people in the door. And then here is the Ambassador who’s kind of on the border line there. Kind of interesting. One of the things that came up was that General Almonte was in fact very much behind, he was very much an actor behind the curtains there in getting the French to invade, and getting Maximilian to come as Emperor. This was very much, he was definitely one of the schemers behind this, and as a matter of fact, once the French invaded, it took, and after the debacle of Puebla, of Cinco de Mayo, it still took a long time for them, once they occupied Mexico City, to get to the front where they could bring Maximilian von Hapsburg over. Who was regent during that period? Almonte was one of the three Regents, so naturally when Carlota, the Empress showed up she had to have her ladies in waiting, the chief dans el Palacio, one of whom was Madame Almonte. So here’s another scene. Here is another scene. This takes place in Mexico City when Maximilian and Carlota have arrived. They’ve been in Mexico long enough to get everything redecorated and ready for some entertaining. The French at this point have pacified much of the country. This is the winter of 1865, which as a contemporary journalist called it, it is the high reign of the Empire. For us, when you include our Americans, I think the Hapsburgs are kind of obscure, but if we get back to this time and this place, they were the huge enormous celebrities, glamorous people of their time. The idea that people would see them as if some movie star walked in the room. Imagine if George Clooney walked in here right now. It would electrify the room, whatever you might think of him, he’s a movie star. Well this is the kind of magnetic power that a Hapsburg would have in Mexico at that time. So this scene is based also on a lot of research in the period. So I’ll just read you this brief scene, and after that I’ll stop, and we’ll go into questions about the history and times. This takes place in winter 1865, and all you need to know about this is that Alice and Angelo and were married and living in Mexico City. The baby had just been born. They’re not yet mixed up with Maximilian. There is a - Angel Iturbide has an older sister named Pepa, with a very strong personality. And Mrs. Yorke is the character who is mentioned here. She was in fact a very prominent member of society in Mexico City, and her daughter, Sara Yorke, wrote one of the most important works on Maximilian which I’ve written about briefly.

(Reading from her book - pages 61 - 64)

“ The Winter of 1865 saw the first formal ball in the mercurial palace, and at last, the Iturbides were invited, or as Alice’s oldest brother-in-law, Agustin Geronimo, wryly put it, commanded to appear.

At the appointed evening at the appointed time (for they had been advised that latecomers would be locked out) their buggy moved slowly through the throngs of Indians and gawkers. At the main doors of the palace, French Zouaves armed with rifles and batons pushed the crowd back, away from the descending guests. Above the palace roof, illuminated with alternating red and green lanterns, the Milky Way sparkled in a chilly sky. Beneath their mantones, as they called their embroidered Chinese silk shawls, Alicia and Pepa wore gowns of satin and tulle, not new, alas, but re-fashioned by the best mantua-maker in Mexico City, after the latest patterns imported from Paris. Pepa’s decolletage glittered with one of her mama’s antique necklaces; Alicia wore her grandmother’s rope of pearls, and earrings, a gift from her husband on the birth of her first son, which were also of pearls. They had been advised that the protocol of the imperial ball was both strict and elaborate. Gentlemen had to bow, women to curtsey, one could not speak to a Highness unless spoken to. Alicia had only read about such things. By comparison, a White House levee, with its bumpkin of a President, was a rustic pile up. Oh, that Potomac backwater with its third-rate consular bureaucrats, those were as reed birds to real eagles! As donkeys to a Pasha’s elephant!

If those belles from Lafayette Square and Georgetown could see her now!”

To think that anyone had looked down upon her marrying a Mexican and going to live in Mexico. Things were going to be radically different with a Hapsburg here: that was clear to Alicia from the moment she caught sight of the Palatine Guards, Vikings in snow white coats and silver helmets shining in the dazzle of fantastic torches, and inside, the gargantuan Venetian teardrop chandeliers, dripping light over the rustling mass of perfumed guests, officers and diplomats in dress uniform, civilians in tails and white tie, the women alight with jewels. Hundreds of people, indeed perhaps a thousand, were all craning their necks. Who had been invited? Whom did one recognize? Don Roberto, que gusto! Ceci, que tal! Alicia recognized a Mexican countess, the Hungarian calvary captain who lodged down the street, the Belgian ambassador, and in a huge velvet cummerbund and a diamond the size of a garbanzo bean in his crave, Don Eusebio, the richest man in Mexico.

A buzzing roar filled the air of the stairwell.. Kisses for friends, handshakes for acquaintances, and up the crimson-carpeted stairs they swarmed, past tapestries, Sevres vases, wondrous peacock-like bouquets. Once in the main hallway, still clinging to her husband’s arm, ALivia happened to look up; the cedar beams had been gilded! It was hard to believe this was the same lice-infested wreck that Dona Juliana de Gomez Pedraza refused to inhabit, back in the 1830’s, when her husband briefly had been president. Neither had Alicia’s father-in-law lived there. (The Emperor Iturbide’s palace, so-called, was now the stagecoach hotel on the Calle de San Francisco.)

What’s more, Their Majesties were only using this palace for the formal entertainments; though they had apartments here, they hd established their Imperial Residence in Chapultepec Castle, which had lately housed the Military College. (This Alicia completely understood, for, as she had remarked to Mrs. Yorke and others, her family’s country estate, Rosedale, was at the same easy-commuting range from the city of Washington.)

In the inside of Chapultepec Castle were half as sumptuous as this, it would be something out of a fairy tale, Alicia thought, pressing her hand to her fast-pounding heart, sincerely hoping that one day she might be invited there, also.

The Imperial Palace extended the entire length of the east side of Mexico City’s Plaza Mayor. The rooms given over to the ball were one extravagant stretch of brightly lit parquet after another, all drapes and mirrors and chandeliers, until they ended with the closed doors of the throne room.

At nine o’clock the doors to the street were bolted, and now the Master of Ceremonies, with the aid of a silver baton and two assistants, divided the crowd; the ladies to line up along one wall, the gentlemen the other. The buzz faded to whispers and then a sudden hush. Alicia went up on tiptoes: yes, the doors to the throne room had swung open.

Soon she could see Maximilian in his Mexican general’s uniform greeting the men, and the empress, trailed by her ladies of honor, working her way her way down the line of women.

Carlota’s dark hair was arranged cushion-like over her ears. She was not wearing a diadem, but, a l’espagnole, a single blood red rose. Her necklace and bracelets were of diamonds; these sparkled in the candlelight. Her gown was of mint green and scarlet brocade with a train of gossamer lace. She moved smoothly, with hauteur relieved now and then by the slightest of smiles. Next to Alicia, two rotund little senoras, nervously fanning themselves, began whispering and giggling. ‘Shsh!’ Pepa scolded. It was an effort to stay back near the wall; everyone wanted a better view of the imperial couple (always, one of the assistants to the Master of Ceremonies nudged them back.) Alicia could now hear the conversation, Carlota’s murmurs of ‘Enchantee’, and some question about the work on the telegraph or, in Spanish, a bland ‘Buenas noches.’ Carlota spoke the language of each lady she addressed, a word of Spanish here, Finnish there, German, or French, or English. This daughter of the king of the Belgians spoke no less that seven languages! Alicia could feel butterflies in her stomach. She batter her eyelashes and her hand flew to her pearls: Her turn had come! She tipped her head forward and sank into the reverent curtsey she had been practicing all week.

Once straightened, Alicia was startled to realize that she and the empress were exactly the same height.

‘Buenas noches, señora,’ Carlota said, and said the same again with a slight nod, her diamonds flashing, as Pepa bowed her head (but, as her hip was troubling her, she did not curtsey). The empress was about to move on when Madame Almonte, chief lady of honor, rushed up and whispered into the empress’s ear.

Carlota turned to Alicia and said in an unnaturally slow deliberate, perfectly pronounced Spanish, ‘Senora de Iturbide, we are pleased to have you here.’

‘Ma’am, oh, delighted!’ Alicia’s voice came out strangely high.

Carlota said, switching to English, ‘Oh, you speak English?’

‘I do? I did? Oh, oh, did I -?’

Pepa interrupted: ‘She’s from Washington.’

‘A very beautiful city, I hear, with the boulevards of Monsieur L’Enfant.’ And before Alicia could recover, Carlota had moved on down the row and was greeting the wife of the Mexican foreign minister.”

(End of reading)

C. M. Mayo: So yes, she was pretty star struck. Many people were at that time, and of course, they didn’t see what was coming which was utter and total fiscal and military and political disaster. It hadn’t happened yet. That was the high reign of the Empire. As you can also see is that I think at the dialog suggests, naturally Carlota and Maximilian, who would have been a little wary of the family of the first Emperor. The first Emperor, although he was executed, still had a lot of support among conservative Mexicans. He was supported by the church. He was Mexican. So I think it was very natural for them to feel that while Maximilian was the Archduke of Austria, and his wife was the daughter of the King of Belgium, they were supported by the French army, it might be a little bit dangerous to have the family of the first Emperor here, because nationals, conservatives ?? sentiment could collapse around them. There they have that darling little child as you see in the picture, and Maximilan and Carlota did not have children. They had been married for many years and did not have children. Now in the modern world not having children is not really a big deal, for some people it is sad, but for some people it doesn’t really matter, or whatever. But when you have a monarchical form of government not being able to have children is in fact a threat to the state, to the legitimacy and viability of the state, so naturally they were very concerned about this, and it has come to light recently through archival research, not mine, someone else’s, that Maximilian was in fact trying to get his younger brother to hand over a nephew as an heir, but in the mean time, one of the ways of getting rid of the Iturbides is to coop them by making that little child the heir apparent, a Royal Highness, taking the older spinster aunt, Pepa and making her the co-??, putting her in the palace as a high ranking member of court, as a Princess, and the parents would have very generous pensions, paid in Paris. They had to go to Paris to get their money. So this deal was something that the Iturbide family approved to, and of course, my big question was, well how did his wife and he agree to this? That was really what my research for the novel was about, but the last thing I’ll say before I get to answer your questions is that basically what happened was that having agreed to this, having been star struck enough to agree to this, the parents got on the stagecoach to go to Veracruz to take the steamboat, the steamship to Europe where they would live in Paris, and get their money, but she only got as far as Puebla, and she basically had a nervous breakdown. She said, “ I can not live without my child. I just have, I’d rather die. Kill me, I’d rather die.” So she went back to Mexico City. She tried to get an audience with Maximilian, and what he did was he arrested her. He arrested her and then forcibly, literally forcibly sent her out on the road and let them go, but they had to go. They were free, but in exile. ??contradictory thing to do because the first thing the Iturbides then did was that they wrote the Secretary of State Seward, and then through knowing Secretary of State Seward who was actively trying to get the French out of Mexico, they went to the U.S. Ambassador John Bigler in Paris with the same thing, and he was actively lobbying to get the French out of Mexico, so this was an enormously powerful bit of propaganda to say, look at this ridiculous Maximilian. He has no children. He takes this child, and it actually got on the front cover, the front page of the NY Times. An observation put forward in the House of Representatives in Washington, D. C. that Maximilian had kidnapped an American citizen. Because, of course, this child was part American. It’s really quite an interesting story and that is the sum of the arc of the action of the novel. Let me just stop here and open it up to questions. Thank you. (Applause).

B. K.: Okay who wants to go first with any questions about this period, about the adoption, about any - as someone in a relationship within the U. S., you can see how powerful it was and went immediately to Seward for help. So there was very closeness between the two countries in their political actions. Are there any questions? I thought we’d be overwhelmed with questions. There’s one back there. Ellen?

Ellen Price: Yes. I want to know what happened to this little boy after Maximilan was killed?

C. M. Mayo: What happened to him afterwards, I’ll tell you. This was one of the reasons it took me so long to write the book was that I had originally thought the story would be his whole life, and then I realized that - and I’ll come back to your question - but I realized that the story needed to end the way it did, not the end of his life, the last roots of the Mexican Empire is a person. Obviously Iturbide y Green, but it’s also a symbol. The main character of the novel really - it does go into the points of view. The main character really is the Prince as a symbol, so when there’s no more symbol it’s over, but then, of course, he did have a life as a regular old human being, and it’s a really kind of an interesting life with many childhood characters. It’s all in his archive at Georgetown University, but basically, what happened was at the end of Maximilan’s reign he was debating whether or not to abdicate. That enforcement was really an unbelievable bit of wishy washiness. Although, in all honesty, he really was under an extraordinarily complex and difficult situation. He was of very conservative honor, he wasn’t sure of what the honorable thing to do, but at some point in all this dithering back and forth that he realized he could no longer protect the child, and so he, he formally gave the child back to his parents, but this was October 1866. It wasn’t physically possible to get out of the country easily, so the child was not actually returned to his parents until the Spring of 1867. Once he was returned to his parents, they lived for a time in Washington, and they also lived for a time in Mexico. He was educated in part in Europe, in England, and Belgium and in Georgetown. I found actually in the archives at Georgetown University, he was ?? So he was quite a scholar, and he was wrote some - a very big history of his family through the Philadelphia Historical Society which is also there. He was plagued by bad health. He had tuberculosis of the bone, and in the novel, there is a scene where he breaks his arm. I don’t know exactly how he broke his arm, but I do know that he broke his arm, and I do know that Dr. Sinclair, who was the court physician to Maximilian, treated the arm, and since Dr. Sinclair left his post and Dr. Bash replaced him towards the end that would probably put the accident in Cuernavaca. Although the scene is fictional, the doctor and the timing and the accident itself are true. Anyway his arm that broke as a child - later he was infected with tuberculosis, and throughout his life until he died in 1925, he suffered terribly and had to have many operations on that arm. He had a difficult time because of his health, and also because his position was very difficult. He had a lot of status, he had been associated with the Hapsburgs and he was a Prince. But I am getting - this Mexican living in Washington around the turn of the century. You know, that was problematic and ….

C. M. Mayo: Well he had agreed to the status. They were one of the old families of Washington, but you’ll recognize some of the names I mentioned in the White House scene, like Riggs, Tayloe, Lee, the Fitzgeralds were another one, the Keyes, the Greens. All these families, Lee and Costas, there were all interrelated, belong to each other, just part of old society and of course as they came into the 20th century, Washington started getting bigger, and those families started having a smaller and smaller role, and Rosedale was inherited by someone else, meaning that he would end up renting out rooms in Rosedale house on O Street. So he had a kind of a tough time. But then he made a very happy marriage. One of the things that I find extremely mysterious, is when, I mean, look at the Wikipedia entry. You really shouldn’t trust the Wikipedia entry, anyway, it says he was married to somebody that I’ve never heard of that doesn’t appear in the archives. What I can tell you from going into his personal archive, and also records of the historical society in Washington, is that he married Louise Kearney in 1915 in a Catholic mass, and she was from one of these old Georgetown Catholic families. She lived until 1967. There are several newspaper articles about her, some from the 60’s and some from the 1930’s where reporters going to interview her, because they just thought it was very curious that there was this widow of a Prince living in Washington, and she had all these photos and all these stories, and there is still a relationship with his Aunt. In fact, I know the wife of one of the relatives of the Prince, and so I was actually at her house having lunch where I saw a picture of the Prince, and I want to show you. He is a little bit older and I said, “Who is that?” She said, “That is the Prince.” I was really kind of bamboozled because I thought - wait a minute, I’ve been living in Mexico awhile. I’m married to a Mexican. I recently ?? and I never heard of the Prince - what is this? Well it turns out that Louise Kearney had come to visit in the 50’s and had given that portrait to the family, so that was kind of to his honor, but I think the rest of his life merits another book. I’m working on it. (Laughter) Any other questions?

B. K.: Anything else that we wonder about? Such a lavish period of time. It just - you made it seem so real - the colors and the splendor of it all, and then three years later, oh my goodness. It was topsy turvy, and I promised you, we have to put it off for next week. You also wander in your minds, I think, what does this have to do with Alamos? Here we are way north, way west, missionaries and miners, a very hard life, but it wasn’t, you see. Alamos was very lavish at that time, too. Of course, they were very impressed with the French and their lifestyle. They came over into Alamos a lot. But again three years later, what an affect it had on the families in this area, in this town, specifically. We’ll go into that next week. We have quite a bit of research on that. It’s so astounding - really a three year period of time had so much, not only influence on Mexico but internationally. It was a very, very colorful period and almost the last of its kind. The monarchies didn’t have very much power after that period of time. So I think??

C. M. Mayo: Oh, about Alice Green. Well the section that I read to you were all from her point of view. But actually that’s not really representative of the novel at all. In a roundabout way to answer your question, I should also mention that there are many different characters, and it goes in and out to the Prince, but we do come back to Alice in the end of the novel. She got her child back as I mentioned, and I think it’s 1872. It’s on the genealogy, her husband died in Mexico City. She was a widow, but she went back to live with her family in Washington. Then what happened, this is kind of at the end of the novel, it’s related, where she - I guess she got into a conversation with Mexico’s Minister of War, and probably she saw a lot of people who were Mexican in Washington. I know this is not in the novel, but I know that she was very close to Guillo??, Monsignor Guillo. Despite his English name was a Mexican - I forget his position, I think he was the Archbishop or something like that. He was one of the most important clerics in Mexico. Monsignor Guillo and they were all saying, well come on back to Mexico and well help you out and ensure your son has a position in the army, which was at that time a great deal of social status, being an officer, and he’’ll have a career in Mexico. So they came back to Mexico City, and he was in the ?? My guess seeing his records at Georgetown University, I think he probably would have been frustrated by the low level ?? He had not grown up in Mexico, so he had a lot of family. He had a lot of cousins. But I think he’d have the kind of social network that you would have if he grew up in Mexico. Furthermore he had this position where people, I think probably were awed by him, but resented him at the same time, and had very conflicted feelings toward him socially and his mother was American. I think he probably had a hard time fitting in comfortably. Let me just put it that way. At some point he was also, his mother was also pretty forward in many ways, and at some point he gave an interview to a newspaper in New York, and they misquoted him, and he felt that he should answer that, and so he answered it, and a Mexican newspaper called the T?? I found the clipping in his archive and the first part of it - this all makes sense. He is answering himself and this often happens with journalists, you know you say one thing and they misunderstand and it comes out something else, and you get in all sorts of trouble. So, okay then he kept going, and he starting criticizing Porfio Diaz through the T?? of Mexico. The story of the family is that he was court-martialed for criticizing Porfio Diaz. Of course in light of the Mexican Revolution as we all know, and Porfiro Diaz was a bad guy. Okay, but the truth is he was an officer in the military. If you are an officer in the military, you do not criticize the commander in chief. You don’t do that. You get court-martialed if you do, and that’s true in any form of government. So he got court-martialed and he went to jail for about a year, and his mother visited him, and then they had to leave the country, so they left the country. Then his mother came back to settle some business. She died of some disease. She got an infection from that, and she died in Mexico City. So horrible she died in 1892. That's not in the novel. ?? But that is what happens. So she died very young. She died in her 40’s, early 40’s. You have another question? We have another question? No more questions?

Audience: I have one. I don’t know if I missed, because I missed the introduction??. How did you first become interested in writing about this?

C. M. Mayo: I did talk about that a little bit at the beginning. But it was really from seeing that picture, from having met the character in ?? which is I mentioned, she was about to be ??, but at least it says she was an American and told a little bit about the ?? and then seeing the picture in my friends house. And then once I started researching it, I realized it was extremely frustrating to research, because I got to so many dead ends, but I realize that it hadn’t been told, it was a story that hadn’t been told. What had been told was superficial or was wrong, and I also realized this is really the main message of the book. It’s not an historical footnote. People said, “Oh, you are doing this tiny little story about Iturbide.” No, in your monarchy, the Prince, the heir is the living symbol of the future of the monarchy. That’s big. That’s really big if you go with that. So in a way what the novel is really about with the Prince as the main character as a symbol is this idea of what does it mean to be Mexican, but they were saying, what the French were saying, what the conservatives were saying, what the church was saying is that Mexicans should be subjects to the crown, and subjects obey. Whereas the opposition which ultimately was notorious as you know Mexicans are citizens of a Republic, and citizens participate. Very different concept of what it means. So that was when I realized, oh no, no, no, no, this is big. I think this is big, I think this needs to be told, and I realized that this story had all these mistakes, and it was in these amazing archives. I had the enormous luck really to be living in Washington for a few years during the last decade where I could very easily get into the archives, but also that English is not an issue for me. It’s my native language. A lot of these archives were in English, but I can also read Spanish. My French, I can read French. Well that said, there are a lot of the archives are in German. They’re hand written, hand written. Even if you speak German, they’re unbelievable. There are some amazing things that have got to be translated. There also is a lot in Italian, and there is a lot in Hungarian. Believe it or not, you really need many languages, and I think there is sort of an endless number of PhD’s that can be written, by just people going into the archives. If you are really hard core interested in the second Empire of Mexico, I would urge you to have a look at the book by Conrad Bratz, an autobiography. He is an Austrian who has dedicated himself to translating many important works from German into Spanish. It has never been seen by even leading Mexican historians, and some of his books are very new. One book just came out this year, there’s one that came out last year. Very recent. They are amazingly important. To have a change, an understanding of Maximilian as a person and his back ground and his court.

Audience: Why were there so many different nationalities included in his archives, his family and then?

C. M. Mayo: Well, the reason is first of all that the language of diplomacy in the 19th century was French, so a lot of things were French, just because they would be in French no matter what. Maximilian spoke German. He was the Archduke of Austria? But he also at that time had very important provinces in northern Italy, and he had been the governor of one of those provinces before coming to Mexico, so he and his personal residence, the Castila de Miramar which is actually in Trieste which is now part of Italy. People spoke Italian there. He had a lot of relations with people in Milan and of course, back then it was very important to have a relationship to the Vatican, so there was a lot of correspondence between people in his consulate in Rome. Then the Austrian Empire itself was multinational. It was the Austrian period. It was natural if you were an archduke, you would have a lot of relations with people throughout Europe. His wife Carlota was the daughter of the king of the Belgiums, she spoke French, but she spoke other languages, but her leading language was French. So when she corresponded with her father, the people, the Belgiums, who was one of Maximilan’s key supporters, all of that was in French. Once they came to Mexico, they started corresponding as much as they could in Spanish, of course, because that was the official language. So, yes, it is multi, multi .… It’s a transnational period. It really is. On many, many levels. That was why.

B. K.: One more question? Are we all done? Okay. Well I invite.

C. M. Mayo: One last one. Yes.

Audience: I really don’t think I remember you exactly explaining how you chose your nom de plumme.

C. M. Mayo: I have lots of different names, oh my god. My real name is Catherine (Catherine Mansell Carstens), and then my husband’s last name is Carstens (Agustín Guillermo Carstens Carstens). He’s Mexican, but his last name is Carstens. You probably have heard of him, because he was the Secretary of Treasury to the governor, the Bank of Mexico. Although he is Mexican, he has a German name. But then as you all know, we all who live here, when you get your driver’s license, they put your mother’s maiden name on there, so it’s Catherine Mansell Mayo and that is my mother’s name. I was originally writing as an economist as Catherine Mansell Carstens, and when I started to do literary work, I wanted to distinguish it, because it’s just a completely different thing, so I thought, well, what can I call myself, I don’t know. I chose C. M. Mayo because it’s based on my real name, Catherine Mansell Mayo. But in fact, it doesn’t really tell you anything. Mayo can be like Cinco de Mayo, but it’s actually an Irish name, from the Cliffs of Mayo. A lot of people think it’s Italian. It could be anything. The reason I like that is because I believe that with fiction what you really want to do as an author is bring your reader in so that they are not looking at you. As a matter of fact, on the book, my publisher insisted on putting my picture on it, on the jacket, which I really wasn’t very happy about, because then as you are reading the book, looking at this blond American woman, which I think kind of takes you out of the story, and what I want is for the reader to not pay attention to me. Just come into the story. I want you to come into the story. That’s why I chose that. I’ll just end by handing this powerful thing back over to you.

B. K.: No keep it.

C. M. Mayo: I want to thank you. I’ll also want to invite you to visit the webpage because on there I have a list of all the genealogy and a lot of photos and a lot of really rare ?? that the copywriter has expired, so I was able to put on the webpage. Some of them are really funny and unusual. I don’t know if Carlota’s ladies in waiting as an elderly woman was interviewed by ??. Things like that you will find on there and also a tab on the library of Congress where I went into a lot more detail about the archives. Thank you very much.

Audience: Applause.

B. K.: I think that is just a sample of what you will find in the book, with her wonderful descriptions and taking you into that period, so that you see it and you feel it and hear it, the music, all of that sort of thing. And if you’re interested in that we have the books available for you even though ?? by Clay and Barbara LaForce. And they have sent the books over. You may purchase them as you leave. It can be autographed, dedicated to you. Did the books come today - anybody saw then in the back? What we’re going to do …. They weren’t here when we started, were going to set up a table out here, and Louise Mcpherson very ….

Transcribed by Ellen Ryan, Alamos History Association

June 26, 2021