Some of these women, while admittedly beautiful, were little more than demi-monde:


Eliza Blakeney was a daughter of Hannah Blakeney of Tappan in Rockland County, New York. By some accounts she was a waitress in a bar and some sources contend that she may have been married to a Mr. Parker. No one, however, contests the fact that she was uncommonly beautiful. She met and bedazzled musician and conductor Alfred Musard (1828-1881) whose French father, Philippe Musard (1793-1859), was known as “King of the Quadrille.” The father popularized outdoor concerts in New York City then did the same in England where he began the annual summer musical tradition now known as “the Proms.” He was also the first composer to use trombones to play the melody and even conducted for Queen Victoria. While the son was not as well-known as his father, he was far better looking. Alfred Musard and Eliza promptly left for Paris where they were married.

In Europe her beauty caught the attention at Baden of King William III of the Netherlands (1817-1890) who had married in 1839 his first cousin, Princess Sophie of Wurttemberg. Although the marriage produced three sons (all of whom pre-deceased their father), it was not happy. The King preferred a life of lasciviousness that led the New York Times to refer to him as “the greatest debauchee of the age.” Eliza Musard became his acknowledged mistress and was even given palace apartments. Queen Sophie, corresponding with a friend in 1867, wrote, “It is whispered his relation with that horrid woman, Musard, is breaking off … I find a dull court, scenes of intemperance, daily drunkenness.”

“The Belle Madame Musard,” as she was called, pressed the King to make her position more tenable, particularly as she was still married to her husband. One day King William took from his writing table a package of old mortgages to land in Pennsylvania and gave them to Eliza. She quickly realized their worth and foreclosed, immediately becoming the owner of some of the richest untapped petroleum fields. As a result, she became enormously wealthy. The King’s eldest son, the Prince of Orange, was said to be “green with rage” as he was heavily in debt and had to beg his father for what small allowances he was given.

Princess Caroline Murat wrote of Eliza, “She was exceedingly beautiful; her beauty was great enough to be resented by many who could not claim so large a share of that distinguishing quality at a time when to be beautiful was even more desirable than to be clever or wealthy. Those who envied Madame Musard, however, affected to console themselves with remembrance of her origin.”

Eliza’s fortune could not have come at a better time as she overplayed her hand. The King was negotiating to sell his Duchy of Luxembourg, of which he was Grand Duke, to the French. Eliza indiscreetly mentioned that fact to the famous courtesan Marquise de Paiva (born Esther Lachmann in a Russian ghetto) who told her lover (whom she later married), Count Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck. Once Germany knew of the King’s plans, war was threatened as Luxembourg was committed to neutrality. The sale of the Duchy was ended, as was the King’s relationship with Madame Musard.

Eliza moved to Paris with her ever-growing wealth and established a sumptuous hotel in the Champs Elysées where she built a palatial stable for her eighty horses. At a dinner she gave for the Prince de Chimay she wore a dress embroidered with three thousand pearls. Her frequent breakfast entertainments attracted writers and artists who were served alternate courses by “three coal-black negroes” and three white servants, all of whom wore “velvet knee breeches, white silk stockings, shoes with silver buckles, and powdered wigs.” The New York Tribune reported that, “Mme. Musard’s equipages were more magnificent than those of the Empress Eugénie.” One social observer of the day wrote of Madame Musard, “She pays as much for one horse as her husband gains by his music in a year.” She bought a country mansion at Villeguier outside Paris, and also purchased the palatial Villa Pizzo on Lake Como and added small bells to the roof because she liked the sound they made when stirred by the wind.

Such excess could not continue, however. Her long-suffering husband was sent to Algiers for his health and died there. Madame Musard was kicked in the face by one of her expensive horses and was permanently blinded and disfigured. She ended her days in an insane asylum and her vast wealth passed to her American family in New York who lived on it for many years. Her former lover, King William III, was widowed in 1877 and two years later married Princess Emma of Waldeck (his third choice), who was 41 years younger than he. She exerted a beneficial influence over his later years and they had one child, Wilhelmina, who would become the first of three successive reigning queens of the Netherlands.