Intimate Enemies: The Two Worlds of the Baroness de Pontalba

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Born into wealth in New Orleans in 1795 and married into misery fifteen years later, the Baroness Micaela Almonester de Pontalba led a life ripe for novelization. Intimate Enemies, however, is the spellbinding true account of this resilient woman's life -- and the three men who most affected its course.

Immediately upon marrying Celestin de Pontalba, Micaela was removed to his family's estate in France. For twenty years her father-in-law attempted to drive her to abandon Celestin; by law he could then seize control of her fortune. He tried dozens of strategies, including at one point instructing the entire Pontalba household to pretend she was invisible. Finally, in 1834, the despairing elder Pontalba trapped Micaela in a bedroom and shot her four times before turning his gun on himself.

Miraculously, she survived. Five years later, after securing both a separation from Celestin and legal power over her wealth, Micaela focused her attention on building, following in the footsteps of her late, illustrious father, Andres Almonester. Her Parisian mansion, the Hotel Pontalba, is today the official residence of the American embassy in France; and her Pontalba Buildings, which flank Jackson Square in New Orleans, form together with her father's St. Louis Cathedral, Presbytere, and Cabildo one of the loveliest architectural complexes in America.

As for Celestin, he eventually suffered a total physical and mental breakdown and begged Micaela to return. She did so, caring for him for twenty-three years until her death in 1874.

In Intimate Enemies, Christina Vella embroiders the compelling story of the Almonester-Pontalba alliance against a richly woven background of the events and cultures of two centuries and two vivid societies. She provides a window into the yellow fever epidemics that raged in New Orleans; the rebuilding of Paris, the Paris Commune uprising, and the Second Empire of Napoleon III; European ideas of power, class, money, marriage, and love during the baroness' lifetime and their inflection in the New World setting of New Orleans; medical treatments, legal procedures, imperial court life, banking practices, and much more.

Combining the historian's meticulous research with the biographer's exacting knowledge of her subject and the novelist's gift for narrative, Vella has crafted a rare cross-genre work that will capture the imagination and admiration of every reader.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Nineteenth-century New Orleans and Paris were towns of magnificent balls, squalid smells, unstable governments and bungling quack doctors. Both cities were home to Micaela Almonester, the Baroness de Pontalba, and both are still home to her legacies: the Parisian Htel Pontalba, and the Pontalba Buildings in New Orleans. The story of the woman behind these architectural triumphs is Gothic to the core, and Vella, a history professor at Tulane, has woven a spellbinding historical narrative out of painstakingly meticulous research. Born the daughter of a philanthropic Spanish real-estate baron in New Orleans, Micaela Almonester was married at fifteen and shipped off to France to live at the gloomy, moated Chateau Mont-l'vque. Her neurotic, obsessive father-in-law, incensed that Micaela's generous dowry was not greater, subjected her to years of legal and emotional abuse before shooting her four times, then taking his own life. More lawsuits and calumnies followed before the courts finally intervened on Micaela's behalf to restore her money and independence. At last, with two bullets permanently lodged in her chest and two fingers missing, the now middle-aged and epileptic lady came triumphantly into her own as a savvy developer and the power-wielding matriarch of a great family. No one could tell Micaela's gripping tale better than Vella, whose passion for her subject infects every inch of her lively, witty, literate prose. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Aug.)

Kirkus Reviews

A charming biography of the Baroness de Pontalba (17951874), a wealthy 19th-century American expatriate.

The baroness, born Micaela Almonester, was the daughter of a Spanish immigrant who had made it in the rough-and-tumble commercial world of New Orleans; at 15, she was the sole heir to a considerable fortune. As such, she attracted the attention of the Pontalbas, her aristocratic French cousins. Xavier Pontalba wrote to Micaela's mother to propose to her daughter on behalf of his son, Célestin, and in 1811, Célestin sailed to America to meet and court his young cousin. The two were married within a month, and Micaela returned with her new family to France. Once there, however, Micaela's troubles began. She was not entirely content with her life in the country estate of her in-laws. Vella (History/Tulane Univ.) writes, with the tongue-in-cheek style that contributes greatly to the book's charm, that "sixteen-year-olds often look on compost with indifference." But the bigger problem came when the dowry of the young heiress was finalized, and the greedy Pontalbas discovered that it was considerably less than they had hoped. Xavier Pontalba, who dominated his weak-willed son, began a war against his daughter-in-law that would last until he ended his own life, in 1834, after shooting Micaela four times at close range and nearly killing her. This dramatic climax was followed by divorce, an interest in construction that took hold of the baroness in her middle years (the home she built in Paris is now the US embassy), and an odd semi-reconciliation between Micaela and an ill Célestin as she nursed him for the last 23 years of her own life.

While the baroness's story might make a more satisfying novel than biography, Vella makes up for the occasional skimpiness of her material with an easy, elegant style.