Princesses Behaving Badly

by Linda Rodriguez McRobbie

  In January 1820, poor mad George III died, and Prinney became His Majesty George IV. But he flat-out refused to allow Caroline to be queen. In June of that year, his ministers offered her an astounding £50,000 a year (about $6 million) to renounce her title and never return. Instead, she came bustling back to England, aglow with righteous indignation and bleating about her rights.

  PAINS AND PENALTIES

  Caroline did have supporters back home. Despite her long absence, the British public loved her even more when they saw her thumbing her nose at the much-hated royal family. Her return was attended by pro–Queen Caroline rallies, most of which turned into window-breaking riots, while mobs stood under the king’s window and called him “Nero.” Even the military seemed on the verge of mutiny. Meanwhile, the country’s two main political parties girded their loins: Caroline’s side was taken up by the opposition party, the Whigs; they were opposed to the Tories, who were the king’s favorites and the party in power. The king declared he’d rather abdicate than recognize Caroline as queen.

  With rebellion staring them in the face, the British government was forced to act. In August 1820, the Pains and Penalties Bill was brought before Parliament, an effort to legally dissolve Caroline and George’s marriage by declaring her guilty of adultery. But if the government was trying to avoid a scandal, they failed spectacularly—the resulting trial aired all sorts of shocking and ridiculous details. First to take the stand was an Italian servant of Caroline’s who testified that her supposed lover, the Italian valet Bergami, did not often sleep in his own bed. Further, he claimed he once heard sounds “like the creaking of a bench” coming from a tent in which Bergami and Caroline were together. Another witness claimed that the chamber pots in Caroline’s rooms contained a “good deal” more than a single person could produce. And still another claimed that he’d come upon Bergami and Caroline asleep in a carriage, her hand upon his “private part” and his upon hers.

  Caroline, meanwhile, acted like a parody of herself, wearing a startling black wig over a face caked in rouge, sometimes nodding off during the duller parts of the proceedings. But however she conducted herself, and however damning the evidence was against her, public support for Caroline only increased. So, too, did libel against the king and his supporters. Realizing there was virtually no chance of getting the bill through both the House of Lords and the House of Commons, the measure was withdrawn.

  Victory was hollow. Caroline was savvy enough to realize that although she had political supporters, she had virtually no friends. She was shunned by most of society, and the king’s allies made sure that anyone who tried to befriend her saw their reputation shredded in the press. Moreover, the public was fickle and lacked patience for bad behavior. One bit of doggerel popular at the time went:

  Most gracious Queen, we thee implore,

  To go away and sin no more;

  Or if that effort be too great,

  Go away at any rate.

  But she didn’t, and her humiliation wasn’t over yet. On July 20, 1821, the date of the king’s coronation, Caroline was denied entry at Westminster Abbey. As she had for most of her life, she doggedly refused to concede defeat, despite having the door literally closed in her face. She wrote to His Majesty that afternoon: “The Queen must trust that after the Public insult her Majesty received the morning, the King will grant her just Right to be crowned on next Monday.” The king did no such thing. Less than a month later, a sad and deluded Caroline died. Just 53 years old, she’d been suffering from an obstruction of her bowels, probably cancer, and had been in near-constant pain for most of the summer.

  In death, Caroline won a final battle, this one for posterity. The British public mourned their queen’s passing with nationwide weeping. Even those aristocrats whose friendship she’d worn out were inclined to think of this unhappy woman kindly and with pity. Conversely, when George IV died nine years later, no one shed a tear. The Times declared, “There was never an individual less regretted by his fellow creatures than this deceased King.”

  DEATH AND THE VICTORIAN AGE

  The daughter of a marriage as unhappy as that of Princess Caroline of Brunswick and the Prince of Wales was unlikely to have an easy life. And Charlotte, a spoiled tomboy with a mercurial temperament, certainly did not. Wedged between her mother and father, the little girl spent the first part of her life as a pawn in their game of one-upmanship. The prince won, and Charlotte was given over almost solely to his care.

  Some care. Virtually a prisoner, she was shepherded from one gloomy palatial estate to the next. Nearly every aspect of her life was controlled by her father or the women he appointed to mind her. She was too like her mother to inspire any real affection in dear old Dad, and he usually spoke to her only when he found fault. Nothing was done with Charlotte’s comfort or happiness in mind.

  Not that her mother would have filled the void any better. By the time Charlotte was 10 years old, Caroline’s interaction with her daughter was restricted to a weekly visit. Just 18 years old when her mother left for the Continent, in 1814, Charlotte was devastated, writing, “I am so hurt about it that I am very low.” Meanwhile, her father was attempting to arrange her marriage to William, the hereditary prince of Orange, a skinny kid whom Charlotte once said was so ugly, it was all she could do not to turn away when he spoke to her.

  The marriage was eventually called off and Charlotte found another suitor whom she came to love immensely. Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfield, seven years her senior, smoothed out her rough edges, and she blossomed into the kind of prudent, feminine, and sweet princess everyone had wanted her to be. And here’s where the story turns even sadder: the couple had only 18 months of marital bliss before Charlotte died in childbirth; their son was stillborn.

  The nation’s outpouring of grief was intense. Charlotte had come to represent the British people’s hope for the monarchy; their immense love for her matched their great hatred for her father. Had Charlotte lived, she would have become queen; her death left George III with no legitimate grandchildren. Ultimately, George’s fourth son, Edward, wed a suitable princess, who gave birth to Alexandrina Victoria, fifth in line to the throne. Twenty years after Charlotte’s death (and the deaths of her uncles), young Princess Alexandrina became Queen Victoria, Britain’s longest reigning monarch (so far). Without her, the country might have missed out on all the good stuff associated with the 63-year Victorian era, from Christmas trees to sexual repression.

  Pauline Bonaparte

  THE EXHIBITIONIST PRINCESS

  OCTOBER 20, 1780–JUNE 9, 1825

  NAPOLEON’S EMPIRE

  In 1804, the master sculptor Antonio Canova was commissioned to create a portrait of Pauline Bonaparte, the younger sister of the great Napoleon Bonaparte and an Italian princess by marriage. Pauline wanted to be depicted as Venus Victorious, the triumphant goddess of love. After all, she was in the prime of her beauty—lithe and long limbed, small breasted, milky skinned, wonderfully proportioned. These were her “advantages of nature,” as she called them, and she wanted to show them off.

  Canova, however, thought that a nearly naked goddess of love might be a bit too sexy for polite society; he suggested Diana, the clothed virgin goddess of the hunt and the moon. Pauline scoffed. “Nobody would believe my chastity,” she said.

  She was right. This was a woman who had her strapping young male servant carry her naked to the bath; who’d been rumored to have slept with half the Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue; who was painted wearing a sheer dress that showed off her nipples and often wore that same diaphanous negligee to court; who’d had a golden cup fashioned in the shape of her breast; and who liked to entertain male guests while lounging in her bath. Not for nothing did Napoleon’s enemies claim that Pauline had been a prostitute at age 14 in a Marseille brothel, that she and her brother were lovers.

  When it came to the sculpture, Pauline got her way (as she usually did). She posed reclining luxuriously on a chaise longue, nude from the waist up
, one bare leg peeking out, her feet unshod, with only a draped cloth to protect her modesty (not that she had any use for modesty). When it was unveiled that summer, the plaster model of the statue caused a gossipy sensation in Paris and beyond.

  Pauline loved it.

  THE ROAD TO ROYALTY

  Pauline, called Paoletta as a child, grew up during restless times on the island of Corsica. When she was 13, her family was forced to flee to mainland France after their house was burned to the ground by partisans. She could clearly remember when the Bonaparte clan was just a pack of refugees living in a tiny house in southern France, subsisting off the town’s charity and taking in washing to make ends meet.

  Pauline grew into an undereducated, oversexed vixen. But she was beautiful, and with her brother’s star very much on the rise as a general of the French Revolution, she set her own sights on total social domination, especially if it meant she got to wear pretty dresses.

  Pauline married General Victor Emmanuel Leclerc in June 1797, when she was just 17 years old and he was a brilliant young commander in the new army (a “blonde Napoleon,” as some called him). Marriage did little to mature her. A contemporary recalled that at dinner one night, she chattered endlessly, laughed at nothing, imitated her elders, and stuck her tongue out at her sister-in-law Josephine behind her back. “She was devoid of principles, and if she did good she did so from caprice.”

  Pauline’s behavior only worsened when she arrived in Paris. She was determined to be the most beautiful woman in the room, a feat that would be a whole lot easier if she was the one making up the guest list, so she started throwing parties. Along with entertaining and buying lots of pretty dresses, Pauline spent her time conducting love affairs. Though content with her “little Leclerc,” she was equally happy to spread her affections far and wide. With her husband away on a military campaign, Pauline launched her own offensive on the menfolk of Paris. One story claims that she had simultaneous affairs with three generals, playing them off one another. When they figured it out, they dropped her.

  The only thing keeping Pauline’s amorousness in check was fear of her brother. He was the sun around which she orbited. When she and Leclerc had a son in 1798, the boy remained nameless until Napoleon, his uncle and godfather, bestowed one upon him (he chose Dermide). Napoleon was her father figure, the family’s protector, and the only person who could control her or make her feel ashamed. Though they often fought, Pauline loved her brother truly and deeply.

  ISLAND LIFE

  And that love was rewarded. In late 1799 Napoleon named himself first consul of the government after a coup toppled the republican regime. He was now the only star in the sky as far as France was concerned, and Pauline cashed in. Sort of. After years of angling for a post that would lead to some glory or remuneration, her husband was made governor general of the island colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti). It was a post that could prove quite lucrative, if it didn’t kill him first.

  Saint-Domingue had shrugged off French rule in 1791 after a slave revolt led by Toussaint Louverture. But the French were hard-pressed to let it go—after all, it was home to some very profitable coffee, sugar, indigo, and cotton plantations. And so in 1801 Napoleon decided to take it back, sending Leclerc, Pauline, and 30,000 troops to do it. When they arrived in February 1802, they were confronted with a terrifying scene. Le Cap, the capital, was an inferno, the commanding rebel having set it alight rather than surrender it to the French. It took only 40 days for Leclerc to regain the colony; Louverture was taken prisoner, and Leclerc promised not to re-enslave the population. But a far deadlier enemy was about to strike: the mosquito. Yellow-fever season hit, killing men at a rate of 50 to 100 a day; within weeks, 25,000 soldiers had died.

  Meanwhile, Pauline ruled the island as a queen, throwing balls and hosting musical events and earning a reputation for promiscuous behavior. Napoleon’s enemies would later claim that she’d experimented with island men and women, that she slept her way through the officers’ ranks, that those nightly musical events were really just orgies. The rumors were mostly untrue; people were too busy dying to worry about having sex.

  But the situation in Saint-Domingue was becoming untenable, and local rebels revolted once more. Despite the danger and her husband’s insistence, Pauline vowed to stay put. She very much enjoyed being first lady, even if her “paradise” was crawling with angry insurgents and deadly insects. On September 16, the rebels launched an assault on the recently rebuilt capital. Pauline refused to leave the palace, even though she knew that if the rebels reached her, they would rape her and murder her child. Other women pleaded to be allowed to flee. Pauline, either stupid or brave, scoffed at them: “I am the sister of Bonaparte and I am afraid of nothing.” As the sound of fire grew closer, she turned to her husband’s secretary and demanded that he kill her and her son if the rebels should reach them. He refused and instead dragged her from the palace. Little Dermide was carried out by a soldier, playing with the plume on the man’s helmet.

  At the last moment, as the French guard contemplated dumping a struggling Pauline into a galley to row her to a waiting ship, Leclerc appeared—the French had won; the rebels were scattered. “I have sworn to return to France only by your side,” Pauline declared, with tears in her eyes. And that’s exactly what happened, though not in the sense she intended. Leclerc caught yellow fever and died on November 1, 1802. Seven days later, a weeping Pauline, their son, and her husband’s coffin sailed for France. Before leaving, she sheared off her long dark hair, placing the locks next to Leclerc’s skin. As for Saint-Domingue, France would lose the colony for good the next year.

  Pauline truly mourned her husband, but a woman such as herself was unable to keep it up for too long. She was only 22, still beautiful, and, more important, politically important. Napoleon had others plans for his sister than a life in widow’s weeds, like marrying her off to a politically important prince and thereby tightening his grip on the empire.

  PRINCESS PICK-ME-UP

  The prince in question was handsome, rich, and well connected. He was also as dumb as mittens on a cat. Prince Camillo Borghese came from one of the oldest families in Rome. Coincidentally, Napoleon needed to endear himself to the Italian principalities and city-states chafing under French rule, and gaining a Borghese brother-in-law would certainly prove beneficial. Pauline was happy to help, especially since Camillo came with money, a palace, and a heavy box full of family jewels.

  Pauline remarried in August 1803, less than a year after the death of Leclerc, and moved to the prince’s villa in Italy. But within a few months, she realized that everyone was right about this guy—he was dumb. And even the second time around, matrimony didn’t keep her from pursuing her favorite pastime: sex with lots of different men. On the heels of one love affair that became too public, her brother forbade her to leave her husband and return to Paris, no matter how much she complained about Camillo’s “difficult and disputatious character.” But however much she disliked her vapid mate now, she would absolutely loathe him very soon. Because the same summer that sculpture of Pauline’s nearly naked body caused titillation in Italy and France, her dear son Dermide died, and it wasn’t until 10 days later that she knew anything about it.

  Camillo, who’d never warmed to little Dermide, had convinced Pauline to leave the boy with his brother while the couple took a cure at a popular spa town. While they were away, Dermide caught a fever and died. Fearing Pauline’s anger, Camillo hid the child’s death from his wife. Turns out he was right to be afraid—when Pauline learned the truth, she flew into a rage. “Leave, Monsieur, I cannot bear the sight of you!” she cried. “You, the butcher of my son!” Pauline was utterly broken. Once again she cut off her hair and instructed that it be put in Dermide’s coffin. She also threatened to retire from public life forever. It was only her brother’s demand that she be present when he crowned himself emperor that kept her from making good on her promise.

  But that was the end of cordial relations betwe
en the Borgheses. By 1806, Pauline was referring to Camillo as “His Serene Idiot.” When he was heading off to war with Prussia, Pauline publicly asked her brother to secure for her husband, “after a useless life, a glorious death.” When Camillo sent her notes addressed to the “Princess Borghese,” she sent them back; she opened only those addressed to “Her Imperial Highness the Princess Pauline,” the title her brother had bestowed on her in 1806.

  If Pauline had been promiscuous before, she now pursued infidelity with truly reckless abandon. Her seductions were legendary: her lovers included Thomas Dumas, the famous mixed-race general and father of Alexandre, the future Monte Cristo writer; various generals under her brother’s command; her chamberlain; a famous actor or two; some musicians; various princes and minor royalty; her first husband’s secretary (when no one else was there to fill in); and pretty much anyone else who came knocking. Her affections flared wildly and were extinguished quickly. She tried to keep her affairs hidden from her brother, but he heard the whispers nevertheless. Those who were involved with her often found themselves conscripted into the army and sent to the front.

  Popular rumor claimed that Pauline’s frequent sexual liaisons had rendered her too weak to walk, which explained why she insisted on being carried everywhere and was so often confined to her bed. For once, gossip might have been correct. Dermide’s birth had left Pauline with chronic pelvic pain, which some biographers believe could have been caused by salpingitis, an inflammation of the fallopian tubes; this condition would have made walking very painful. But salpingitis can also be caused by, well, too many sexual partners and the venereal diseases they can bring. The one thing that probably would have helped was the one thing that Pauline wouldn’t do: give up her lovers.