The Secret Life of Josephine: Napoleon's Bird of Paradise

by Carolly Erickson

  It was all I could do, when the time came, to say goodbye to him, even though he promised to see me again very soon.

  In fact, we saw each other nearly every day, now that Donovan was

  in Paris. I invited him to my house. I saw him in the park when I drove my phaeton there in the afternoons. We went shopping together, I for soft silken underclothes, he for hats and gloves and a set of fine duelling pistols.

  And always, with the most delicious abandon, we made love. He could not banish my mourning, but he eased it, and I was grateful.

  “Come with me to Martinique, Rose,” he said as I lay in his arms. “Things are improving there. The plantations are beginning to produce cane again, and the Americans are buying it. I have bought a plantation of my own. I call it Bonne Fortune. I have a hundred Africans working on it, and I plan to hire more.”

  “Who is looking after it for you?”

  “I have a good overseer.” He smiled at the thought, having once been an overseer himself. “And Jules-sans-nez is there.” He stroked my cheek as he talked on. I closed my eyes. “Come with me,” he said again. “Bring the children. Leave this place of debauchery and crime, this topsy-turvy Paris. You will have complete freedom at Bonne Fortune. And we will have each other.”

  “It would not be—a permanent arrangement, I assume,” I said after a time. “No promises, no vows.”

  “I am not the sort that makes promises.”

  I knew that he would say that, of course I knew. He was not offering me marriage. He could not. Only rapture, for as long as it lasted.

  It was becoming more and more clear to me that my life was in transition. I knew that Paul was tiring of me, and he seemed to go out of his way to bring me together with General Buonaparte. He seated me next to the general at dinner parties, and spoke well of him to me when we were alone together, which was less and less often.

  “You know, Rose, you could do far worse than marry that little Corsican, Buonaparte. I happen to know he admires you.”

  I dismissed the suggestion as outlandish, but it worried me. It was one more hint that Paul wanted me out of his life. Yet I was dependent on the bank drafts that he sent me. My income as a provisioner was far less than what I needed to run my household and pay my bills.

  About a month after Donovan came to Paris, I gave a dinner party at my house. Paul was not there, but Donovan was—and indeed he was far and away the most handsome man present. The occasion was Eugene’s leaving to return to military school. He was fourteen years old and one of the most promising boys in his class, a dutiful, serious boy, always extremely polite and loving to me. He had a natural patrician air that reminded me of Alexandre, but he had none of Alexandre’s snobbery or hauteur. Nor was he an intellectual—thank goodness! The military life had always appealed to him, and it thrilled him that I was becoming acquainted with General Buonaparte, the hero of Toulon. (For in fact the general had done more at Toulon than contract scabies; he had performed brilliantly as an artillery officer, gaining a major victory.) At Eugene’s pleading I invited the general to my dinner party.

  Donovan was among the first to arrive and was happily greeted by the children. He brought marzipan for Coco, a very grown-up necklace of pink coral for Hortense (his special favorite) and a long, wicked-looking cane knife for Eugene.

  “It takes an edge as sharp as any saber,” Donovan told Eugene. “On Martinique we use it for everything: cutting cane, clearing brush—and of course for self-defense.” He swung the wide blade through the air, making a swishing sound. “They won’t teach you about the cane knife in military school. But if you should ever go into battle, you’ll find it useful.”

  “If! If I go into battle! You mean when I go into battle! My father always said, son, you must defend the Republic against her enemies. I will fight for France! I will win glory for her!”

  I shuddered when I heard Eugene’s words. I feared for him.

  “Fighting is not the best way to win,” Donovan was saying. “I know. I was a soldier once. I have led men into combat. The very best way to win is to appear so strong, so formidable in defense, that the enemy will not dare to attack.”

  Eugene looked dubious.

  “What if the enemy is overconfident, and attacks anyway?”

  “Then you must wait—and at the last moment, defend yourself.”

  “Wait? Wait? What’s this I hear?” It was the piercing, insistent voice of General Buonaparte, who shrugged off his cape as he entered the salon, a large leather case in his arms.

  “Who is telling the brave Eugene to wait and not to fight? No—you must always advance. Take the battle to the enemy. Conquer him by your audacity!”

  He advanced himself as he spoke, striding into the room with vigor, carrying his leather case up to Eugene and laying it on a table near him. Eugene straightened himself and saluted, grinning. I could not help noting that Eugene, though only fourteen, was already as tall as the general.

  “Here is a little something to take with you to military school. A memento.”

  Eugene discarded the cane knife and opened the case. Inside was a gleaming sword, the hilt chased in silver and bronze, the blade in perfect condition, without any chipping along the edge, as if it had never been used.

  Eugene’s eyes gleamed. He ran his hand along the flat of the flawless blade.

  “General,” I said, “this is my friend from Martinique, Monsieur Donovan de Gautier.” The two men nodded to one another, the contrast between them very marked. Donovan was much taller and better looking. I made introductions among the other guests, who were beginning to arrive.

  Among them was Fanny de Beauharnais, who when introduced to Donovan, gave him a wide smile of approval. (I had confided to her all that went on between us—or almost all.) When presented to General Buonaparte, however, she visibly drew back in evident scorn.

  “The hero of Toulon,” she said, her tone icy. “The man who jumps when that despicable Paul Barras snaps his fingers.”

  “And you, I believe, are Fanny de Beauharnais, the woman who dresses badly and writes execrable verse.”

  “At least I don’t murder innocent people.”

  “No, you only murder the French language.”

  “You’re a fine one to talk about murdering the French language, when you can barely speak it!”

  “But when I do speak it, my words have value.”

  “Please, general, Fanny”—I said, intervening, “let us remember that this is a party for Eugene, and be civil to one another.”

  “Forgive me, my dear madame,” General Buonaparte said, taking my hand and kissing it. “I was provoked.”

  Fanny opened her mouth to speak but took note of my imploring glance and thought better of it.

  “Of course, my dear. We will overlook the insults of annoying little men.”

  Much to my relief, the focus shifted to the magnificent sword, which General Buonaparte was lifting from its case.

  “This belonged to your father,” he said quietly to Eugene. “I rescued it from among his effects, confiscated when he was arrested. The despicable Paul Barras, as someone just called him, was a great help to me in obtaining it. I present it to you with Monsieur Barras’s compliments and my own. Your father served the Republic well.”

  And then, in a gesture that brought tears to every eye in the room, the general knelt and presented the sword to Eugene.

  A hush fell as Eugene, fighting for composure himself, received the beautiful sword and kissed its hilt.

  High drama indeed! I saw that Donovan too was moved, and that he joined enthusiastically when the guests burst into sustained applause. I went to Eugene and kissed him, and presently we all went in to dine.

  There must have been at least twenty guests at my long dining-table that evening, but General Buonaparte was easily the most vocal of them all, dominating the room with his amusing, knowledgeable talk. He did not insult Fanny again, and she restrained herself from taunting him. I had seated her next to Donovan and
was glad to see that they got on well together.

  The general held forth on a subject he knew extremely well: artillery. He talked of siege guns and howitzers, shells and shot.

  “Gunners are no ordinary soldiers, I can assure you,” he concluded. “Oh no, gunners are artists! They must be masters of strategy, mathematics, mechanics, the very art of war itself! Come with me to Italy, Eugene, and I’ll make a gunner of you. You’re old enough now to be a powder monkey. Then you’ll become a loader, and then a sponger, and finally a gun captain. That’s a fine, proud thing to be, a gun captain. Twenty-four crewmen under you, ten drivers, a dozen horses, carpenters to repair the gun carriage—and all of them taking orders from you.”

  Eugene beamed. “I’ll bring along my father’s sword. And my cane knife,” he added with a smile to Donovan.

  “You’ll go back to school,” I said firmly. “No more talk of going to war.”

  “Ah, but there will be talk, madame,” the general retorted. “The British are still trying to keep their foothold in Brittany, and the Austrians are on the move against us. We cannot wait to go on the offensive. We must advance! We must go on the attack! We must show the enemies of the Republic that the hour of our victory is at hand!”

  28

  THE PARISIANS, in that summer of 1795, were restless and rebellious. Even on the night of my dinner party for Eugene, we could hear the disturbing sounds of people grouping together in the street, shouting for an end to high food prices and even (I could hardly believe it) for the return of the king. The king was long dead, of course; what they really wanted was to feel that they had some influence, and could make things better for themselves by taking action to force change.

  They were fed up with being ignored by the new unscrupulous politicians and wealthy exploiters who had come to power. Paul Barras was among the worst of these exploiters, I knew. I was not proud of my association with him. But what else could I have done? How else could I have lived, in those dangerous and turbulent days, without his money and his support?

  On into the fall of that year the unrest all around us grew, until on one terrible night we began hearing alarm bells ringing and drums beating all across the city. No one could sleep. We were far too much on edge for that. We knew, of course, that there were extremists who wanted to overthrow the government yet again and who were prepared to take up arms and destroy the Tuileries Palace where our current officials met. For months there had been rumors of another widespread uprising. On that night it began.

  We locked all the doors and barred the windows, and prepared for the worst.

  All was confusion on that awful night, but as Paul told me later, he was determined not to let the rabble of Paris destroy what had taken six long years of revolution to create—namely, a true republic, imperfect but capable of improvement. The mob, he said, was determined to dig the Revolution’s grave. They had to be stopped.

  And who better to stop them than the hero of Toulon, General Buonaparte?

  Barras sent for him and told him to disperse the immense crowd that was threatening the Tuileries Palace. There was a storm that night and rain was falling in torrents. The streets were full of sticky black mud. The rioters were sure that they would meet with no resistance, whatever they did. They thought the soldiers could not fire their muskets in all the rain.

  But General Buonaparte, Paul told me afterwards, acted with remarkable cleverness and dispatch. He ordered forty big guns brought into the city and positioned around the palace. When the mob launched its assault, he ordered his gunners to fire.

  No one expected such a merciless assault. The killing was dreadful, bodies all over the streets, blood everywhere.

  “It was all over in a few minutes,” Paul told me. “Buonaparte did exactly what was needed. He saved us. He saved the Revolution.”

  The hero of Toulon became the hero of Paris. Promoted to major general, his salary tripled and his importance immeasurably increased. Everyone praised Buonaparte—everyone but the hundreds of men and women killed by his murderous cannonade, and their relatives and friends. But they were of no account. They belonged to the past. Buonaparte was the future.

  And he was mine—if I wanted him.

  Flowers began arriving daily at my house on the rue Chantereine. Huge bunches of roses, lilies, exotic hothouse flowers that lived only a day. There were always love notes with the flowers.

  “I am consumed with you. I long for the sight of your sweet face.”

  “I cannot wait until tonight. Would that you were here beside me as I write this, so that I could kiss your rosebud lips!”

  “I am enchanted with you. Never free me from this enchantment, I beg of you!”

  He had a fertile pen, did General Buonaparte. He was well read for a military officer. He knew how to write a graceful love letter.

  But when we met privately, as we began to do at around this time, he was as inept, as unsure as a besotted schoolboy. His attempts at lovemaking were clumsy. He mauled me, he fell on me like a starving man falling on a plate of roast chicken. He had no finesse, no sense of the erotic. Not that any of this would have mattered, had I returned his infatuation. But I did not. I could not. And in any case, I was involved with Donovan, who continued to try to persuade me to pack my things and return with him to the Windward Isles.

  One afternoon a card was left for me, along with a huge basket of hothouse flowers and herbs—lavender, thyme, anemones, carnations.

  “My dearest,” the card read, “I must see you tonight on a matter of the greatest urgency. Be prepared for my visit at nine o’clock.”

  It was nearly eleven when he arrived. Most of the servants had gone to bed and I was on the point of going to bed myself, thinking that the general had been unexpectedly delayed by some urgent business. Then I heard a carriage and the insistent clicking of boot-heels on the flagstones at the front entrance to my house. I knew at once who it was.

  He fairly shouted my name as he was admitted, and ran in to my salon.

  “Rose! Rose! It has happened! I am officially entrusted with the invasion of Italy! Rejoice with me!”

  He looked, on that night, as I had never before seen him look: he seemed transformed, completely taken out of himself. Had he been a priest or monk, I would have said that he had glimpsed the Beatific Vision. His eyes were bright, his brow unlined and serene.

  We embraced and I congratulated him warmly on his success—saying nothing of his lateness, or the inconvenience to me.

  “I have you to thank, Rose, for giving me the confidence to make my plan of campaign and present it to the Directors.” We had a new government at that time, headed by five Directors, chief among them Paul Barras. “You listened to me and encouraged me, and gave me hope when I was almost in despair.”

  “I was glad to do what I could to help you, general,” I said, suppressing a yawn. He was right, of course. During the past several months I had spent a good deal of time patiently hearing him expound his plans to lead an army into Italy, and reassuring him when he was in a low mood, as he often was.

  He sat down beside me and took my hand in his. I could not help noticing that his hands, as always, were cold and clammy, the nails bitten down to the quick.

  “I had already made up my mind to discuss an important matter with you, Rose, even before I learned that the Directors have approved my Italian campaign. It is this. I need a wife.”

  He looked at me intently, waiting for me to say something.

  “Oh,” I said at length.

  “I need a wife, Rose. I need the respectability of a wife, children. Family.” “Yes. I see.”

  “And she must be French, not Corsican. My mother has chosen a Corsican bride for me, and I will disappoint her, but that cannot be helped. No, my wife must be French, because I myself must seem French. I am changing the spelling of my name from Nabuleone Buonaparte to Napoleon Bonaparte. I am gallicizing myself.

  “And while we are speaking of names, dear Rose, it pleases me to call you by yo
ur second name. You were christened Rose-Joseph, I believe you told me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I prefer Josephine. It suits you so much better than plain Rose. I shall call you Josephine from now on.”

  “And what if I prefer my own name Rose?”

  “You may think of yourself however you like, but your public name will be Josephine.”

  I started to refuse, but had second thoughts. Rose was a rather plain name, and in truth I had always thought of myself as Yeyette. Josephine had an elegant ring to it, more in keeping with the rather elegant woman I had become. I could still be Yeyette to my family, after all. I did not demur.

  In that moment, I later realized, I capitulated to the general. What he wanted for me began to govern my life, though I did not yet perceive it. My very identity became his to command.

  He talked on, ticking off one qualification after another for the wife he needed. She had to have noble blood, superb social connections, she had to be an able hostess, she could not be taller than he was.

  “And of course she must be rich, like you, my Josephine.”

  There was an awkward silence. I confess I had led General Bonaparte (I must spell his name in the French way from here on) to believe that I was rich. It was not difficult. As I have said, all Creoles were assumed to be wealthy, and my pride demanded that I maintain the illusion of wealth. Not great wealth, of course, but substantial wealth, comparable to that of the most prosperous of the Grands Blancs of Martinique or the successful merchants of Paris. I said nothing.

  A puckish smile broke over the general’s features. I thought, he can certainly be charming.

  “You know what I am trying to say, my dearest Josephine. I am proposing marriage to you. I am offering to let you share my future.”

  I got up then, and moved to stand by the fireplace. So this was where his businesslike catalog of wifely attributes had been leading. This very unromantic train of logic. This was his idea of a proposal!

  I was more amused than offended by the oddity of it all, so like him. He was an original. But of course the idea was absurd.