The Ambitious Madame Bonaparte

by Chatlien, Ruth Hull

  Bo frowned and remained very still as he considered her words. Finally, he said, “I think I see what you mean.”

  In May 1821, Betsy heard that Napoleon had died on his lonely island in the South Atlantic. She had never lost her admiration for him, and the realization that they would never meet saddened her immeasurably. The event prompted her to alter her plans. Betsy’s original idea had been for Bo to attend the academy for three years and then enroll at Harvard, but in the wake of Napoleon’s death, she decided to pull her son from school and spend the winter in Rome. Bo’s grandmother Letizia Bonaparte was in her seventies, and Pauline had been ill, so Betsy feared that one of them might die before Bo could make their acquaintance.

  Betsy, Bo, and his dog departed for Rome in October 1821, which was very late in the year to cross the Alps. “This will be an adventure,” Betsy told her son, “like the excursion I took to Niagara with your father. You will remember this journey for the rest of your life.”

  It took six days to travel by coach from Geneva across the Alps to Turin in northwest Italy. The carriage road twisted like a corkscrew to ascend the mountains, and once during the journey, their route was covered by snow that had drifted deeper than the horses’ bellies. If it had not been for the help of several local men with shovels, they would have had to turn back.

  Near the end of the crossing, an ice storm struck as they traversed a mountain pass in the middle of the night. The road became as slick as glass, and the driver halted the coach in the lee of a rock wall to keep the horses from slipping and carrying them to their doom. Even though leather shades covered the windows, it was bitterly cold in the coach, and Betsy, Bo, and the other passengers—an American couple named the Packards—huddled beneath fur robes that the carriage company had provided. The storm did not subside until shortly before dawn, and Betsy’s fingers became so cold that she feared they might snap off like icicles.

  They waited until a few hours after daylight to resume their journey in hopes that the road would become less treacherous. By midday, Betsy’s throat felt raw, and by nightfall, her head was so congested that she had difficulty breathing. During the week it took the coach to travel from Turin south through Italy, she grew sicker each day, and when they finally reached Rome, she had a deep-seated cough that left her with sore ribs and an aching diaphragm. The Packards offered to put her up in their rented house, which they had reserved ahead of time, and she gratefully accepted. While she recuperated, she sent sixteen-year-old Bo out to find inexpensive rooms they could rent.

  After a week, Betsy received a note from the Princess Borghese, who had learned from a mutual acquaintance where they were staying. When Betsy wrote back asking at what hour she should visit, the princess sent her carriage to bring Betsy and Bo to her immediately.

  The three-story, sixteenth-century Palazzo Borghese had a severe, many-windowed façade and an unusual harpsichord shape, wider at one end than the other with a side wall that bent at an angle partway along its length. As a footman led them through the public rooms toward the princess’s private apartments, Betsy saw her son blush at the sight of one sculpture—a full-sized figure of a reclining, bare-breasted Venus. Betsy decided not to mention that the model had been none other than the aunt Bo was about to meet. Instead, she informed him that the artist was Canova, a famous sculptor she had known in Paris. As they walked on, Bo continued to stare at the gilded chandeliers, painted ceilings, tapestries, paintings, and statues that ornamented the rooms. Betsy held back a smile at his awe. He was so proud of his millionaire grandfather that he had never realized how devoid of luxury the Patterson home in Baltimore really was.

  When the footman showed them into the anteroom to Pauline’s boudoir, Betsy and Bo found the princess lounging on a chaise longue, in a pose very similar to the Canova statue.

  Betsy curtsied and introduced her son. Then she examined the face of this woman she was said to resemble. They both had a Grecian nose and slanting eyes, but Pauline’s nose was longer and her chin slightly more pointed. The biggest difference, however, was intangible. Betsy found the other woman’s expression curiously indifferent for one with such a scandalous reputation.

  “I am glad that we meet at last.” The princess’s voice, while sweet, had a light, artificial quality. With a wave of her hand, she indicated they should take seats, and then she requested that Bo move his chair close beside her.

  After he complied, she gazed at him. “Mr. Astor said that you greatly resemble the late emperor. I see that he did not exaggerate.”

  Bo blushed and lowered his gaze.

  Placing one hand behind her head, Pauline leaned back more comfortably against the chaise and regarded her nephew through half-closed eyelids. “Which name do you prefer to use, Jerome or Napoleon?”

  “In school, I use Jerome, your highness,” Bo answered, and Betsy felt relieved that he had remembered the proper form of address for his royal aunt. Surely, her son’s beautiful manners would impress the Bonapartes. He smiled and added, “But my American family call me Bo.”

  Pauline scrunched up her nose in distaste. “I shall call you Jerome. How do you like to amuse yourself?”

  “My favorite activity is horseback riding, your highness,”

  “Ah. Perhaps something can be arranged so that you can indulge that pastime during your visit. I believe your Uncle Louis’s sons have mounts that you might be allowed to borrow.”

  The visit lasted for more than an hour, with Pauline asking question after question, nearly all of them superficial. Betsy was glad her son maintained good humor under the inquisition, but she could not help but feel slighted at being so completely ignored.

  The next day they were summoned to the palazzo occupied by Letizia Bonaparte, officially called Madame Mère. A footman led them to an ornate reception room with marble columns and a painted ceiling, and once again Bo gaped at his surroundings. Madame Mère stood waiting for them, still erect despite her years. She was a thin woman dressed in black with an ornate cross hanging on her breast and an elaborate white cap covering her hair. Her dark, hooded eyes bored into Betsy. “So you are the American who nearly ruined my Girolamo,” she said, using Jerome’s Italian name.

  Although tempted to retort angrily, Betsy managed to say, “We believed ours was an honorable marriage, Madame. It was not my fault the emperor had other designs.”

  “Perhaps not, Madame Patterson. But you cannot deny that it was a hasty, ill-conceived alliance.” Shifting her gaze to Bo, she said, “And you claim that this is his son?”

  “Look at him closely, Madame. Can you honestly say you doubt it?”

  When Letizia Bonaparte stepped within a few inches of Bo to peer into his face, Betsy realized that the old woman was going blind. After a moment, she murmured, “Nabulione,” and Betsy knew that she had seen the resemblance to Napoleon. The old woman patted Bo’s cheek and gestured for him to sit beside her while Betsy sat on a nearby sofa. Like her daughter the day before, she focused entirely on the boy. “Paolina tells me that you have been attending school in Geneva, my son.”

  “Yes, Madame.”

  The old woman frowned and fingered her cross. “It is a Protestant city, is it not?”

  “That is its history, Madame, but there are Catholics in Geneva now. My mother has raised me as a Catholic because she knew that was my father’s religion.”

  His grandmother nodded and smiled for the first time. “Do you work hard in school?”

  “Yes, Madame.” Bo shot an amused glance at Betsy, and she knew he was thinking of her many lectures. “My mother has always impressed upon me the need to be diligent and disciplined.”

  Madame Mère nodded again. “Your uncle, the emperor, had those traits even as a boy, and they served him well. Are you interested in a military career?”

  Bo shook his head. “No, Madame. I do not have any aptitude for it. My mother wishes me to pursue law or diplomacy.”

  “And what do you wish to do?”

  Hesitating, Bo bit hi
s lower lip. His expression grew guarded. “I wish to be a credit to the Bonaparte name.”

  Madame Mère’s younger half-brother Cardinal Fesch entered the room and approached them. He introduced himself and sat beside Betsy. The retired cleric, still dressed in his black cassock and scarlet sash, had pure white hair, a broad face, and an aquiline nose. As Bo continued chatting with his grandmother, the cardinal quietly interviewed Betsy. He was gratified to learn she had brought up her son in the Roman church, and he expressed shock upon hearing that Jerome had contributed nothing to his oldest son’s upbringing.

  At the end of the visit, Madame Mère told Betsy, “I must compliment you on young Jerome Napoleon. He shows unusual aplomb and common sense for such a young man.”

  Betsy bowed her head in acknowledgement. “I have dedicated my life to him, Madame.”

  To Bo, Madame Mère said, “Come to see me often while you are here, my son. And bring that dog you told me about.”

  WHILE STAYING IN Rome, Betsy and her son saw most of the Bonaparte family except Joseph and Jerome. Although the Bonapartes teased Bo about his unsophisticated American frankness, they seemed to like him. Betsy, on the other hand, suspected that the family still regarded her as a woman of dubious virtue. While never overtly rude, they frequently omitted to pay her some of the more subtle courtesies considered a lady’s due.

  Their ostensible hostess, the Princess Borghese, proved to be every bit as erratic as rumor painted her. During the first week of their visit, she professed to be delighted that she and Betsy were so much alike, and she impulsively gave Betsy a richly embroidered ball gown, a pink satin cape, and a bonnet. Several weeks later, without any explanation, Pauline sent a maid to demand the return of the gifts. The incident left Betsy chagrined and worried that she had offended her former sister-in-law, but at their next encounter, Pauline acted as though nothing had happened. Eventually, she returned the items to Betsy, whose pleasure in them was diminished.

  Even so, the two women spent hours together. Pauline took Betsy for carriage rides to the ruins of the Forum and Colosseum, asked her to the opera, and extended a standing invitation to her salon, yet often Pauline’s manner turned cool. Betsy quickly realized that the princess had latched onto Bo because of long-festering grief at losing her own son years before. Yet no matter how hard Pauline tried to win Bo’s loyalty, granting him a clothing allowance of $400 a year and promising him a settlement of $8,000 on his marriage, the princess could not supplant Betsy’s place in his heart.

  The vagaries of the princess notwithstanding, the visit to Rome proved fruitful. Madame Mère shared Napoleon’s mania for controlling the clan’s matrimonial alliances, and within a month of meeting Bo, she suggested marrying him to Joseph’s daughter Charlotte. As Joseph was the only one of Letizia’s children to have a fortune, such an alliance would ensure that Bo was provided for despite his father’s insolvency. Although Betsy feared Bo would balk at the suggestion, the fact that his cousin lived in the United States dovetailed with his preference for America, so he agreed to consider the match. Betsy herself was keen on the idea. Not only was Charlotte a Bonaparte and an heiress, through her mother she was niece to the Queen of Sweden.

  Madame Mère wrote to Joseph urging the marriage, and she persuaded her sons Lucien and Louis to add their support. Only Pauline seemed ambivalent. At length, the family decided to send the boy to the United States to meet his uncle. Betsy wrote her father explaining the proposed match and asking him to make inquiries as to what Joseph Bonaparte might settle on his daughter:

  The principal and only thing is to see that Bo will not be left without any provision if she dies before him, or that he will not be entirely dependent on her as long as she lives. They tell me here, Joseph means to give a hundred thousand dollars on the marriage. If he does not secure the whole or any part to her, there is nothing to be said, as the money becomes her husband’s. But if he means to tie it up, I wish at least fifty thousand to be settled on my son.

  Betsy also wrote that if Joseph should not agree to the match, Bo should attend Harvard as originally planned.

  Since Betsy knew her father could handle the marriage negotiations, she decided to remain in Europe for a while. Louis Bonaparte arranged for Bo to sail from Leghorn in late February, and he hired a trusted associate to convey his nephew to the port. As Betsy watched her sixteen-year-old son and his dog climb aboard the coach, tears filled her eyes so that she could hardly make out Bo’s face as he called good-bye from the window. She told herself that she would enjoy a period of being free from the necessity of constant vigilance over the boy.

  The next day, however, Betsy bitterly regretted her decision. She felt certain she should have gone with him, to watch over his conduct and see that everything was carried out according to her wishes. She began to vomit whenever she ate, and her illness kept her in Rome.

  Two weeks after Bo left, Betsy received a bill in the mail that compounded her worries about him. She immediately sat down and wrote him an admonishing letter:

  They have sent me a bill for six hundred cigars you took at Leghorn. For heaven’s sake spend as little money as possible, and recollect the smallness of my income and the many privations it subjects me to…. I shall go to America if you think there is the least necessity for it. Let me know everything about my finances. Do read as much as you can, and improve in every way. I ask you to reward my cares and anxieties about you, by advancing your own interests and happiness. I am very uneasy about you, and almost blame myself for not going with you to take care of you, and shall never forgive myself if you meet any accident by being alone.

  Betsy’s agitation increased when she learned that her ex-husband and his wife had come to Rome. Jerome visited Pauline and harangued her about the impropriety of having invited Betsy and Bo to meet the family. Word reached Betsy of the quarrel—and of the duplicity of the princess, who claimed that Betsy had come uninvited and forced her company upon them.

  The possibility of an encounter with Jerome made Betsy eager to leave the city. When she learned that the Packards planned to travel to Geneva by way of Florence, she decided to accompany them.

  IN THE PALATINE Gallery of the Pitti Palace in Florence, Betsy stepped forward to examine La Donna Velata by Raphael. The young woman in the portrait had a round face with dark eyes and dark hair pulled back from a center part. She wore an elaborate dress with cascading folds of material, a choker of oval stones, and a headdress that fell past her shoulders. She was a lovely girl with evenly arched eyebrows, a straight nose, full lips, and a rounded chin.

  “I think she looks like you,” whispered Mrs. Packard.

  Betsy analyzed the comparison objectively. “No, my face is thinner, and we have different coloring. And of course, I am middle-aged, not blooming with youth as she is.”

  “But you have not lost your beauty. Why else would Massot want to paint your portrait when you return to Geneva?”

  Betsy patted the other woman’s arm. “You flatter me, trying to lift my spirits because you know I miss my son.”

  Smiling wistfully at the memory of Bo, Betsy moved toward another painting, then paused as she saw a couple standing about ten feet away. Normally, she would have paid them no attention, but the man was staring at her. Glancing into his face, Betsy was reminded of her son. Then she felt her smile freeze and slide away.

  The man was her former husband. She had not seen Jerome in seventeen years, but she could not mistake the dark eyes that used to caress her or the sensuous mouth that had loved to laugh. He was not laughing today. Instead, he looked mortified. His chin—a double chin, she noted spitefully—was sinking into his throat as though he were a turtle withdrawing into its shell. Betsy also noticed that his hairline had receded, so that the black curls she used to play with during lovemaking no longer tumbled riotously onto his forehead. He had brushed his hair forward and pomaded it in place in a vain effort to disguise his growing baldness.

  Jerome’s companion, who was clinging to
his arm, looked from him to Betsy and back again. She was a pasty dumpling of a woman, which meant that she must be his fat wife Catharine rather than one of his mistresses. Giving the pair a mocking smile, Betsy flung the edges of her cape back over her shoulders to show Jerome that she had retained her perfect figure even at the age of thirty-seven.

  Unexpectedly, the noise in the gallery faded as Jerome’s eyes locked on hers. For a moment, the years of bitterness fell away, and Betsy was eighteen again, pronouncing her vows of fidelity to the man she had loved so passionately that she married him despite her father’s protests. Standing across from him in this palatial hall—with its marble floor, ornate gilt moldings, and brilliantly painted ceiling—reminded Betsy of the dream she and Jerome had once shared of being the most dashing couple at Napoleon’s court. How young and naïve they had been. Searching his face, she tried to transmit the message, Have you ever stopped loving me? An instant later, she could have sworn that, like the faintest vibration of a butterfly’s wings, came the return assurance, Non, ma chère Elisa.

  Then Jerome turned to leave. As he and Catharine walked away, Betsy heard him say in a cracked voice, “That was my American wife.”

  Catharine grasped his arm more tightly and leaned close to whisper a reply as they exited the gallery. The familiar intimacy of the gesture stabbed at Betsy.

  Shaken to the core, she turned to her companion. “I am feeling unwell. Do you mind if we take our leave?”

  “Of course not. Are you faint?”

  No, Betsy thought, but I cannot breathe the same air as Jerome Bonaparte. Instead of admitting the truth, she answered, “I am having an attack of acute ennui. I think it is time for me to leave Florence.”

  XXXIV

  THE shock of encountering Jerome upset Betsy’s nerves so greatly that when she returned to Geneva, she suffered from periodic nausea for a month. Her distress grew so oppressive that she wrote to Lady Morgan to unburden herself: