by Susan Nagel
Meanwhile, Napoleon kept Elgin under constant surveillance. Permission for Elgin to live in Pau was granted, but local officials were secretly encouraged to try to ensnare him if possible in some kind of fraudulent activity. One morning, a woman who worked at the inn where Elgin was staying brought him a packet which she said had been left by a local peasant woman. This country girl was waiting for an answer to the packet, claimed the female porter. Elgin opened the packet in front of the woman, read aloud the contents—explosive information concerning plots to burn the French fleet and letters to the Comte d’Artois and other members of the French aristocracy who were trying to remove Napoleon from office—threw the letters in the fire, and called in the prefect to report the entire incident. Lord Elgin informed both the hotel employee and the local prefect that he would not receive any letters that were sent in any way other than ordinary post. Elgin was simply too canny to fall for any ruse formulated by members of the French government.
While he was being watched and tested, Mary was trying her best to mingle with and charm the most influential people in Paris. On the arm of Robert Ferguson, she attended dinners and the opera, where she could see and be seen by Napoleon and Josephine. Mary was lovely and pregnant; all of Paris may have held a grudge against her husband, but they had developed soft hearts for this very elegant and charming young mother who scored a public relations coup of her own when she ordered her bankers at Coutts to send money to every English prisoner at Verdun.
Mary’s letters to Elgin were filled with amusing anecdotes of all of her comings and goings. Now that he was to some degree free, Elgin expected her to join him. He was not only afraid of her having the child without proper medical attention, as Dr. Scott had not yet arrived in Paris, but he was also convinced that Paris society would totally corrupt his wife. He had lived in Paris; he knew its social world and believed that his high-spirited Mary would be swept away by harmful pleasures. He was also sensitive to his mother’s letters admonishing him because people in London were incredulous that Lady Elgin would continue to live alone in the city of excess while her poor husband was languishing in prison. Mary wrote home immediately to let everyone know that her good friends had obtained Elgin’s release and that he was living quite comfortably in a spa town where his health was improving. She also pressed the point that it would be inadvisable for her to undertake a long journey in a carriage so far along in her pregnancy. Elgin, who had miscalculated her due date, made plans of his own.
In Pau, he met with a man called Monsieur Brouquens, a Bordeaux businessman who suggested that a Monsieur Dupouy would be the perfect doctor to deliver the Elgins’ baby. Monsieur Dupouy had delivered the children of Madame de la Tour du Pin, a young favorite of Queen Marie Antoinette. Forced to flee the guillotine, the young Madame de la Tour du Pin arrived at her country chateau in Bordeaux, where Dupouy delivered her daughter Séraphine in 1793. In 1794, the de la Tour du Pin family sailed to Boston on an American ship called the Diana. Back in Paris in 1796, and pregnant once again, the noblewoman begged Dupouy to travel from Bordeaux to Paris to deliver her baby. Another daughter, Alix Charlotte, was born. Monsieur Brouquens relayed all this to Lord Elgin in order to assure him that Lady Elgin would be in the best of hands upon her delivery when she arrived in Pau. Elgin, in turn, dispatched all of these wonderful references to Mary and lovingly advised her to travel to Pau immediately in a quilted and well-cushioned coach. As for Madame de la Tour du Pin, generations have now read and enjoyed her posthumously published memoirs of her life in America and subsequent return to France, where she became indispensable to Madame Bonaparte.
When Mary wrote that she had no intention of risking the journey and that she was working, instead, to bring Elgin to Paris, he accused her of gross misbehavior. He admonished her for surrounding herself with too many men, declared her an unfit wife, and commanded her to be by his side. “I don’t grudge your being amused—But God knows, it [is] not natural,” he wrote in February 1804. He told her that her behavior hurt him more than his prison stay in Lourdes, and that he was appalled she was “receiving and going about with men alone.” Mary explained that she was only going about with very old men and Robert Ferguson, whom Elgin himself had asked to look after her. She wrote, “Ferg. Is a most extraordinary being … without joking Elgin I can never repay what he has done for me.”
Elgin expected his good friend to watch over his wife and work behind the scenes on his behalf, and when he bombarded Mary with extensive shopping requests for clothes, books, and gastronomic delicacies, he knew very well that Mary would need Ferguson’s assistance in their procurement; but Elgin drew the line and became quite irritated when Mary and Ferguson went on shopping expeditions together and she allowed Ferguson to assist her in letter writing. Elgin considered that far too personal. He was appalled that Mary would allow Ferguson to be privy to what Elgin perceived to be their private marital business, and he chastised his wife.
Elgin persisted in attacking Mary for committing what he believed were improprieties, including “having constantly men & seldom woman’s company.” These accusations were off the mark. Mary had many female friends, as she was a very social creature. She also sought out women whose husbands could be of help to Elgin. In Paris, she had become very friendly with Madame de Talleyrand for obvious reasons and enjoyed the company of some of the dowagers from Britain who served as substitutes for her much missed mother, aunt, and grandmother. In her letters she omitted mentioning her episodes with her female friends, dismissing those stories as “female chatter,” which she thought would bore Elgin. She tried to keep to the point of what she thought he wanted to know. She was therefore truly affronted by his accusations. When she inquired as to where on earth he had gotten such impressions, his answer stunned her. He did not explain that her letters mentioned nothing of ladies’ teas; instead, he was intentionally vague, implying something sinister. “I cannot specify all that has come to my knowledge…. You would not believe the facts I have learnt since we parted.”
Some women adored Mary, but there were also those who were envious. Mary suspected that these so-called facts Elgin believed he was in possession of had been maliciously supplied to him by one of Mary’s jealous rivals. While Mary went out and about in Paris, as much as she could in her discomfort, Lady Yarmouth, a formidable gossip and controversial woman in her own right, was most definitely not thrilled by Mary’s popularity. Mary demanded that Elgin reveal the source of his news, certain that it was Lady Yarmouth who had invented these stories, and she went on the offense, attacking Elgin for believing anything provided by a woman of such dubious character. It was true that Lady Yarmouth’s background and adulterous affairs were well known in English and French society, and as the “love child” of the famously debauched Duke of Queensbury and a married Italian marchesa, Maria Emily Fagnani, she had grown up outside convention and was indulged with the attitude that she need not comply with other peoples’ rules. Her father, the duke, arranged a marriage of convenience for “Mie-Mie,” as she was known, with the feckless Lord Yarmouth, who enjoyed his father-in-law’s money and turned a blind eye on his wife’s extramarital love life. At the time she was accusing a very pregnant Lady Elgin of infidelity, she herself became pregnant by Comte Casimir de Montrond. Yarmouth passed himself off as the father of Lord Henry Seymour, but no one was fooled. While her husband remained in England, Lady Yarmouth lived in France until her death in 1856.
Mary wrote to her husband that his accusations caused her to become physically sick. She persisted in defending her own good intentions. Had she not been the one who had secured his release through the deal, which through no fault of her own, was not acceptable to the British government? How could he think she was not completely on his side? All she wanted was to see him and return together to their children. He, too, was weary and vulnerable. In one letter, he would write that he had decided to stay in France to avoid his enemies back home, then in the next letter would expound on his frustration that he was
being kept from Broomhall and their children. In the very next letter, he would instruct her to go to Germany, where they would live in peace and harmony. Mary was truly frantic, and yet she carried on, accomplishing the impossible.
At the beginning of February, with the help of Talleyrand and Senator Fargues, the congenial efforts of Lady Elgin, and even the pleas of his own brother, Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon agreed to issue a passport to Elgin for him to travel to Orleans, not far from Paris. Elgin was to travel incognito under the name “Monsieur Robert.” Mary wrote with joy that Elgin and she would be together for the birth of their child and that he had been misinformed about her conduct. She insisted that she had, in fact, done honor to Englishwomen with her glamorous gowns and, by French standards, rather prim behavior. Her triumph was short-lived, however, when she learned, as she had in Constantinople, that her popularity could be turned on her. As the weeks went by and once again a passport disappeared into the French bureaucratic jumble, Mary discovered that the very jealous Lady Yarmouth was “doing every thing in her power to prevent my getting it. That is good natured, is it not?”
Frustrated and exhausted as she herself was, she understood Elgin’s growing impatience and made a valiant effort to subdue her husband, teasing him out of his bad temper. She wrote that she thought he must be surrounded by pretty women in Pau, which she knew was true, and in response to his criticism of her remaining in Paris, surrounded by the customs of “modern French manners,” she lightly responded that society in Paris “is quite changed to what it was formerly—It is now the fashion to be fond of Husbands & Children.” She swore her undying love and assured Elgin that she was completely indifferent to society and that her only desire was to be with him. “If I have a horror in the world it is the idea of being confined without having you near me.” She tried again and again to explain to him that she was unwell and that travel would be dangerous. Elgin was equally intransigent, ordered her to let Ferguson handle matters in Paris, and exploded, “If you can move, it is your Duty to come!”
He continued his tirade, berating her for impropriety, and she persisted in demanding that he produce his proof. “If you don’t tell me who is sending you letters with gossip about me, I accuse you of inventing it.” She wrote these letters during the day and, because she was so upset, even during the middle of the night. “Farewell Elgin,” she told him when she had had enough. “What a scandalous thing to say of me that I am losing my character as a Woman & as an Englishwoman.” When she still received no satisfaction as to who was spreading vicious rumors about her to her husband, she wrote, “If your kind and friendly advisers knew what I suffer they would be gratified—I never expected such unkindness almost cruelty from you … I was … so totally unused to one unkind word from either my Father or Mother that it quite overpowers me—”
Elgin’s accusations and mistrust had wounded her and caused her additional strain during her pregnancy. She took the position that she would not have any more of his children and that they could never heal the rift between them: “what dreadful anxiety I have gone through on your account.” To the public, she was the vivacious Lady Elgin, but in her rooms at the Hotel Prince de Galles, she cried herself to sleep every night. This heiress refused to be pushed around: “What a wonderful stile of writing ordering me to leave Paris today or tomorrow.” Finally, she wrote, “Your Letter has hurt me too much in every respect to be able to answer it.”
To Mary’s great relief, Dr. Scott arrived in Paris and became her ally. She could tell Elgin that she was under doctor’s orders to stay put. Elgin’s emphatic preoccupation with decorum suffered a stunning blow when the Countess of Elgin demonstrated, once again, that she would take control of her own regime. Nothing whatsoever could have prepared him for the unfathomable bombshell she dropped when she announced to him that since the French population did not submit to the smallpox vaccine, she would not engage the requisite wet nurse and would instead breast-feed her own baby when it was born—an unheard-of undertaking for an aristocratic woman. Mary’s parents had always been engaged by her outrageous sense of humor and supportive of her plans, but when this bit of news was gingerly imparted to the Nisbets, they were not at all amused. As for the Dowager Countess Elgin, King George’s own paragon of correct comportment, she recalled with disapproval Elgin’s youthful days spent not too innocently in Paris and she began to worry that too much Bordeaux had gone to Mary’s head.
The simple decision, which confounded her parents, her husband, and her mother-in-law, was in a way Mary’s own declaration of independence. In the past, she had welcomed their advice, but she had spread her wings over the four and a half years since she had left England and had become a magnificent woman ready to make her own choices. At this point in her life, she resented their interference and felt assaulted by their efforts to control her. Only one person offered her unconditional friendship, free from judgment. She wrote Elgin that his very dear friend, Robert Ferguson, had become “to me like a brother.”
Chapter 18
RUDDERLESS
By February 23, 1804, Elgin was on his way to Orléans. When he received his traveling papers, he realized that Mary had been true to her word and had not been spending her time frivolously. Elgin began down the long, uncomfortable road of groveling to regain her affection. With much contrition he wrote, “My dearest angel … I most sincerely will do all in my power & anything to make up for it.” He pleaded for her forgiveness, insisting that all he wanted in the world was “to have you in my arms.” Mary had been very proud of Elgin’s great humanity toward others. He had walked among lepers in Greece, begged English naval officials for the release of a French sailor whose brother he had befriended, and when he arrived in Orléans, Elgin accompanied a Dr. Hewitson to visit English prisoners in the Orléeans jail. She was aware that he could exhibit a harsh side when the subject of money was discussed among his employees, but he had never before lashed out at her. Whether it was some kind of delusional suffering from the psychological tricks being played on him or, in fact, slander on the part of Lady Yarmouth that fueled his jealousy, Elgin was excessively punitive, and Mary could not shake a pervasive feeling of dread brought about by Elgin’s severity toward her. Once again, she felt an uncomfortable “presentiment.”
She buried those feelings when, on Monday, March 5, at 8:30 a.m., William Bruce was born, and she was thrilled at the birth of her second son. Elgin, who had not expected the baby’s arrival so soon, was still in Orleans with no hope of reaching her in Paris. News reached him faster than it would have in Barèges, however, and by the next morning he knew that he had another son, his French-born “little frog.” The distance between them made him unaware of how weak Mary truly was, and right after William was born, Elgin proceeded on to other business. Although Mary could not yet get out of bed, he bombarded her with demands for her to have tea, good food, servants, and other comforts delivered to him at the inn Trois Empereurs in Orléans. As she grew more and more exasperated with Elgin’s self-centeredness, she relied more and more on Robert, who kindly volunteered to absolve her of her responsibilities fulfilling Elgin’s demands while she convalesced. Incorrectly assuming that Mary was well enough to resume her duties, Elgin sent Mary financial reports, asking her to handle the bankers, and he reminded her to write to his mother, although she was a far more consistent correspondent than he was. Using the baby’s health as a pretense, he advised her, as a nursing mother, to “shut yourself up hermetically.” Weak and bedridden, she had no intention of going anywhere and was rather annoyed that he was still on the same tack. She dropped her tearful defenses and in her letters focused instead on the baby’s progress, including the mention that on Monday, March 26, Robert Ferguson stood in for Elgin at William’s baptism.
Elgin recovered from the shock of Mary nursing their baby and, in fact, became sexually aroused by the image of it. He fantasized about his wife and wrote her very erotic letters: “What wd. I not give to see you & the Dear Willy suckling? You must be a m
onstrous treat…. I dread you’ll glut my boy,” “Give the little fellow a very nice kiss … lick his lips after his dinner,” “I think I see the female centaur suckling its little one,” and addressed her as “My Dear Nurse.”
Their fifth anniversary passed and so did Mary’s twenty-sixth birthday, and they were still apart. In April, Mary wrote to her mother that she had been “separated from my poor Turks almost twelve months,” and she dealt with her longing to be with her other children by now focusing all of her attention on William. Mary regained her strength with daily walks in the parks of Paris, accompanied by Ferguson, where she strolled with the baby as if he were theirs. She went one more time to Talleyrand to see if her husband would be permitted to join her in Paris. When the answer was a regrettable no, Mary resigned herself to leave for Orléans.
That May, Napoleon declared himself emperor, and the Elgins’ stalwart friend, Robert Ferguson, returned to Scotland for the first time in years. In 1804, the Whigs had returned to power in the British Parliament, enabling some of Ferguson’s sympathizers, including Charles James Fox, to intercede with Napoleon on his behalf. In addition, the president of the Royal Society, famed explorer and botanist Sir Joseph Banks, had also petitioned the emperor for the release of the esteemed scientist. Napoleon had the highest regard for the Royal Society as a fraternity of great educational distinction, and he yielded. Ferguson left Mary behind in Paris with the assurance that he would use his considerable contacts in the new British government and his friendship with Banks to help gain Lord Elgin’s release.