For her part, Betsy had no idea how to contact her husband. English newspapers reported that he had been reinstated in the French navy and was already at sea. A letter she wrote to Bentalou went unanswered. Another, to the daughter of the U.S. ambassador to France, Elisa Monroe—asking, “Would it be asking too much to request you would sometimes write me to communicate what occurs”—received no reply. A note to Lucien Bonaparte, pleading that he convey a simple message to Jérôme—“Please let me know your intentions concerning myself and your child”—was met with silence. She did receive a letter dated July 15 from Jérôme’s physician and her former shipmate, Dr. Garnier. According to the doctor, Jérôme was deeply distressed about her suffering but was even more distressed that she had sought refuge in the land of France’s enemy. Her husband, Garnier continued, instructed her to return to America as soon as possible. But, as Betsy later wrote to her father, she did not trust anything the doctor said; his letter “bears all the marks of being a deception.”
Betsy had no reason to mistrust the Marchioness of Donegal when, at long last, the dowager located her. It was possible, Betsy thought, that the marchioness could serve as her much-needed line of communication with Jérôme. Writing to the noblewoman on August 14, 1805, Betsy took pains to stress her willingness to comply with any instructions Jérôme might give. “Will you then have the goodness to inform Mr B—thro’ the same channel, that I will act with implicit obedience to his wishes as to the place of my residence & with respect to every thing else he desires.” Aware that Dr. Garnier’s report that Jérôme was angered by her decision to take asylum in England might be true, Betsy added an explanation: “I sought refuse [sic] in England not from any particular predilection for it but on my being refused admittance at Amsterdam my situation (being at that time far advanced in pregnancy) obliged me to seek an asylum in any country where I could be received.” Since her arrival, she added, she had taken care to live “in the most secluded retirement 3 miles from Town. I avoid every thing that can excite observation or comment … & … I will never act otherwise than with the propriety that my own dignity & that of his wife require.” She closed the letter with the hope that the marchioness would convey to Jérôme her “firm conviction of his sincerity & honor.” She would learn soon enough that Jérôme’s “honor” had failed her. He had already renounced her, as part of his reconciliation with his older brother.
Despite Jérôme’s abandonment of his wife, his friends took pains to assure the Pattersons that he was suffering greatly from their separation. Alexandre Le Camus conceded to William that Jérôme must, for the time being, bow to his brother’s wishes. But, he added, there was still hope that Napoleon would relent if Jérôme proved himself in an upcoming naval mission. “Your daughter,” he declared, “has only to yield to the present, and expect a better time.” William must have been unconvinced, for he did not bother to convey Le Camus’s advice to his daughter.
About three weeks after Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte was born, his father risked a second letter to Betsy. It was filled with declarations of love, justifications for his actions, and calls for patience and understanding. “You know with what regret I left you at Lisbon,” he wrote, “and God, who sees into my heart, knows that I live and breathe only for my wife.” He urged her not to believe any accounts of what had transpired in his talks with Napoleon. He alone could—and would—tell her the truth. Meanwhile she should not judge Napoleon harshly, and above all she should be patient. “My brother is as good and as generous as he is great, and if political reasons force him at present to this conduct, the day will come when that will change.” He closed with assurances of his own devotion: “Have confidence in your husband, be convinced that he breathes, dreams, works, only for you, yes, for you alone and our child.… I kiss you a thousand times, I love you more than ever.”
As he penned this letter to Betsy, it is likely that Jérôme believed every word was true. Acquaintances who saw him at the time were touched by his melancholy and noted that he spoke often of “my dear little wife.” But it is difficult to know if the air of dejection he wore stemmed from his failure to get his way with his brother or from a genuine and mature commitment to his wife and child. That he filled a letter with emphatic exclamations of devotion and pledges of undying love tells little; for a young man of Jérôme’s accommodating nature in dealing with women, this was the only possible way to speak to his beautiful wife. The circumstances called for romantic declarations and firm reassurances, and Jérôme delivered both with the sincerity of a callow youth. The truth was, he had already recognized that he had more to lose if he disappointed his French emperor than his American wife.
This letter did not reach Betsy while she was in England. All through the fall and winter of 1805, she remained in the dark about both her husband’s intentions and his whereabouts. Jérôme had, in fact, written her several letters that fall, each filled with the same sentiments that he had expressed in the missing letter, but she received none of them. Believing now that she was abandoned, Betsy canceled plans to remain in England through the winter. She would return to Baltimore with her brother Robert and her infant son. Just as she was preparing to leave, several boxes arrived from France containing dresses, hats, jewels, a miniature of Jérôme—and gold pieces worth almost fifteen hundred dollars. These were the last extravagant signs of affection she would receive from her husband.
On November 14, 1805, after six weeks on stormy seas, Betsy Patterson Bonaparte arrived home. Her mother and her many siblings were eager to greet her and her young son. But the welcome she received from her father was far less warm. William could not measure the emotional cost of Betsy’s abandonment, but he knew to the last penny the financial cost of her romantic escapade. For William had saved every receipt for his expenditures, from the outfitting and provisioning of the Erin, to Robert’s Paris expenses, to the funds he had made available for her on the continent, and to those she had used in England. Time as well as money had been wasted, for Robert and William had been absent from the family business for months. Even more infuriating, Betsy’s erstwhile husband had left Baltimore in debt to local shopkeepers, tailors, stable owners, and shoemakers and William felt honor-bound to pay these bills. In America as in France, Jérôme left it to others to pay for his extravagances.
William clearly felt all this could have been avoided if Betsy had obeyed him in the first place. He had opposed the marriage; he had tried his best to prevent it. In the end, he had surrendered to his daughter’s unshakable confidence in her own charm, and given way to her stubborn conviction that Napoleon would succumb to her beauty and wit as other men had so often done. He had, he believed, financed a fool’s errand and now bore the real burden, the dollars-and-cents burden, of her stubborn disregard for paternal authority. If he could not change the past, he was determined to recoup what he could from the present. When the boxes containing Jérôme’s last gesture of generosity arrived from London, William claimed half the gold that his former son-in-law provided. He was not content to stop there. As Betsy recorded, her father “sold to his own profit horses, carriages, serving to furnish his house at Cold Stream with plate, china, glass, tables, carpets, chairs, beds, etc etc, all that had been left at Baltimore by his imperial son-in-law.”
Betsy was enthusiastically welcomed back into Baltimore society, but given William’s obvious anger, she remained uncomfortable in her father’s home. His certainty that Jérôme had played her for a fool weighed heavily on her already fragile morale. Through the early months of 1806, as Jérôme’s letters of 1805 followed their circuitous path to Betsy’s doorstep, she struggled to maintain some hope that her husband would prove her father wrong. In April she received the notes of assurance that he had sent from Paris six months before. Then in May she received a letter written while he was on naval duty. In it, he expressed resentment that his sincerity had been doubted. If I intended to abandon you, he wrote with obvious indignation, I would already be sitting on a throne somewhere i
n Europe. Instead, I am aboard a ship, serving my emperor.
This letter made Betsy wonder if she had indeed misjudged Jérôme. Was he loyal to her after all? Perhaps as he had always insisted, Napoleon would relent if his young brother acquitted himself honorably in the naval battles being waged against Britain. Her optimism was intense, but it was short-lived. By June the tone in the letters coming from Jérôme had changed dramatically. Assurances had turned to accusations. He laid all blame for their situation at her feet. “Your departure for England,” he declared, “was the only cause of our separation.” The signature on the last letter she received revealed his clear change of heart: the impersonal closing, “J. Bonaparte,” told Betsy that the marriage was indeed over.
Jérôme’s confidence that Napoleon would eventually forgive him proved correct. But Betsy would not reap the benefits of the emperor’s renewed affection. While she was wrestling with the meaning of her husband’s promises and then his rejection, a placated Napoleon was busily trying to arrange a suitable new marriage for his youngest brother. The emperor’s victories against a coalition of Britain, Austria, Russia, Sweden, and several German states had expanded his empire across much of Prussia, Germany, Austria, and Italy, and he intended to place men he could trust in positions of power in the newly acquired areas. Marriage between his brothers—or sisters—and local leaders was thus a useful strategy. If Lucien had refused to cooperate, Jérôme’s resistance to Napoleon’s will now seemed broken. After two proposed matches failed in 1806, Napoleon finally hit upon a perfect arrangement: he would marry Jérôme to the daughter of the new king of Württemberg.
The king, who owed his title to Napoleon, had the temerity to express his concern that Jérôme was, in fact, already married in the eyes of the church. Napoleon acted quickly to remedy the problem. He appealed to Pope Pius VII to annul his brother’s marriage, claiming that there was danger in having a Protestant in close proximity to a Catholic emperor. The pope was not persuaded that a young woman posed a serious threat. When Pius refused Napoleon’s request, the French ruler took matters into his own hands. He pressured the Parisian ecclesiastical court to do what the pope would not. By October 1806, the marriage of Jérôme Bonaparte and Elizabeth Patterson had been invalidated.
All was thus in readiness when Jérôme arrived from his string of successful naval missions in the Atlantic. The former deserter was now pronounced a national hero, and Napoleon heaped rewards on him. Jérôme was made a rear admiral and a prince of the realm, a man to be addressed as “royal highness.” Jérôme’s elation was only slightly diminished when Napoleon broke the news to him that he was to be a husband once again.
While Jérôme reveled in his newfound prestige, Betsy was in Washington, visiting her aunt and reestablishing social connections with Dolley Madison. Dolley, who shared Betsy’s love of fashionable clothes and sparkling dinner conversation, served as the widowed Thomas Jefferson’s hostess at all presidential social events. This made her the undisputed leader of Washington society. Like so many of Betsy’s personal decisions, her close association with Dolley seemed to carry political implications. Jefferson’s pro-French—or more accurately, his anti-British—sentiments were well known; did the two women’s friendship suggest that Betsy, too, had cast her lot with the French? The Federalists were appalled; how could she ignore the implicit insult to American honor contained in the emperor’s dissolution of her marriage? But it was Betsy’s refusal to condemn Napoleon, whose power and ambition she would admire for the rest of her life, that ensured her private crisis would continue to have political overtones.
It was in Washington that Betsy began to hear the rumors of Jérôme’s proposed marriage to the princess of Württemberg. Soon enough she also heard rumors that her own marriage had been annulled; although it was not unexpected, the news, if true, was a terrible blow. Both rumors, of course, proved correct. On July 7, 1807, Napoleon rewarded Jérôme’s loyalty with a kingship. The emperor had been revising the map of Europe, carving new countries out of conquered areas of Prussia and Germany. One of the new kingdoms was tiny Westphalia, lying to the east of Belgium. Jérôme would wear the Westphalian crown. His queen would be Princess Catherine Fredericka Sophia Dorothea of Württemberg.
Jérôme was unlikely to feel the rush of desire to possess his queen-to-be that he had once felt for Betsy Patterson. Nineteen-year-old Catherine was neither pretty nor charming, although she proved herself to be kind and caring during their long marriage. She was short, without the long neck that signaled grace and beauty in the Napoleonic era, and she rarely smiled. The Duchesse d’Abrantès, who believed Jérôme regretted his divorce but simply did not have the “strength of mind” to resist the pressures put upon him, described the poor impression Catherine made on her first meeting with him. The duchesse, who was present at the first meeting of the young couple, expressed regret “that no one had the courage to recommend her a different style of dress.” Instead, Catherine wore a gown “in a style which had … been forgotten … with a train exactly resembling the round tail of the beaver.” The meeting was brief; after a short conversation, Jérôme announced, “My brother is waiting for us,” and left the room. Catherine realized the meeting had gone badly. “The colour in her cheeks increased so violently,” the duchesse wrote, “that I feared the bursting of a blood-vessel.” Then Catherine fainted. Despite Jérôme’s lack of enthusiasm for his future wife, their wedding took place on August 12, 1807.
Jérôme filled the weeks and months that followed running up bills that quickly drained the Westphalian treasury. In addition to his own dazzlingly extravagant wardrobe—including satin suits embroidered with gold—he dressed members of his palace staff in velvet capes. He was soon borrowing money to cover his debts. Napoleon watched with disgust. Although he spoke bluntly to Jérôme, declaring, “I have seldom seen anyone with so little sense of proportion as yourself,” he knew the censure fell on deaf ears. His younger brother was simply beyond reform. “Jérôme,” Napoleon told a confidant, “cares for nothing but pageantry, women, plays, and fetes.” But no matter how harshly Napoleon criticized him, Jérôme remained confident that he would eventually be forgiven. In the end, it was Catherine who did most of the forgiving, for Jérôme was regularly, and flagrantly, unfaithful to his wife.
While Jérôme was refurbishing royal buildings and appointing incompetent friends to positions of responsibility, Betsy was rebuilding her own life. What might have seemed an ending for an early-nineteenth-century American woman abandoned with a small child was, for Betsy Patterson Bonaparte, only the beginning. Her prince charming had failed her, but she was now ready to create a fairy-tale life for herself.
Chapter Five
“Madame Bonaparte Is Ambitious”
Although at twenty, Betsy was still young and beautiful, by 1805 she was no longer naïve. She had grown cynical, and over the coming years, she would come to share with her father that distrust of other people’s motives that was the darker side of self-reliance. For the moment, however, it was enough that she was determined to find her own voice, to make her own decisions. She would no longer rely on her father or brothers to protect her interests, and thus she would no longer have to justify her choices. She would choose her own path and negotiate, if need be, with emperors, kings, ambassadors, and congressmen for what she wanted.
She grew quickly adept at reading the motives of her enemies and allies alike, and she now clearly understood that men with power operated in their own best interest. She would do the same. She knew what she wanted: to secure a future for her son and to find a way out of Baltimore. The question was, How to achieve both?
In 1807 Bo, as the three-year-old Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte was called, was a handsome, healthy child with an uncertain legal and social status. In Europe he was the illegitimate son of the king of Westphalia. In America he was the sole offspring of a marriage still recognized as legal in Maryland. He was the grandson of one of America’s wealthiest citizens and the natural nephew
of the emperor of France. Above all, he carried the surname Bonaparte, and this alone made him an object of considerable interest on both continents. Perhaps most significant, he would become a pawn in a struggle between William Patterson and Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte, for each believed his choice of loyalty would vindicate their respective actions.
Betsy might have pursued a course of action that reduced, if not resolved, the importance of her son’s paternity. She could have quickly filed for a divorce in her home state and just as quickly remarried, giving Bo a father figure and a refuge from political intrigue and social notoriety. This was a choice William Patterson would surely have approved. It was true that Betsy was not a widow, the most respectable status for remarriage; but a dowry from her father could have swept away any concerns about this. Her family wealth, her beauty, and what many saw as her tragic betrayal combined to make her desirable to several eligible bachelors. But Betsy had no intention of remarrying. She meant instead to fight for recognition of her son as a full member of the French imperial family. She meant to see him ranked among the successors to the throne of France. She had once thrown down a challenge to Napoleon—“Tell him that Madame Bonaparte is ambitious and demands her rights as a member of the imperial family.” Now it was Bo’s rights that consumed her thoughts and that would shape many of her actions for the rest of her life. It seemed not to occur to her, until it was too late, that Bo did not value those “rights” as much as his mother did.
Wondrous Beauty: The Life and Adventures of Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte Page 5