Wondrous Beauty: The Life and Adventures of Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte

by Berkin, Carol

  Bo was probably unaware of the contest for his soul being waged between his grandfather and his mother. But for the moment, his immersion in “the follies of Europe” could not be avoided if he wanted to meet his father and his father’s family. Thus, while Betsy settled down in Florence for the winter, Bo continued south to Rome for a reunion with the Bonapartes living there. Then at the end of October, he traveled to the château of Lanciano, near Camerino, where his father lived with his wife; his two sons, Jérôme and Napoleon; and his daughter, Mathilde. The meeting was thus open rather than covert, for the concerns Jérôme had about his American son’s reception had proved baseless. Catherine was gracious, and none of her royal relatives issued any complaints.

  After two months Jérôme’s entire family, Bo included, moved to Rome. Here Bo’s disdain for his father’s version of an aristocratic life emerged. “I am excessively tired of the way of living at my father’s,” he told William. “We breakfast between twelve and one o’clock, dine between six and seven, take tea between eleven and twelve at night, so that I seldom get to bed before half-past one o’clock in the morning.” But it was not simply the late hours that troubled Bo; it was the lack of any meaningful activity during the day. The family simply gathered together in the parlor, “principally for the purpose of killing time.” Bo’s criticism did not spring from any desire to achieve greatness or make a significant contribution to society; rather, its roots were practical. His father spent more money than he had; he ought to be busy finding new sources of income. He ought, that is, to do as William Patterson and his fellow Baltimore merchants did: invest, buy, and sell—make money.

  But Jérôme’s extravagance, his living far beyond his means, his willingness to drain Madame Mère of her own dwindling fortune, was not simply a commentary on his character. Bo realized it had serious consequences for his own future. It meant that neither his Bonaparte grandmother nor his father would be able to provide for him even had they wanted to. The only sensible thing to do, Bo concluded, was “think of doing something for myself.” And he added, “America is the only country where I can have an opportunity of getting forward.”

  Betsy might have agreed with Bo’s conclusion but not with his solution. After two years of desultory study of the law, Bo found a less tedious route to wealth: he married it.

  Chapter Twelve

  “He Has Neither My Pride, My Ambition, nor My Love of Good Company”

  Bo’s courtship of Susan May Williams had begun without Betsy’s knowledge, and it had proceeded with the full support of William Patterson. Until now William had joined his daughter in advising Bo to remain a bachelor, but his motives stood at cross-purposes to his daughter’s. Betsy hoped to prevent what she considered an unsuitable marriage outside the European aristocracy; William hoped to prevent his grandson from marrying into it. The Bonapartes, he told Bo, lived in the past, clinging to their faded glory. “Your father’s family,” he had written in 1825, “cannot get clear of the notion of what they once were.” His future, he told Bo, did not lie in being joined to a family whose fortunes were rapidly diminishing in a society based on idleness; it lay in America, where a young man with a good education but modest means “may rise to consequence.”

  In offering this advice to his grandson, William left the obvious unsaid: his own daughter shared the Bonapartes’ illusions. But marriage to an American heiress—this would be an excellent step in a young man’s “rise to consequence.” The tug-of-war over Bo’s future, long waged between Betsy and her father, was about to end in triumph for William Patterson, and he intended to assist Bo’s courtship of Susan in any way he could.

  The only stumbling block to the marriage was money. Susan was the heir to a huge fortune left by her father, but her mother was initially wary of a suitor with few resources of his own. To help the courtship along, William Patterson assured Mrs. Williams that he would provide Bo with a generous portion of his own wealth, including several valuable Baltimore properties and a cash settlement that, in modern currency, would equal almost half a million dollars. This promise dispelled all doubts, and in turn the widow Williams pledged that her future son-in-law would have the authority to manage the family fortune. The annual income from that fortune, some $8,000, would be his to enjoy as he saw fit. This arrangement gave Bo thousands of dollars more than Betsy’s investments provided her each year. And Bo could spend this money as he chose, without fear of hearing a lecture from his parsimonious mother.

  Everyone who knew of the arrangement seemed satisfied. But Betsy was not aware that an arrangement had been made. In July 1829, William had written to her only that Bo was courting a young woman and that, as the young man’s grandfather, William had consented to the match. Bo had acted judiciously, William assured his daughter; he had always been “determined not to marry unless he met with one with such a fortune as would make him independent through life,” and Susan May Williams could do just that. “You will no doubt be greatly surprised at this determination of your sons [sic], but I trust & expect that you will on mature reflection see that it is a wise & rational measure & the very best that could be hoped for or expected in his situation.” The implied criticism of Betsy—that she could not provide her son with the wealth needed to lead an independent life—and the triumphant tone of the entire letter surely struck home.

  Still Betsy was kept carefully in the dark about how far along the courtship had progressed. Thus, while William Patterson was arranging the financial settlement that would make her son a wealthy man, Betsy was busily mapping out other plans for his future. Perhaps a diplomatic career would suit him. Perhaps William and her uncle, Samuel Smith, could talk to President Andrew Jackson about naming Bo secretary to the legation at the embassy in London. She would somehow find the money to support him there in appropriate style. These plans revived her dream that Bo might marry into a titled family, perhaps by taking as a bride a Galitzin or Potemkin or Demidov princess.

  All of Betsy’s “perhaps”es hinged on aborting Bo’s courtship of an American woman. She sent her father a letter in September, urging that Bo abandon his pursuit of a Baltimore bride. He must be told that she would never give her consent to a marriage to Miss Williams or to any American woman. In her desperation, she declared that she would act in a manner reminiscent of Napoleon twenty-six years before: “If he were a Minor I would go to America & avail myself of the Laws of the country to prevent or dissolve the mean marriage.” A few weeks later she wrote again, this time softening her tone and rescinding her threat. “I am sorry,” she told William, “that in the first shock I felt when I read your & his letter I was hurried into the expression of feelings which may have appeared extraordinary to you.” Despite the conciliatory tone, Betsy’s sense of helplessness in the face of what she suspected was a conspiracy to destroy her dreams prompted her to add: “If this marriage should have been hurried on to prevent my interference, for I feel persuaded that everyone of them know that I have too much sense & too much pride ever to give my consent I will then declare in the face of the whole world that I utterly disclaim all participation in it.”

  Betsy’s suspicions were sadly correct. Her brother Edward confessed to her that both Bo and William had taken pains to hide the progress of the courtship from her. On November 3, 1829, the very day she was told that her son was engaged, Bo and Susan were married. William’s letter carrying the news, written the day after the ceremony was performed, made it clear that her efforts to prevent it had come too late. If fortune had at last smiled on Bo, it had laughed once more at Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte.

  Betsy’s rage was palpable, but as usual, William had no sympathy for his daughter’s distress. Had Bo dashed her hopes and dreams? Had he acted in direct contradiction to her wishes? She had no right to complain, he wrote, for her own disobedience and her own rejection of her family’s expectations had been far more extreme. William urged her to “look back on your own conduct in relinquishing your family and country for an imaginary consequence a
mongst strangers who care little for you.… Indeed,” he continued, “rather than being displeased with your son’s late conduct you ought to commend him for his prudence and forethought in providing so well for his future prospects.”

  Betsy could not immediately reply to this barrage of blame and accusation. Finally, in a December 4 letter to William, she wrote, “I think that I did my duty in trying to elevate his ideas above marrying in America.” But it had all been for naught. “He has neither my pride, my ambition, nor my love of good company, therefore I no longer oppose his marriage.”

  What surely ate at Betsy’s soul was that William’s values and William’s tastes had triumphed over her own. Her son, like her father, embraced American culture, from its hearty and simple cuisine to its creation of an aristocracy based on wealth rather than bloodline. And in Susan May Williams, Bo had chosen a woman far more like his grandmother Dorcas Spear Patterson than his mother, a woman who did not charm with sparkling wit or dazzle with brilliant observations on politics and literature. Like William’s wife, Susan would ensure Bo a perfect blending of two necessities in his life: wealth and unchallenged patriarchal authority.

  A letter from Bo did little to cool her anger. Her son begged her to understand his motives. “Please Understand, Maman,” he wrote, “that in my future life I can never get along without money. Yet as you know, the allowance from my father is precarious, and grandfather has not, so far, promised to do anything for me. Contrary to your wishes, I have no desire to follow a diplomatic career. Business is what I like, and for that I need something to fall back on.” Bo’s explanation was carefully crafted. William Patterson had, of course, provided amply for his grandson in the marriage negotiations; perhaps Bo hoped to exaggerate his plight, gambling that his mother did not know of the large marriage settlement. It was an artful ploy, worthy of his own father. One thing is clear: with this letter, Bo at last told Betsy bluntly who he was and what he desired in life.

  Those who knew Bo well were not surprised by his actions. Even William, who loved Bo deeply, recognized that his grandson lacked the qualities that defined a self-made man. Bo was “by nature rather indolent and without much ambition” and thus had chosen a path that suited his character. Betsy’s brother Edward had also taken his nephew’s measure over the years and wrote that the marriage was, as Bo himself conceded to his mother, “a mercenary transaction altogether and carried through in a purely mercantile spirit.” And where was the surprise in that? Edward asked. What else was to be expected when there was “a total want of ambition in Jerome and an inordinate desire of wealth on his part”?

  It was, of course, Betsy, not Bo, who shared William’s pride in being self-made, in succeeding through her own efforts. But she had not seen what both her father and her brother had seen in Bo’s character. She had always viewed her son through the halo glow of her own hopes and dreams for an only child. She had planned meticulously, fervently, for his future without a clear picture of his inclinations, his interests, or his abilities. Now, rather than accepting Bo as he was, she nurtured an intense sense of betrayal.

  On December 21 she dropped all pretense that she was reconciled to events. She would never condone the marriage, she told her father. She would not disown Bo, as she believed William had disowned her—he was her legitimate heir, and she would do her duty as his mother. But she would no longer sacrifice for her son. She would spend all the funds that her investments spun off each year on herself. “I have gained my fortune by the strictest economy—by privations of every kind,” she declared, and she would not see the fruits of her labor go to “strangers” like Susan Williams. Her anger, her sense of betrayal by an ungrateful son, was a distant, ironic echo of Napoleon Bonaparte’s reaction to her marriage to his favorite brother.

  Disturbing as Bo’s marriage was, it was not the only surprising event that 1829 would bring to the life of Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte. For in the same year that Bo married for money, his mother fell in love. At forty-four, despite all her protestations that love was sheer foolishness, out of fashion even among novelists and poets, Betsy began a romance with a young Russian named Prince Alexander Mikhailovich Gorchakov.

  Prince Gorchakov was a thirty-one-year-old attaché at the Russian embassy in Florence. He was blond and handsome, with a high forehead and eyes that revealed a deep and probing intelligence. He would rise to be the chancellor of the Russian Empire under Tsar Alexander II, but in the 1820s his career was just beginning. He shared with Betsy a disdain for insipid gossip and a love of serious conversation. He also shared with her a tendency to hide his more serious nature from others, to take on a flirtatious persona that charmed but kept those he charmed at arm’s length. Betsy quickly recognized in him the same depths she knew to exist in herself. “A duller person,” she told him, “could not have seen through the mist with which your caprice and impertinence envelope you.”

  Betsy’s attraction to Gorchakov shone through in the undated description of him she kept for the rest of her life: it spoke of his “unique simplicity,” his “generous sentiments,” and his exquisite taste. Yet Betsy knew his faults as well as his virtues: he was intensely ambitious and vain, two qualities that defined her as precisely as they did the prince. And just as Betsy enjoyed being courted by men, Gorchakov was a man who wished all women to adore him, even if he felt no love for them in return. To win his love, Betsy declared, a woman “must be beautiful, spirited,” and she must be in demand and fashionable and be considered as charming by others as by himself. This portrait of Gorchakov’s ideal woman fit Betsy perfectly.

  So many men had courted Betsy over the decades, but none had stirred her emotions as Gorchakov did. In Alexander she had found a man not only as charming as she, but as intelligent. For months, the pair engaged in spirited arguments about philosophy, politics, and poetry. Often their discussions collapsed into heated argument, for he was as stubbornly confident of his views as she was of hers. When they were not debating the merits of a poem or a philosophical principle, they challenged each other in contests of wit and penned word portraits of friends and enemies.

  Watching Alexander and Betsy, their Russian friends knew they were witnessing the sparring of brilliant equals and the electricity of a doomed attraction. It was clear to all that the relationship would not, could not, end in marriage, for Alexander had to marry a woman of the Russian aristocracy if he hoped to fulfill his ambitions as a national leader.

  Alexander’s solution to their dilemma was as simple as it was acceptable to the society in which they traveled: Betsy must become his mistress. But Betsy refused. Like Caesar’s wife, she had taken care, since her marriage to Jérôme ended, to lead a life above reproach. No matter how tempted she was now, she would do nothing that might cast doubt on her moral character. She guarded her honor carefully, for to do otherwise would suggest that Napoleon had annulled her marriage on moral grounds. For Betsy’s pride, and for her son’s reputation, the annulment must stand as a purely political decision. Thus through all the years since Jérôme abandoned her, despite all the suitors, all the men who longed to bed her or to marry her, none, not even Alexander Gorchakov, would succeed.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Disgusted with the Past, Despairing of a Future”

  In 1834 Betsy left Europe. Her romance with Alexander Gorchakov was long over, and the charms of the continent had paled. A cholera epidemic, begun in 1826, still raged, taking thousands upon thousands of lives. Many of her friends had fled to the countryside, leaving Paris, Rome, and Florence in hopes of avoiding the gruesome death that reminded many of the bubonic plague. The political and social face of Europe was, in Betsy’s view, equally blighted. The July Revolution of 1830 had created a constitutional monarchy in France, and the new king, Louis-Philippe, now ruled as “King of the French” rather than as the French king. The implication was clear: France’s citizens were sovereign, and the king they put on the throne must rule in their best interest. The revolution in France sparked revolutio
ns in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Poland. Cholera was thus not the only epidemic sweeping across the continent; democracy was threatening to make bloodlines less important in Europe than the ability to amass wealth.

  In America, William Patterson had watched the turmoil produced by these events with concern—and a measure of satisfaction at the crumbling of the world his daughter had so admired. “Every thing is turning upside down in Europe,” he wrote as the July Revolution’s impact began to be felt across that continent, and there would be “confusion & distress … before things can settle down in any regular way.” He predicted, “It is not likely there will be a crowned head left except at the will of the people,” for “they are all looking forward to independence & Republicanism & nothing short of this will satisfy them.” He clearly felt that Europe was becoming more American every day.

  Betsy’s response to the declining power of Europe’s aristocrats was a measure of how consumed with bitterness and anger she had become in the wake of Bo’s marriage and the loss of Alexander. In her darkest mood, she proclaimed her hope that the aristocratic classes would at last experience the suffering she had long endured. “Let them all descend from their rank & try the disgusting life as citizens,” she wrote to her friend and financial manager, John White. Why should they escape the “blighted existence” she had endured? The weariness that this attack on the aristocrats who had befriended her conveyed was no romantic posturing; in 1834 she felt “old, enfeebled by misery of every sort, soured by disappointments, disgusted with the Past, despairing of a future which can afford me nothing.”