The Ambitious Madame Bonaparte

by Chatlien, Ruth Hull

  With the prospect of travel opening up before her again, Betsy felt as though shackles had fallen from her wrists. She vowed not to be a prisoner of her circumstances any longer.

  XXXI

  BECAUSE Napoleon’s return had made the name Bonaparte too conspicuous, Betsy obtained a passport and booked passage in her maiden name. She sailed for England in June with the Ashleys, a prosperous merchant and his wife to whom friends had introduced her. They reached Liverpool in July and took rooms in a local inn to recover from the voyage before starting the three-day journey to the spa at Cheltenham.

  Almost the first thing Betsy learned after her arrival was that the Duke of Wellington had already defeated Napoleon at a place called Waterloo in Belgium. Napoleon was now a British prisoner on the HMS Bellerophon in Plymouth Harbor. Betsy briefly wondered if she might journey to meet the great man who had thwarted her destiny yet retained her admiration, but the newspapers reported that Captain Maitland was under strict orders not to let anyone aboard.

  While in Liverpool, Betsy wrote to Frances Erskine, who was now living in Surrey. In her reply, Lady Erskine gave Betsy a letter of introduction to a distinguished Irish physician who lived at Cheltenham, Sir Arthur Brooke Falkener, and his wife Anne.

  Betsy and the Ashleys set out for the spa town a week after their arrival in England. During the first leg of the trip, they shared a coach with a pleasant old gentleman whose son was an officer under Wellington. The father had read all available accounts of Waterloo and eagerly described the battle to his American companions. Betsy plied the man with questions—so many that she found it difficult to disguise her special interest in the Bonapartes. Finally, unable to restrain her curiosity, she asked, “Was Napoleon’s youngest brother in the battle? He visited my city years ago, and I wonder what became of him.”

  “Do you mean Prince Jerome? Yes, he acquitted himself with distinction, inspiring his men to fight long after all hope was lost.”

  A wave of unexpected tenderness washed over Betsy. “So he has won military glory at last,” she murmured. Then, seeing the old man frown, she shrugged. “Much good may it do him now that his brother has gone down to defeat.”

  “Well, there’s no denying that Boney had genius. As far as I can tell, the rest of his family is a worthless lot who did him no favors.”

  “Perhaps the emperor’s talents have descended to the next generation,” Betsy said, thinking of her son. Bo would be pleased to learn that his father had fought well.

  The old man snorted. “God help us if they have.”

  ARRIVING AT CHELTENHAM, Betsy was pleased by the town’s appearance. The main thoroughfare, High Street, was neatly paved, and oil lamps lit the streets in the evening. St. Mary’s, located at the center of town, was a picturesque church that dated back to the Middle Ages. It was built in the shape of a cross, with a squat octagonal spire topped by a gilded weathercock. Betsy’s first day in town, she noticed an astonishing amount of building taking place, no doubt because of Cheltenham’s growing popularity as a resort. One great project under construction was a crescent of connected town houses, built of light stone and fronted by beautiful cast-iron fences. Betsy wished she could rent one of those fashionable residences instead of settling in the same boarding house as Mr. and Mrs. Ashley.

  The Ashleys already bored Betsy so much that she had difficult curbingher sarcasm—they were the kind of narrow, commercially minded people she had hoped to leave behind in Baltimore. She could not, however, live on her own in a foreign country. Hoping to make more amiable friends, she sent Lady Erskine’s letter of introduction to the Brooke Falkeners.

  Lady Brooke Falkener called the next day. She was a slim, elegantly dressed blonde in her late twenties. After greeting Betsy, the Englishwoman gazed down her nose at the parlor furniture, which had threadbare upholstery. “Please accept what I am about to say as a friendly caution, Madame Bonaparte. You are a visitor to England and do not know our ways. People of fashion do not stay in boarding houses.”

  Betsy smiled to show that she did not take offense and then tried to hint at her financial limitations. “Surely it would be viewed as self-important to take larger quarters for just my maid and myself.”

  “Oh, but there is a sweet little house to let next to ours, and I’m sure Sir Arthur could obtain reasonable terms. Lady Erskine told us your health is delicate, so it would be to your advantage to settle near a physician.”

  Within a week, Betsy had moved to a two-story town house on High Street, a building just wide enough for a door and single window on the ground floor. It was not as stylish as the houses that she admired in the Royal Crescent but, with neighbors like the Brooke Falkeners, it was far more respectable than her previous lodgings.

  Shortly afterward, she consulted with Sir Arthur about her health. The doctor was only in his mid-thirties, but he had many years experience as a physician to his majesty’s troops and, just two years earlier, had earned honors by halting the spread of the plague in Malta. Since his retirement from the service, he had been appointed the personal physician of the Duke of Sussex, George III’s youngest son. Betsy had complete confidence in him.

  Sir Arthur agreed with Betsy’s Baltimore doctor that she suffered from an excess of bile, so he urged her to take full advantage of the spa. Because she disliked the idea of bathing in waters so many others had used, he excused her from using the public bath, but he insisted that she drink mineral water four times a day and take frequent lukewarm baths at home. Betsy followed his prescribed regimen exactly.

  After she had been in Cheltenham several weeks, she traveled to London to see her father’s business agent, James McIlhiny. Sitting in his office amid a welter of account books, Betsy explained that her relatives had given her lists of things to purchase in Europe, and she was relying on Mr. McIlhiny to help her with the shipping and transfer of funds.

  “Shall I also handle the letters of credit your father provided you?”

  “I am afraid you are misinformed, Mr. McIlhiny. My father is not paying for my trip.”

  He rubbed his chin. “Oh. I gathered from his last letter that he is very concerned about you, so I assumed he was giving you an allowance.”

  Betsy’s heart swelled with emotion. Perhaps her father cared for her more than she knew but because of his stern nature only expressed that love to others. “Pray, what did he say?”

  McIlhiny coughed. “He asked me to look after you and keep him informed because you had conceived yourself so ill that you hurried to Europe without the knowledge or approval of your friends.”

  The words stung like a slap. “Sir, I can assure you that is not the case.”

  He bowed his head in apology. “Forgive me. I have no wish to offend you.”

  After smoothing down the fingers of her gloves as a way to calm herself, Betsy said, “I bear you no ill will, Mr. McIlhiny.”

  McIlhiny rubbed his chin again and then cleared his throat. “Madame Bonaparte, please forgive me if this is presumptuous, but I would like to ask your father to consider making you an allowance. Perhaps he may be moved if I write that it is the custom for gentlemen of his station to provide their unmarried daughters with financial support when they travel.”

  “You are very kind, sir. I would be grateful for your intervention.”

  Betsy was so angry with her father that her stomach churned and her head ached during the entire two-day trip back to Cheltenham. The day after her return, she wrote to him:

  Dear Sir—I perceive with much regret, by your letters respecting me to persons of this country, that you announced to them that I conceived myself ill, and had embarked contrary to the wishes of my friends. I shall answer categorically these two accusations, and answer them without temper. The physicians of England are willing to give a certificate of their opinion that there is an accumulation of bile on my liver, which would have killed me,… had I not gone to sea and tried a change of climate.

  Betsy was gripping her pen so tightly that her hand beg
an to cramp. She lay down the quill to stretch her fingers and then resumed the letter by saying that those who begrudged her this trip were no friends of hers because true friends would be happy that she now found herself in a society she enjoyed and where she was much appreciated.

  My misfortune and the declining state of my health have excited more interest here than in my own country, and have been a passport to the favor of the great. My talents and manners are likely to preserve their good opinion. What you have written of me to Europe will have very bad effects. Either people will wonder you should not wish my health restored, and that you should not be pleased at knowing me in the first society, or they will consider me to be a hypocrite and disobedient child, who has bribed medical men to say my life is in danger.

  By then, tears were streaming down her face. The pain of her father’s disapproval stung as sharply as it had when she was eight years old, and Betsy searched for words to convince him of the merit that others saw in her.

  I get on extremely well, and I assure you that altho’ you have always taken me for a fool, it is not my character here. In America I appeared more simple than I am, because I was completely out of my element. It was my misfortune, not my fault, that I was born in a country which was not congenial to my desires.

  She went on to describe the excellent living situation she had found with reputable protectors. Then she warned her father to be careful what he wrote about her.

  I beg… that you will consider the impropriety of writing anything except what will produce a good effect in this country. All my conduct is calculated, but you will undo the effects of my prudence if you write to certain people, who show your letters. Let people think you are proud of me, which indeed you have good reason to be, as I am very prudent and wise.

  Once she had sent the letter to Baltimore, she resolved to put her father out of her mind. Indeed there was much at Cheltenham to distract her as her health improved. The Brooke Falkeners took her to the horse races and dances, where they introduced her to members of the British aristocracy. In late September, Percy Smythe, the Viscount Strangford, brought Betsy an invitation to attend a ball given by the Portuguese ambassador, Count Tonsall, for all the nobility residing in Cheltenham. The evening of the party, Betsy felt queasy, but she did not want to give offense by refusing to attend, so she rose from her bed and dressed in a white chemise beneath a sheer, high-waisted gown with gold metallic braid crisscrossing her bosom and forming a band beneath the short puffed sleeves. For accessories, she added long, white kid gloves and the pearls Jerome had given her for a wedding present. Betsy remained at the party for three hours, talking with spirit and making many titled acquaintances, but when supper was served, she excused herself and left. Before going to bed, however, she recorded in her notebook the names of all the aristocrats she had met whose daughters might be potential brides for Bo.

  Betsy did not spend all her time at Cheltenham pursuing amusement. She also sought to increase her knowledge of every kind. In September, she went with the Brooke Falkeners to hear Haydn’s oratorio The Creation at Gloucester Cathedral. It was a musical retelling of the book of Genesis, performed by three soloists, a chorus, and a large orchestra, and she delighted in the virtuoso performances.

  Often during the daytime hours, Betsy and Lady Brooke Falkener attended lectures at the Assembly Hall about such diverse topics as the novels of Miss Jane Austen and the fossilized skeleton of an ancient fishlike creature discovered at Lyme Regis in 1811. The people Betsy met at these meetings were educated, and she reveled in the opportunity to take part in stimulating conversation, including many disquisitions on the recently concluded Congress of Vienna, where representatives of the victorious powers had sought to restore deposed monarchs, redraw the boundaries of Europe, and create a balance of power to preserve the peace. The spa also had several subscription libraries, so Betsy could read to her heart’s content. Having access to so many cultural opportunities confirmed her resolve to educate Bo in Europe.

  Only two things marred her happiness. She missed her son dreadfully and wished she had a large enough income to have brought him with her. Marianne had written in July that Bo was depressed, but more recent letters said he was resigned to the separation. Betsy wrote him as often as she could afford the postage, recounting lively stories so he might feel part of her life. She also reminded him in every letter that, just as soon as she received permission from the French government, she would travel to France to look for a suitable school for him:

  Being separated by the Atlantic is as disagreeable to me as it is to you, but I must do what is necessary to secure your future. Reward all my cares for you by studying as hard as you can, so that when I come home I will find that you have proven yourself worthy of the Bonaparte name. I love you, and I shall not rest easy until I can be with you again and look after you myself.

  The second problem was money, as Betsy had known it would be, but she worked hard to keep her conversation witty and amusing so that she would be a much-desired guest—a plan in which she succeeded. Acquaintances invited her to dine so frequently that it kept her expenses in check, and she managed to live just within her means. Even so, she dared to imagine that her father might respond favorably to McIlhiny’s suggestion about the allowance, which would give her more freedom. She delayed traveling to Paris until she received an answer.

  That possibility was soon dashed like a storm-tossed ship upon rocks. In November, James McIlhiny wrote to say that her father had declared categorically he would never give a penny toward her support as long as she lived abroad.

  Betsy felt no real surprise at the answer, but she did berate herself for having been seduced by hope. Shortly afterward, a letter from her father arrived.

  I am persuaded you are pursuing a wrong course for happiness; but I hope and pray you may soon perceive your mistake, and that you will look to your mother-country as the only place where you can be really respected, for what will the world think of a woman who had recently followed her mother and her last sister to the grave, had quit her father’s house, where duty and necessity called for her attentions as the only female of the family left, and thought proper to abandon all to seek for admiration in foreign countries; surely the most charitable construction that can be given to such conduct is to suppose that it must proceed in some degree from a state of insanity, for it cannot be supposed that any rational being could act a part so very inconsistent and improper.

  The charge of insanity wounded Betsy so deeply that she took to her bed with a severe headache.

  Lady Brooke Falkener called the next morning and commented on how ill she looked. Not wanting to reveal the breach with her father, Betsy said, “November never agrees with me. The gloomy weather afflicts me with tristesse.”

  “Well, this novel I brought will cheer you up. You said how much you enjoyed Lady Morgan’s Wild Irish Girl, so I feel certain you will want to read her latest, O’Donnel. There is nothing like its portrayal of the Irish peasant.”

  “Thank you, how kind.” As Betsy glanced through the pages of the book, she reached a decision. “But I should not borrow this. I think that it is time for me to depart for France.”

  “Oh, keep it, my dear, and return it to me later.”

  ARRIVING IN PARIS the last week of November, Betsy gazed out the window in rapture as the public coach took her through narrow, winding streets crowded with medieval, sometimes crooked buildings. She had dreamed of this moment for so long. After checking into a hotel recommended by Thomas Jefferson, Betsy sent a note to the American embassy asking if she could call on Ambassador Albert Gallatin, whom she knew from his days as Secretary of the Treasury in Washington.

  The Swiss-born Gallatin was then in his fifties. He had a square face, heavy eyebrows, and a bald pate surrounded by a collar-length fringe of hair. At his meeting with Betsy, he gave her helpful advice about suitable neighborhoods and the best way to transmit funds between the United States and Paris. He also invited her to dine with his fami
ly. Gallatin’s wife Hannah was very kind to Betsy, who became a frequent guest at their table and through them began to make connections in Parisian society.

  They introduced her to the writer David Bailie Warden, who helped Betsy find a small apartment for eighty dollars a month. The building had interior stairs that dipped in the center from decades of traffic, water-stained walls, and warped floors, but Betsy did not care because she was in Paris at last. Her suite consisted of two bedrooms, one for herself and one for a maid, and a parlor furnished with fringed, gold velvet draperies, a gold-on-blue damask sofa, and four mahogany fauteuils with blue cushions and winged goddesses carved on the arm supports. On the rare occasions that she dined at home, Betsy had meals sent up from a restaurant in the building next door.

  Warden also showed her the sights, including Notre Dame, the tomb of Voltaire in the Pantheon, and Napoleon’s unfinished Arc de Triomph. As they drove through the city, Betsy’s delight in Paris was marred only by the sight of so many British and Russian soldiers encamped in the royal parks. The troops reminded her that, even though she was finally living in her ideal city, she would never experience the glory of the French Empire.

  That disappointment faded as Warden introduced Betsy into literary circles. The United States had nothing comparable; the only acclaimed American writer was Washington Irving, whom Betsy had met at Dolley Madison’s open houses, but his two books of satiric essays could hardly constitute a national literature. In Paris, Betsy made the acquaintance of several female writers, who eventually became close friends.

  One was Madame Germaine de Staël, a woman of nearly fifty with dark hair, a fleshy face, and a slightly buck-toothed smile. She dressed in turbans and shawls of rich Eastern fabrics. During his reign, Napoleon had exiled Madame de Staël from France because her controversial novel Delphine explored the subject of women’s freedom. Now, she and Betsy commiserated with each other over their unfair treatment by the emperor.