The Ambitious Madame Bonaparte

by Chatlien, Ruth Hull

  “I know. It is time for you to settle to a career.” Even as Betsy said that, the thought of returning to Baltimore made her feel as though she were being sent to an exile every bit as barren as Napoleon’s imprisonment on St. Helena. Her shoulders slumped.

  “Oh, Mama.” Bo stepped forward and kissed the top of her hair. “I know it will not be much fun for you to sit embroidering while I slave over my law books. Perhaps you should stay in Europe one more year while I pursue my studies.”

  Lifting her head, Betsy shot him a saucy look. “Are you sure you would be happy if I did? I would not have you think I prefer Grand Duke Ferdinand to my own son.”

  To her relief, Bo laughed. He chucked her under the chin as though she were a girl. “I do believe the grand duke has turned your head, Mama, but I know you quite well enough to feel secure of your affections. Stay in Florence and enjoy your much-deserved year of amusement. But don’t let any of these rogues talk you into becoming his mistress. My fencing is not proficient enough to fight a duel in your defense.”

  “Impertinent child.” She turned back to her dressing table. “As if an old woman like me is still in want of protection.”

  After Bo left Europe, Betsy consoled herself for his absence by telling herself that she could do more to secure his future on the continent than she could in Baltimore. To that end, she continued to make inquiries about both a noble marriage and a diplomatic post.

  She began to receive letters from her father complaining that Bo showed little inclination for the law and an increasing tendency toward indolence. Betsy wrote her son reminding him of the necessity of working to achieve prominence, but she remained in Europe rather than hurrying home to chastise him. She felt confident that her father was already riding the young man hard.

  The next year, Betsy’s plan to return to Baltimore fell through. She was delayed in the early summer by the need to go to Paris and see to her European investments. By the time her business was complete, the only ship available at Le Havre was a rickety old vessel she would not risk taking, while traveling to an alternate port would make it too late in the year to sail. Knowing that Bo was still tied up with his studies, Betsy felt little regret about stretching her extra year in Europe into two. Then almost effortlessly, she found that another year had passed, and by late summer 1829 she had decided to add a third year to her sojourn.

  On November 3, 1829, Betsy received a letter from her father announcing that twenty-four-year-old Bo had become engaged to Susan May Williams, a seventeen-year-old Baltimore girl whose late father had left her a large fortune. Mrs. Williams was not eager to see her daughter marry so young, but Patterson had offered to give the couple several valuable pieces of property and a cash gift of $50,000, so the mother agreed to the match.

  Betsy wrote back furiously, repeating all her old arguments against an American marriage. In the weeks that followed, she talked at length upon the subject with her friends, and finally after a month, she wrote what she believed to be a more temperate letter:

  I tried to give my son all my ideas and tastes, and, in the first weeks after hearing that he meant to marry an American woman, I was in despair. I think that I did my duty in trying to elevate his ideas above marrying in America, and you well know that I left nothing undone to effect this. I have considered now that it is unreasonable to expect him to place his happiness in the only things which can make me happy…. He has neither my pride, my ambition, nor my love of good company; therefore I no longer oppose his marriage…. As the woman has money, I shall not forbid a marriage which I never would have advised.

  While waiting for further word, Betsy learned through mutual acquaintances that Bo had written to his father and his Bonaparte relatives to announce his upcoming marriage as early as September. At first, she told herself that his letter to her must have been lost. Perhaps he had been mistaken about her itinerary and sent the news to the wrong city.

  Then she received two letters from home, not from Bo as she had every right to expect, but from Edward and her father. Only then did she learn the full extent of the deception that had been practiced upon her. The wedding had already taken place; indeed, it occurred on the very day she received the original letter from her father announcing a “possible engagement.” With his grandfather’s collusion, her son had deliberately excluded her from this event in his life.

  Betsy screamed when she realized what they had done and then sobbed for days. Princess Galitzin consoled her by reminding her of what she had already written home, that she could not force her son to desire the same things from life that she wanted.

  “You don’t understand! They have treated me as if I were a maniac or a wretch convicted of an infamous crime. Look at this copy of the letter I wrote after I learned of the engagement. I said I would accept the marriage. But how can I forgive treachery and deceit?”

  After the initial storm of grief, Betsy took a hard look at her son’s character and realized that she had been pushing him to fulfill her own dreams and had refused to listen when he said he had little taste for them. Bo’s choice of an American wife and an American life was truly not surprising, but Betsy had thought more highly of their relationship than to imagine he could act in such a mean, dishonest fashion as to marry behind her back. Bitterly, she reflected that for all of her husband’s faults, at least Jerome had been man enough to write his family to plead for their marriage.

  Betsy found it impossible to write to Bo, who still had not sent her a line. Every time she tried to describe her hurt, she suffered a headache and nausea for days. Eventually, she calmed herself enough to write again to her father:

  I have no right to oppose his living in the way he likes best. It is possible that your judgment and his are better than mine. I hope that they are. I tried to give him the ideas suitable to his rank in life; having failed in that, there remains only to let him choose his own course. A parent cannot make a silk purse of a sow’s ear; and you found that you could never make a sow’s ear of a silk purse…. When I first heard that my son could condescend to marry any one in Baltimore, I nearly went mad. Every one told me that it was quite impossible for me to make him like myself, and that, if he could endure the mode of life and the people in America, it was better to let him follow his own course than to break off a marriage where there was some money to be got.

  In spite of her deep hurt, Betsy decided not to disinherit her son, which would violate her principles of how parents should act. Even so, her feelings about her duty to Bo changed. Now that he had married into money, she no longer felt obligated to sacrifice her own comfort for his, so she cut off his monthly allowance. She increased her spending to make use of her full income and gave up any thought of returning home.

  The following spring, five months after his marriage, Bo wrote to her about some business having to do with her Baltimore property, and thus, at least a formal level of communication was restored between them. To Betsy’s chagrin, her son never apologized or explained the clandestine manner of his marriage, so she kept their correspondence as brief and businesslike as possible.

  During one of her extended stays with her friend Princess Galitzin, Betsy complained, “He is just like his father. My ex-husband was never able to acknowledge that he chose to betray his solemn vows to me. My sainted mother once told me that men often have difficulty owning up to the hurt they inflict upon those they love, but I find it hard to excuse such thoughtlessness.”

  “My dear.” Princess Galitzin laid a hand upon Betsy’s, which was resting on the tea table between them. “You are not listening to your better nature. You yourself told me that your son has never possessed your ambition nor your drive.”

  “No, he has not. Do you mean to say that excuses his weakness?”

  Sitting back in her chair, the princess shook her head. She picked up the teapot and refreshed Betsy’s cup. “No, but I think I can understand the situation from your son’s point of view. Remember that I know young Jerome. I have often seen you together, an
d I am convinced that he loves you deeply. He has spent his entire life trying to please you, but I believe he hated the very thought of the life you had chosen for him.”

  “Then why did he not tell me so instead of shutting me out like a stranger?”

  Prince Galitzin smiled at her fondly. “You are rather a force of nature when you set your heart upon something, you know.”

  Betsy frowned and dropped extra sugar in her tea to sweeten the bitter conversation. “So you are saying that it is my fault because he knew I would have trampled upon his expressed wishes. In short, you blame me for my son’s disloyalty.”

  “No, my dear, I do not. I am asking you to see your son as he is. He could not endure the course you set for him, yet he could not bear to confront you and witness the pain of your disappointment. So he took the child’s way out of acting without your knowledge.”

  Tears pooled in Betsy’s eyes as she remembered all the times that her little boy had sworn he would take care of her and ease her difficulties. In her heart, she wanted desperately to believe that Bo still loved her. Was it possible that his fear of her temper could have led him to commit such a dishonorable act?

  She sighed. “You may be right, but I need more time to recover from this blow. I cannot endure seeing my son again. As long as he refuses to apologize, I don’t know if I ever shall.”

  The princess nodded and did not look surprised. “You will know when you are ready to reconcile. Keep your heart open, and it will tell you.”

  Betsy knew that her mother would have offered much the same advice, but that knowledge did little to salve her lacerated feelings. Bo had wounded her as deeply as ever her father or husband did. Not even when she learned a year after the marriage that Susan May had given her a grandson did Betsy’s attitude soften. She was still enjoying herself in Europe, and she honestly did not care if she ever saw Baltimore again.

  EPILOGUE: JUNE 1870

  STANDING alone in the Bonaparte room of her son’s Baltimore mansion, Betsy sighed as she gazed at the miniature of her ex-husband. “Oh, Jerome. Our son is dying. How I wish I did not have to face this alone.”

  She glanced from the miniature in her hand to her favorite photograph of Bo, the one that showed his remarkable resemblance to Napoleon. Ever since Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte had restored the French empire, Betsy’s dearest ambition had been to see Bo or one of his sons become emperor of France should the line of Napoleon III fail. Now it seemed that her son, who had throat cancer at the age of sixty-five, would die before his cousin.

  So much loss. At her advanced age, Betsy had outlived her parents, her ex-husband, and most of her siblings. If Bo should die too, how would she summon the strength to go on?

  When I see him, she thought, I must make sure he knows that my love for him has never wavered. If he must die, I want him to go in peace.

  “You can come up now,” a man’s voice broke into her thoughts.

  Betsy turned to see Jerome standing in the doorway, as handsome as ever with his dark hair and eyes. Gasping, she dropped the miniature and heard the glass break.

  Then her nineteen-year-old grandson Charles stepped toward her. “Grandmama? Are you all right?”

  Placing one hand on her chest, Betsy exhaled and leaned against the table. “For a moment, you reminded me so much of your grandfather, I thought he had come back to life.”

  “I’m sorry I startled you. It was not my intention.”

  “That is quite all right.” She held out her hand, and Charley came close so she could take his arm. “I was lost in my memories, you see.”

  “You always said that Jerome Jr. favored Grandpapa more than I do,” he replied, referring to his much-older brother. “Are you sure you feel up to this after having such a fright?”

  “Do not condescend to me. You may think I am a silly old woman, but I am a tougher bird than you imagine. I have something I must say to your father before it is too late.”

  “All right, Grandmama. But take the stairs slowly, OK?”

  “Yes, yes, if you insist.”

  As they moved toward the doorway, Betsy glanced back and saw the miniature lying on the floor amid fragments of glass. “Your grandfather.”

  “Don’t worry. I will take care of that later.”

  Turning her back on the shattered image of her husband, Betsy crossed the hall and then slowly ascended the staircase. She kept one hand on the banister and the other tucked into Charley’s arm. As she climbed, she remembered how her father had used Bo’s wedding to take revenge for the trouble her marriage caused him.

  He could not have devised a more perfect way to express the resentment he had nursed for twenty-five years. It must have given him great satisfaction to usurp her role as parent so completely that he was able to convince Bo to shut her out of that event. At the time, Betsy thought that having taken his vengeance, her father would let her live in peace. But she had been wrong to assume that William Patterson’s rancor could be appeased by a single act of retribution.

  As she and Charley reached the second-floor landing, the old feeling of being choked by outrage seized Betsy, and she had trouble catching her breath.

  “Grandmama, are you all right? Do you need a doctor?”

  “No, no. Just let me rest a moment.”

  He led her to a sofa that sat against a wall not far from the top of the stairs. After easing her onto the seat, he leaned down with his hands braced on his knees. “Grandmama, truly, you look very distressed.”

  Betsy forced herself to smile. “All that afflicts me are bitter memories. If you would fetch me some water, I will rest a minute before I go in to see your father.”

  “Of course, but—are you sure you are well enough to be left alone?”

  Gazing into her grandson’s face, so very like his mother’s, Betsy thought, How young he is and how little he knows of the decades of loneliness I have had to endure.

  “You will be gone only a minute. I believe I shall survive.”

  As Charley walked away, glancing back over his shoulder, Betsy returned to her memories. After learning of her son’s marriage, she had remained in Europe five more years, traveling among her favorite places and taking part in the social life she loved so well.

  She had even had a last chance at love. In Florence, Betsy formed a friendship with a Russian diplomat named Prince Alexander Gorchakov. He was in his early thirties, thirteen years her junior, and had wavy dark brown hair, a full mustache, and a goatee—not as dashing as Jerome had been but handsome in his own way. With other women of their acquaintance, he flirted, but with Betsy he discussed politics and world events. For her part, she relished the stimulation of debate; no other man except Elbridge Gerry had ever treated her as an intellectual equal. However, after several years of correspondence and intimate conversations whenever they found themselves in the same city, the prince made it clear that he wanted more from Betsy than a meeting of the minds, and she—knowing that his noble family would never accept his marriage to a commoner or a woman past childbearing age—broke off the relationship rather than become his mistress. In the decades since, she had followed Gorchakov’s career with tender admiration and pride. He had become one of the most influential men in Russia.

  Finally, nearing the age of fifty, Betsy grew tired of wandering the cities of Europe. Her father wrote warning her of a pending financial crisis in the United States, so she used that excuse to return home and finally meet her daughter-in-law and four-year-old grandson. She found Jerome Jr. adorable and regretted having neglected him so long.

  Although Betsy did her best to be cordial, Susan May never forgave her for her initial opposition to the marriage. It saddened Betsy that she was not welcome to live in her son’s house, but she knew that trying to convince the young woman that the criticism had never been personal was a futile task. After all, she herself had never yielded to her mother’s urging to forgive Jerome. Instead of continuing to try to win over her daughter-in-law, Betsy contented herself with being a doting
grandmother to Jerome Jr. and much later to Charley, born twenty-one years after his brother. Her relationship with her son eventually grew warm again, although they never completely restored their old closeness.

  In 1835, a year after she returned, William Patterson inflicted on Betsy one last grievous injury. When he died, his will revealed that he had deprived her of an equal share of his estate. He left stocks to his sons, his grandchildren, and even his illegitimate daughter Matilda, but not to Betsy. Nor did he bequeath her any money. All that he gave her were a few properties, including the house where she was born. Patterson also denied Betsy her equal share of her mother’s settlement from Grandfather Spear, in defiance of Dorcas’s wishes. More wounding, though, than the scant inheritance were the words Patterson wrote in his will:

  The conduct of my daughter Betsy has through life been so disobedient that in no instance has she ever consulted my opinions or feelings; indeed, she has caused me more anxiety and trouble than all my other children put together, and her folly and misconduct have occasioned me a train of expense that first and last has cost me much money. Under such circumstances it would not be reasonable, just, or proper that she should inherit and participate in an equal proportion with my other children in an equal division of my estate.

  If Patterson’s final intention on earth was to crush his daughter’s spirit and force her at last into the broken submissiveness he thought appropriate for women, he nearly succeeded. He left instructions for his will to be published in the newspaper so that all of Baltimore would read his condemnation of Betsy. She was mortified.

  Betsy was not the only person on whom William Patterson played a cruel joke at the end. He left $100 to Aunt Nancy, who by then was in financial difficulties, but only on the condition that she give up attending the sessions of Congress, a pastime he had never considered proper for a lady. Even more maliciously, he bequeathed a case of brandy to John, who was a drunkard. Yet knowing that others had been mocked in her father’s will did little to alleviate Betsy’s humiliation.