Royal Pains: A Rogues' Gallery of Brats, Brutes, and Bad Seeds

by Leslie Carroll

  Cumberland and his wife had already sailed for the Continent. He assured the king that, No person whatsoever knew of this transaction but one lady and the clergyman who married us on Weds 2nd of October 1771. . . . To avoid suspicion I have taken the name of Thomas Johnson Esq. [he was always one for disguises!] as I was obliged to have correspondence with a banker.

  Writing to Colonel Deaken from Lille, Cumberland appeared flummoxed by George’s demands.

  The king does not desire that I disavow my marriage, but my wife is to be called Mrs. Horton and in the above condition alone I am to be admitted to His Majesty’s presence—that is the King’s commands. . . . I am not logician enough to be able to understand this paradox. She can only be my wife or not.

  According to George III, his brother’s lopsided marriage was “a stain the D of C has put on me.” The duke would not publicly disavow his marriage to the former Anne Horton, although the couple was content to accept the king’s refusal to permit Anne to use the title Duchess of Cumberland. Nevertheless, nearly everyone referred to her or addressed her as such, even if she was not so officially styled.

  The king also made it clear that anyone visiting Cumberland House would not be permitted entrance to St. James’s, meaning that if one were foolhardy enough to consider the duke his friend, he would no longer be welcome at court. George informed their mother (who evidently seemed inclined to support his view), “I now wash my hands of the whole affair and shall have no further intercourse with him.”

  After summoning his prime minister, Lord North, with an eerie prescience George expressed his concern to the PM that if he didn’t do something to close the barn door (even after Cumberland had escaped through it), his other siblings, as well as his numerous progeny, might also be tempted to bolt and to make unsuitable marriages by following their hearts. Still unaware that the Duke of Gloucester had already done exactly that, the king confided to Gloucester, “I must . . . on the first occasion show my resentment,” adding that Cumberland’s children “must know what they have to expect if they could follow so infamous an example.”

  The eventual denouement of this determination was the Royal Marriages Act of 1772. The bill prohibited any descendants of George II from marrying without the consent of the king if they were under twenty-five years old. After they reached the age of twenty-five, they could wed whom they chose as long as they gave the privy council twelve months’ notice—unless both houses of Parliament expressly declared their disapproval of the proposed match.

  Perhaps because it was off-limits to anyone claiming to be a friend of the king, Cumberland House became a sort of rival court. It was as filled with gaiety, laughter, music, and amateur theatrics as St. James’s was dull and fastidiously decorous. And King George had an even stronger reason to ostracize the duke when Cumberland took the young Prince of Wales under his wing. The future George IV found his uncle’s entertainments, his friends, his politics, and his vacation destinations (such as the upand-coming seaside town of Brighthelmstone, eventually shortened to Brighton) vastly preferable to his father’s court. The Prince of Wales would also eventually (and secretly) wed a widowed commoner, and a Catholic one, at that. His marriage to Maria Fitzherbert violated numerous statutes, including the Royal Marriages Act of 1772.

  The Cumberlands spent several years living on the Continent, chiefly because they could not afford to keep up appearances in England.

  In 1775, the duke became the royal patron of a boat club, the Cumberland Fleet, which evolved into the Royal Thames Yacht Club. He was promoted to admiral of the Royal Navy, but was forbidden by the king to assume command—a lucky break for the seamen who would have served under him, because the duke’s naval experience would have fit inside a barnacle.

  Cumberland was diagnosed with ulcers on his lungs in 1779 and retired to Brighthelmstone for the healthful sea air. During the Gordon Riots that tore up London the following June, he and his other wayward brother, the Duke of Gloucester, were reconciled to the king (albeit not fully) when they offered their support to the crown. George still remained unprepared to forgive Cumberland for being a bad influence on the Prince of Wales. But at least both Cumberland and Gloucester were not hypocritical in supporting the prince’s clandestine marriage to Mrs. Fitzherbert.

  Between 1783 and 1786 the childless Cumberlands returned to the Continent. Aware of the king’s continuing displeasure with him, the thirty-seven-year-old duke announced that he intended to become a “Citizen of the World,” although it was really an effort to stave off his creditors that kept him on the opposite side of the Channel. But by 1787 he was back on English soil, acting as the emissary between the Prince of Wales and Prime Minister Pitt during the prince’s first campaign to clear his debts.

  On September 18, 1790, the Duke of Cumberland dropped dead in Pall Mall, outside Cumberland House. An autopsy of the forty-five-year-old royal found his right lung “universally diseased.” He was buried ten days later in Westminster Abbey.

  Anne, the unofficial duchess, was granted an annuity of £4,000 (over $641,000 today), a sum that she considered barely enough to keep herself in the manner to which she had become accustomed. To make ends meet she sold off her late husband’s valuable collection of rare manuscripts and musical instruments. The Prince of Wales ended his friendship with her in 1794 after she dared to criticize Maria Fitzherbert.

  Anne had been compelled to move out of Cumberland House in 1793, when her debts became too burdensome. Seven years later, she transferred the lease to her bankers and decamped to the Continent, where by law her creditors could not reach her. She died in the tiny town of Gorizia, near Trieste, on December 28, 1808.

  The Duke of Cumberland’s scandalous sexual escapades mortified both king and kingdom. And his marriage to Anne Horton left the British monarchy a permanent legacy. Had Cumberland not been such a royal pain, George III would never have felt the need for the creation of the Royal Marriages Act of 1772, the terms of which still bind England’s ruling family.

  PAULINE BONAPARTE

  1780-1825

  ONE OF THIS BOOK’S MORE ALLURING BRATS WAS THE bodacious and sexually rapacious Pauline Bonaparte, Napoleon’s prettiest, and by far most promiscuous, sister. Her libidinous antics not only scandalized the emperor (quite a feat, as he was a pretty randy soul himself), but became the subject of international gossip. Wherever Pauline went, from Corsica to the Caribbean and numerous locations in between, she left a trail of illicit love affairs in her wake. These messes, which it too often fell to Napoleon to clean up, proved a tremendous distraction to a man who was busy trying to conquer the world. Despite the scoldings he gave her vis-à-vis her social and sexual shenanigans, Napoleon could never be angry with her for long. She was his favorite sibling, and the two of them shared a unique bond. Many were quick to believe it was something more.

  Although Pauline eventually became a princess, a title she cheerfully flaunted in front of her other sisters (who were ennobled only through the good graces of their overachieving brother), her life began with little promise of wealth and privilege. Maria Paola—twelve years younger than her famous brother, Napoleon—took her first breaths in a tenement house in Ajaccio, Corsica, the sixth of seven children born to Letizia and Charles Buonaparte.

  Paoletta, as she was called, was only four when her father died, and although Napoleon was sent away to military school to make something of himself, she received little, if any, formal education. In the summer of 1793 her fate changed dramatically when the family was forced to flee Corsica, caught up in the island’s war of independence from the French. The Buonapartes had sided with France. Napoleone (as he was then known), one of the army’s rising stars, was compelled to rescue his family after their home had been torched by Corsican patriots. They were taken aboard a frigate to the south of France, where by degrees Paoletta became more Francofied, changing her name first to Paulette and eventually to Pauline. Napoleon was the one who modified the spelling of their surname to Bonaparte, dropping the
“e” from the end of his Christian name in the process.

  The teenage Pauline’s fine features and chiseled beauty drew notice, but the attention was not necessarily favorable. Pauline believed her looks and vivacity afforded her a license to flirt outrageously and to blurt out whatever was on her mind at whatever moment she chose. As a result she developed the somewhat obnoxious habit of frequently interrupting dinner parties when some venerated adult was holding forth to make some inane exclamation or to laugh uproariously at her own joke.

  At the age of fifteen she became engaged to a man twenty-six years older, Stanislaus Fréron, the pro-Consul in Marseille. In the summer of 1794 Robespierre had sent Fréron to the Midi to represent the face of the Terror in the region, and just weeks later, after Robespierre’s execution and the Terror’s subsequent collapse, Fréron had been placed in charge of establishing order. For a man who had energetically espoused the revolutionary beliefs and supported the execution of a king, and who had overseen the judicial murder of countless members of the titled nobility, Fréron lived like a pasha. His taste for extravagance was not, however, at odds with the Bonapartes. Although the family had come from modest circumstances and began their life in France as Corsican refugees, they had an innate sense of entitlement that was always antithetical to revolutionary ideals.

  The Bonaparte family was divided as to whether Pauline was making a good match. The pair had been introduced by Napoleon’s brother Lucien, who had been Fréron’s aide-de-camp in Marseille. Napoleon himself initially supported the May-December marriage, but their mother, Letizia, was vehemently against it. Not only was Fréron more than old enough to be Pauline’s father, but at the time the couple became engaged, he had been enjoying a five-year affair with an Italian actress, by whom he had 2.5 children (two, with one on the way, due sometime around his wedding day to Pauline).

  Despite the vast difference in their ages, Pauline was very excited about her impending nuptials, insisting that she was passionately in love with her fiancé; and Letizia’s antipathy only strengthened her belief that her relationship with Fréron was star-crossed.

  On February 9, 1796, Pauline wrote to her intended: . . . I swear, dear Stanislaus, ever to love but you alone. My heart is not for sharing. It’s given to you whole. Who could oppose the union of two souls who seek only happiness and who find it in loving each other? No, my love, not Maman, not anyone can refuse you my hand.

  That spring, Napoleon, having just wed Josephine de Beauharnais, was appointed Commander of the Interior and was given command of the French army in Italy. Although he had an older brother, Napoleon’s position and potential for greatness made him the de facto head of the family. His siblings were to share his ambition in that he expected them to marry up. “No money, no match,” was his philosophy.

  By that reckoning, Stanislaus Fréron was about to selfeliminate from the list of eligible suitors for Pauline’s hand. He was denounced for embezzlement on March 30, 1796. Mademoiselle Masson, his pregnant mistress, then stepped forward. After such a one-two punch, Napoleon swiftly changed his mind about his sister’s impending marriage. He told their older brother, Joseph, “Please arrange the business of Paulette,” then wrote to his colleague Paul Barras, who was also a friend of Fréron’s, to persuade Stanilaus to gracefully back out of the engagement and not to insist on marrying “a child of sixteen of whom he is old enough to be the father. One does not try to marry when one has two children by a woman still living.” Napoleon would always be extremely fastidious when it came to other people’s morals, although his own were frequently questionable.

  Despite her brother’s efforts to end their engagement, Pauline still had her heart set on Fréron, even going so far as to write a letter to him commiserating with the condition of “that woman,” saying, “I put myself in her place and feel for her.”

  And on July 2, after Pauline had fallen into a river and nearly drowned, she wrote to Fréron, I don’t talk more about your mistress. All that you say reassures me. I know your honest heart and approve the arrangements you are making in that respect. The water I drank in the river has not cooled the warmth of my heart for you. It was more likely nectar I swallowed.

  That December, Napoleon gave orders for Pauline to quit Marseille and meet him at his army headquarters in Milan. Fréron was thus abandoned. He eventually wed his mistress and after a brief second act as commissioner in Saint-Domingue he slipped into poverty and obscurity, dying of yellow fever on the island in 1802.

  Meanwhile, Pauline’s star was on the ascent. In Milan she met one of her brother’s officers, Adjutant General Victor Emmanuel Leclerc, in his mid-twenties, dashing, chiseled, and nicknamed “the blond Napoleon.” Leclerc had adopted his mentor’s manner of walking with his hands behind his back; and he also imitated a gesture Napoleon’s older brother, Joseph, was fond of—that of crossing his right arm over his waist and tucking his hand inside his coat.

  On April 20, 1797, Leclerc and Pauline announced their intention to wed.

  However, there is a bit more to the story than a sudden coup de foudre of attraction. After Napoleon caught his sister with Leclerc in his study having ecstatic sex behind a screen, he determined that the sooner Pauline got married, the better.

  Leclerc had evidently loved Pauline from afar for three years. But he was hardly marrying an heiress. Her dowry was an unimpressive forty thousand francs. They were also a pair of opposites: Leclerc was as serious as Pauline was vivacious, fondly referring to him as mon joli petit gamin—“my cute little imp.”

  At the time, the Milanese Republican army headquarters resembled a royal court, particularly after Josephine arrived with her daring, sophisticated coterie of friends. Pauline took advantage of the cultural and shopping opportunities to bedeck herself in gold, swanning into La Scala in all her gilded splendor. Wherever she went, Pauline made quite an impression, with her pale skin, sensuous mouth, dark eyes, and dark hair. She was particularly proud of her milky complexion and her dainty hands and feet. And at five-foot-six, she was more or less the same height as her ambitious brother.

  The saucy Pauline was hardly a bashful, blushing bride-to-be. And modesty was never her strong suit. She knew full well that she was gorgeous and desirable, and played it to the hilt. According to the poet Antoine-Vincent Arnault, a friend of Leclerc’s who had occasion to dine in Pauline’s company, she was a “singular mix of all that was most complete in physical perfection and most bizarre in moral qualities.” Arnault found Pauline “the prettiest and worst-behaved person imaginable” with “the deportment of a schoolgirl, chattering away without pause, laughing at nothing and everything, contradicting the most eminent personages, sticking out her tongue at her sister-in-law [Josephine] behind her back, nudging my knee when I wasn’t paying sufficient attention, and drawing upon herself from time to time the most terrifying looks of reproof from her brother. . . . But this didn’t work with her. A minute later she would start again. To have the authority of the general of the Army of Italy checked thus by the giddiness of a little girl!”

  Arnault was far from the only one to recognize Pauline’s combination of beauty and frivolity. The renowned Austrian statesman and diplomat Klemens Wenzel, Prince von Metternich, thought her “as pretty as it is possible to be,” but “in love with herself and her only occupation was pleasure.”

  Pauline’s animosity toward Josephine is intriguing because they shared many similarities. Each came from a modest background and had been given a minimal education. And both women had a certain magnetic appeal in addition to their beauty. Perhaps Pauline’s jealousy stemmed from the fact that she herself was wildly in love with her brother.

  On June 14, 1797, Pauline married Leclerc in a civil ceremony at Mombello, outside Milan, in which she formally renounced any claim to the Bonaparte family property. A religious ceremony was held that evening. Napoleon had requested a dispensation from the Milanese archbishop because the banns had been posted for only a civil marriage. Although the radical revolutio
naries had secularized France, Leclerc was a religious man. Their church ceremony was a double wedding: Pauline’s older sister Elisa wed a fellow Corsican, Felice Bacciochi.

  The Leclercs honeymooned on Lake Como, and Pauline was soon pregnant. On April 20, 1798, she bore a son who was baptized Dermide Louis Napoleon Leclerc; the boy’s first name was chosen by his godfather, Napoleon, after the hero of one of his favorite epic poems. It was a difficult birth that left Pauline with health problems for the rest of her life. Years later she would be diagnosed with salpingitis, an inflammation of the fallopian tubes, that might have stemmed from Dermide’s birth, but might just as well have been the result of multiple sexual partners, or from gonorrhea. According to the late historian Christopher Hibbert, one symptom of salpingitis is nymphomania; and Pauline’s recent biographer Flora Fraser posits that the disease may have rendered Pauline nearly infertile, which gave her the freedom to indulge her promiscuity without fear of pregnancy. The symptoms of salpingitis include intense abdominal pain and difficulty walking—which might have accounted for Pauline’s insistence over time that she be carried everywhere in a chair or on a litter. In the autumn of 1801, and again several years later, she required a purpose-built girdle to support her pelvis.