by Lyndon Orr
THE STORY OF PAULINE BONAPARTE
It was said of Napoleon long ago that he could govern emperors andkings, but that not even he could rule his relatives. He himself oncedeclared:
"My family have done me far more harm than I have been able to do themgood."
It would be an interesting historical study to determine just how farthe great soldier's family aided in his downfall by their selfishness,their jealousy, their meanness, and their ingratitude.
There is something piquant in thinking of Napoleon as a domestic sort ofperson. Indeed, it is rather difficult to do so. When we speak his namewe think of the stern warrior hurling his armies up bloody slopes and onto bloody victory. He is the man whose steely eyes made his haughtiestmarshals tremble, or else the wise, far-seeing statesman and lawgiver;but decidedly he is not a household model. We read of his sharp speechto women, of his outrageous manners at the dinner-table, and of thethousand and one details which Mme. de Remusat has chronicled--andperhaps in part invented, for there has always existed the suspicionthat her animus was that of a woman who had herself sought the imperialfavor and had failed to win it.
But, in fact, all these stories relate to the Napoleon of courts andpalaces, and not to the Napoleon of home. In his private life this greatman was not merely affectionate and indulgent, but he even showed acertain weakness where his relatives were concerned, so that he let themprey upon him almost without end.
He had a great deal of the Italian largeness and lavishness of characterwith his family. When a petty officer he nearly starved himself inorder to give his younger brother, Louis, a military education. He wasdevotedly fond of children, and they were fond of him, as many anecdotesattest. His passionate love for Josephine before he learned of herinfidelity is almost painful to read of; and even afterward, when he hadbeen disillusioned, and when she was paying Fouche a thousand francsa day to spy upon Napoleon's every action, he still treated her withfriendliness and allowed her extravagance to embarrass him.
He made his eldest brother, Joseph, King of Spain, and Spain provedalmost as deadly to him as did Russia. He made his youngest brother,Jerome, King of Westphalia, and Jerome turned the palace into a pigstyand brought discredit on the very name of Bonaparte. His brother Louis,for whom he had starved himself, he placed upon the throne of Holland,and Louis promptly devoted himself to his own interests, connivingat many things which were inimical to France. He was planning highadvancement for his brother Lucien, and Lucien suddenly married adisreputable actress and fled with her to England, where he was receivedwith pleasure by the most persistent of all Napoleon's enemies.
So much for his brothers--incompetent, ungrateful, or openly his foes.But his three sisters were no less remarkable in the relations whichthey bore to him. They have been styled "the three crowned courtesans,"and they have been condemned together as being utterly void of principleand monsters of ingratitude.
Much of this censure was well deserved by all of them--by Caroline andElise and Pauline. But when we look at the facts impartially we shallfind something which makes Pauline stand out alone as infinitelysuperior to her sisters. Of all the Bonapartes she was the only one whoshowed fidelity and gratitude to the great emperor, her brother. EvenMme. Mere, Napoleon's mother, who beyond all question transmitted to himhis great mental and physical power, did nothing for him. At the heightof his splendor she hoarded sous and francs and grumblingly remarked:
"All this is for a time. It isn't going to last!"
Pauline, however, was in one respect different from all her kindred.Napoleon made Elise a princess in her own right and gave her the GrandDuchy of Tuscany. He married Caroline to Marshal Murat, and theybecame respectively King and Queen of Naples. For Pauline he did verylittle--less, in fact, than for any other member of his family--and yetshe alone stood by him to the end.
This feather-headed, languishing, beautiful, distracting morsel offrivolity, who had the manners of a kitten and the morals of a cat,nevertheless was not wholly unworthy to be Napoleon's sister. One has totell many hard things of her; and yet one almost pardons her becauseof her underlying devotion to the man who made the name of Bonaparteillustrious for ever. Caroline, Queen of Naples, urged her husband toturn against his former chief. Elise, sour and greedy, threw inher fortunes with the Murats. Pauline, as we shall see, had the oneredeeming trait of gratitude.
To those who knew her she was from girlhood an incarnation of whatused to be called "femininity." We have to-day another and a higherdefinition of womanhood, but to her contemporaries, and to many modernwriters, she has seemed to be first of all woman--"woman to the tips ofher rosy finger-nails," says Levy. Those who saw her were distractedby her loveliness. They say that no one can form any idea of her beautyfrom her pictures. "A veritable masterpiece of creation," she had beencalled. Frederic Masson declares:
She was so much more the typical woman that with her the defects commonto women reached their highest development, while her beauty attained aperfection which may justly be called unique.
No one speaks of Pauline Bonaparte's character or of her intellect, butwholly of her loveliness and charm, and, it must be added, of her utterlack of anything like a moral sense.
Even as a child of thirteen, when the Bonapartes left Corsica and tookup their abode in Marseilles, she attracted universal attention by herwonderful eyes, her grace, and also by the utter lack of decorum whichshe showed. The Bonaparte girls at this time lived almost on charity.The future emperor was then a captain of artillery and could give thembut little out of his scanty pay.
Pauline--or, as they called her in those days, Paulette--wore unbecominghats and shabby gowns, and shoes that were full of holes. None theless, she was sought out by several men of note, among them Freron, acommissioner of the Convention. He visited Pauline so often as to causeunfavorable comment; but he was in love with her, and she fell in lovewith him to the extent of her capacity. She used to write him loveletters in Italian, which were certainly not lacking in ardor. Here isthe end of one of them:
I love you always and most passionately. I love you for ever, mybeautiful idol, my heart, my appealing lover. I love you, love you, loveyou, the most loved of lovers, and I swear never to love any one else!
This was interesting in view of the fact that soon afterward she fell inlove with Junot, who became a famous marshal. But her love affairs nevergave her any serious trouble; and the three sisters, who now began tofeel the influence of Napoleon's rise to power, enjoyed themselves asthey had never done before. At Antibes they had a beautiful villa, andlater a mansion at Milan.
By this time Napoleon had routed the Austrians in Italy, and all Francewas ringing with his name. What was Pauline like in her maidenhood?Arnault says:
She was an extraordinary combination of perfect physical beauty and thestrangest moral laxity. She was as pretty as you please, but utterlyunreasonable. She had no more manners than a school-girl--talkingincoherently, giggling at everything and nothing, and mimicking the mostserious persons of rank.
General de Ricard, who knew her then, tells in his monograph of theprivate theatricals in which Pauline took part, and of the sport whichthey had behind the scenes. He says:
The Bonaparte girls used literally to dress us. They pulled our ears andslapped us, but they always kissed and made up later. We used to stay inthe girls' room all the time when they were dressing.
Napoleon was anxious to see his sisters in some way settled. He proposedto General Marmont to marry Pauline. The girl was then only seventeen,and one might have had some faith in her character. But Marmont wasshrewd and knew her far too well. The words in which he declined thehonor are interesting:
"I know that she is charming and exquisitely beautiful; yet I havedreams of domestic happiness, of fidelity, and of virtue. Such dreamsare seldom realized, I know. Still, in the hope of winning them--"
And then he paused, coughed, and completed what he had to say in a sortof mumble, but his meaning was wholly clear. He would not accept theoffer of Paulin
e in marriage, even though she was the sister of hismighty chief.
Then Napoleon turned to General Leclerc, with whom Pauline had forsome time flirted, as she had flirted with almost all the officers ofNapoleon's staff. Leclerc was only twenty-six. He was rich and of goodmanners, but rather serious and in poor health. This was not preciselythe sort of husband for Pauline, if we look at it in the conventionalway; but it served Napoleon's purpose and did not in the least interferewith his sister's intrigues.
Poor Leclerc, who really loved Pauline, grew thin, and graver stillin manner. He was sent to Spain and Portugal, and finally was madecommander-in-chief of the French expedition to Haiti, where the famousblack rebel, Toussaint l'Ouverture, was heading an uprising of thenegroes.
Napoleon ordered Pauline to accompany her husband. Pauline flatlyrefused, although she made this an occasion for ordering "mountains ofpretty clothes and pyramids of hats." But still she refused to go onboard the flag-ship. Leclerc expostulated and pleaded, but the lovelywitch laughed in his face and still persisted that she would never go.
Word was brought to Napoleon. He made short work of her resistance.
"Bring a litter," he said, with one of his steely glances. "Ordersix grenadiers to thrust her into it, and see that she goes on boardforthwith."
And so, screeching like an angry cat, she was carried on board, and setsail with her husband and one of her former lovers. She found Haiti andSanto Domingo more agreeable than she had supposed. She was there asort of queen who could do as she pleased and have her orders implicitlyobeyed. Her dissipation was something frightful. Her folly and hervanity were beyond belief.
But at the end of two years both she and her husband fell ill. He wasstricken down by the yellow fever, which was decimating the Frencharmy. Pauline was suffering from the results of her life in a tropicalclimate. Leclerc died, the expedition was abandoned, and Paulinebrought the general's body back to France. When he was buried she, stillrecovering from her fever, had him interred in a costly coffin and paidhim the tribute of cutting off her beautiful hair and burying it withhim.
"What a touching tribute to her dead husband!" said some one toNapoleon.
The emperor smiled cynically as he remarked:
"H'm! Of course she knows that her hair is bound to fall out after herfever, and that it will come in longer and thicker for being cropped."
Napoleon, in fact, though he loved Pauline better than his othersisters--or perhaps because he loved her better--was very strictwith her. He obliged her to wear mourning, and to observe some of theproprieties; but it was hard to keep her within bounds.
Presently it became noised about that Prince Camillo Borghese wasexceedingly intimate with her. The prince was an excellent specimen ofthe fashionable Italian. He was immensely rich. His palace at Rome wascrammed with pictures, statues, and every sort of artistic treasure.He was the owner, moreover, of the famous Borghese jewels, the finestcollection of diamonds in the world.
Napoleon rather sternly insisted upon her marrying Borghese.Fortunately, the prince was very willing to be connected with Napoleonwhile Pauline was delighted at the idea of having diamonds that wouldeclipse all the gems which Josephine possessed; for, like all of theBonapartes, she detested her brother's wife. So she would be married andshow her diamonds to Josephine. It was a bit of feminine malice whichshe could not resist.
The marriage took place very quietly at Joseph Bonaparte's house,because of the absence of Napoleon but the newly made princess wasinvited to visit Josephine at the palace of Saint-Cloud. Here was to bethe triumph of her life. She spent many days in planning a toilet thatshould be absolutely crushing to Josephine. Whatever she wore must be abackground for the famous diamonds. Finally she decided on green velvet.
When the day came Pauline stood before a mirror and gazed at herselfwith diamonds glistening in her hair, shimmering around her neck, andfastened so thickly on her green velvet gown as to remind one of amoving jewel-casket. She actually shed tears for joy. Then she enteredher carriage and drove out to Saint-Cloud.
But the Creole Josephine, though no longer young, was a woman of greatsubtlety as well as charm. Stories had been told to her of the greenvelvet, and therefore she had her drawing-room redecorated in the mostuncompromising blue. It killed the green velvet completely. As for thediamonds, she met that maneuver by wearing not a single gem of any kind.Her dress was an Indian muslin with a broad hem of gold.
Her exquisite simplicity, coupled with her dignity of bearing, madethe Princess Pauline, with her shower of diamonds, and her green velvetdisplayed against the blue, seem absolutely vulgar. Josephine was mostgenerous in her admiration of the Borghese gems, and she kissed Paulineon parting. The victory was hers.
There is another story of a defeat which Pauline met from another lady,one Mme. de Coutades. This was at a magnificent ball given to the mostfashionable world of Paris. Pauline decided upon going, and intended,in her own phrase, to blot out every woman there. She kept the secret ofher toilet absolutely, and she entered the ballroom at the psychologicalmoment, when all the guests had just assembled.
She appeared; and at sight of her the music stopped, silence fell uponthe assemblage, and a sort of quiver went through every one. Her costumewas of the finest muslin bordered with golden palm-leaves. Four bands,spotted like a leopard's skin, were wound about her head, while these inturn were supported by little clusters of golden grapes. She had copiedthe head-dress of a Bacchante in the Louvre. All over her person werecameos, and just beneath her breasts she wore a golden band held inplace by an engraved gem. Her beautiful wrists, arms, and hands werebare. She had, in fact, blotted out her rivals.
Nevertheless, Mme. de Coutades took her revenge. She went up to Pauline,who was lying on a divan to set off her loveliness, and began gazing atthe princess through a double eye-glass. Pauline felt flattered for amoment, and then became uneasy. The lady who was looking at her said toa companion, in a tone of compassion:
"What a pity! She really would be lovely if it weren't for THAT!"
"For what?" returned her escort.
"Why, are you blind? It's so remarkable that you SURELY must see it."
Pauline was beginning to lose her self-composure. She flushed and lookedwildly about, wondering what was meant. Then she heard Mme. Coutadessay:
"Why, her ears. If I had such ears as those I would cut them off!"
Pauline gave one great gasp and fainted dead away. As a matter of fact,her ears were not so bad. They were simply very flat and colorless,forming a contrast with the rosy tints of her face. But from that momentno one could see anything but these ears; and thereafter the princesswore her hair low enough to cover them.
This may be seen in the statue of her by Canova. It was considered avery daring thing for her to pose for him in the nude, for only a bit ofdrapery is thrown over her lower limbs. Yet it is true that thisstatue is absolutely classical in its conception and execution, and itsinterest is heightened by the fact that its model was what she afterwardstyled herself, with true Napoleonic pride--"a sister of Bonaparte."
Pauline detested Josephine and was pleased when Napoleon divorced her;but she also disliked the Austrian archduchess, Marie Louise, who wasJosephine's successor. On one occasion, at a great court function, shegot behind the empress and ran out her tongue at her, in full view ofall the nobles and distinguished persons present. Napoleon's eagle eyeflashed upon Pauline and blazed like fire upon ice. She actually took toher heels, rushed out of the ball, and never visited the court again.
It would require much time to tell of her other eccentricities, of herintrigues, which were innumerable, of her quarrel with her husband, andof the minor breaches of decorum with which she startled Paris. One ofthese was her choice of a huge negro to bathe her every morning. Whensome one ventured to protest, she answered, naively:
"What! Do you call that thing a MAN?"
And she compromised by compelling her black servitor to go out andmarry some one at once, so that he might continue his minist
rations withpropriety!
To her Napoleon showed himself far more severe than with either Carolineor Elise. He gave her a marriage dowry of half a million francs when shebecame the Princess Borghese, but after that he was continually checkingher extravagances. Yet in 1814, when the downfall came and Napoleon wassent into exile at Elba, Pauline was the only one of all his relativesto visit him and spend her time with him. His wife fell away and wentback to her Austrian relatives. Of all the Bonapartes only Pauline andMme. Mere remained faithful to the emperor.
Even then Napoleon refused to pay a bill of hers for sixty-twofrancs, while he allowed her only two hundred and forty francs for themaintenance of her horses. But she, with a generosity of which one wouldhave thought her quite incapable, gave to her brother a great part ofher fortune. When he escaped from Elba and began the campaign of 1815she presented him with all the Borghese diamonds. In fact, he had themwith him in his carriage at Waterloo, where they were captured by theEnglish. Contrast this with the meanness and ingratitude of her sistersand her brothers, and one may well believe that she was sincerely proudof what it meant to be la soeur de Bonaparte.
When he was sent to St. Helena she was ill in bed and could notaccompany him. Nevertheless, she tried to sell all her trinkets, ofwhich she was so proud, in order that she might give him help. Whenhe died she received the news with bitter tears "on hearing all theparticulars of that long agony."
As for herself, she did not long survive. At the age of forty-four herlast moments came. Knowing that she was to die, she sent for PrinceBorghese and sought a reconciliation. But, after all, she died as shehad lived--"the queen of trinkets" (la reine des colifichets). She askedthe servant to bring a mirror. She gazed into it with her dying eyes;and then, as she sank back, it was with a smile of deep content.
"I am not afraid to die," she said. "I am still beautiful!"