JOSEPHINE AT MALMAISON.
By Prud’hon. This charming portrait, which is one of Prud’hon’s most successful works, and also one of the most graceful and faithful likenesses of Josephine, was doubtless executed at the same time as Isabey’s picture of Napoleon wandering, a solitary dreamer, in the long alleys at Malmaison (1798). (See page [88].) Prud’hon shows us Josephine in the garden of the château she loved so well, and in which she spent the happiest moments of her life, before seeking it as a final refuge in her grief and despair. The empress presents a full-length portrait, turned to the left; she is seated on a stone bench amid the groves of the park, in an attitude of reverie, and wears a white décolletté robe embroidered in gold. A crimson shawl is draped round her.—A. D.
Josephine showed her wisdom, from the beginning of the Consulate, in yielding to Napoleon’s wishes about whom she should receive. The First Consul’s notions of official society were severe and well-matured. Nobody should be admitted that did not support his government. At least, if they criticised, they must do so quietly. The army must be honored there before all. The Republicans must be made to feel, of course, that this was their society. The aristocrats must be encouraged just as far as it could be done without giving the people alarm. A fusion of all elements was really what he aimed at, but nobody dared mention that fact. Josephine’s intuition seems to have guided her almost unerringly through the difficult task of giving just the right amount of encouragement and attention to each.
Above all, in this new society there must be no irregularities, no scandals. The government must be respectable. There should be no speculators, no contractors, no fakirs, no persons of immorality of any sort; only honest people, and they must behave. Order, decency, and dignity were to prevail in the Consulate. No more impromptu suppers for Josephine, no more dinners with Barras and Mme. Tallien and their like, no more moonlight walks in the garden at Malmaison. La vie Bohème was ended, and she was wise enough to accept the situation and make the most of it.
For nearly two years the entertainments over which Josephine presided as wife of the First Consul were very simple. There were balls and parades and fêtes, but they were conducted like such functions in a great private house, where there is only the necessary etiquette to insure order and comfort. It was a republican court which was held at the Tuileries and at Malmaison—for the country home of the Bonapartes had come to be almost an official residence, so much of their time was spent there and so many were the visitors who came there. The place was a great delight to Josephine. She was having the chateau rebuilt and the gardens laid out over again, and she was indulging her caprices fully in doing it. She must have a new dining-room, large enough to seat a great diplomatic dinner party, if necessary. There must be a new billiard room, a new library, new private apartments, more room for guests and servants, more stable room. But to build over an old house in this elaborate way was no easy task, particularly when the proprietor enlarged and changed his plans each month. The architects warned Bonaparte that it would be cheaper to pull down the old chateau than to rebuild, but the work was under way, and it must go on. A year and a half after the repairs began, and before anything was completed, the bills were sent in—$120,000 had already been spent. “For what?” demanded the enraged First Consul. Protest as he would the work had to continue. For years Malmaison was a constant expense—for Josephine, never satisfied, was always enlarging and changing. In the end, the chateau was nearly double its original size, but its exterior never had any real distinction. The interior, however, was most interesting from the great number of rare and beautiful art objects which it contained and which, for the most part, Josephine had either received as gifts or had brought from Italy. There was a wonderful mantel of white marble, ornamented with mosaic, given to her by the Pope, and there were vases of Berlin from the King of Prussia. There were rare specimens of the ancient and modern works of all the Italian painters, sculptors, potters, metal workers, and there were pictures by all the great French artists of the day, among them many portraits of Napoleon—in Egypt, in Italy, crossing the Alps.
Josephine took even more interest in the park and gardens at Malmaison than in the chateau. She was passionately fond of flowers, and immediately undertook to cultivate at Malmaison a garden of rare plants, similar to that which Marie Antoinette had started at the Petit Trianon. This soon became, at the suggestion of the professional botanists she called in to assist her in collecting her plants, a veritable Botanical Garden. She gathered from the world over, and her fancy becoming known, ambassadors, merchants, and travellers, foreign and French, exerted themselves to please her. In the end, thanks to the skilful gardeners she secured, her plants became of large public value and interest. Masson says that between 1804 and 1814, 184 new species of plants found their way into the country through Josephine’s garden. The eucalyptus, hybiscus, catalpa, and camelia were first cultivated by her, not to speak of many varieties of heather, myrtle, geranium, cactus, and rhododendron.
When she first owned Malmaison, the land was in park or in vines, and there were some long avenues of fine trees. There was none of the complicated English gardening which was then in fashion. Josephine would have nothing else. So the fine allées and lawns were destroyed, and groups of shrubs, long rows of hedges, a brook, lakes, winding paths, a Swiss village, a temple of love, grottoes, a cascade, an endless variety of artificial and sentimental devices, took their place. To decorate this park of Malmaison to Josephine’s liking, the government turned over to her dozens of bronze and marble busts, vases, columns, and statues, some of them of great value.
One curious and amusing feature of the park was the animals it contained. Josephine was as fond of pets as of flowers. She always had one or more dogs from which she was never separated—not even Napoleon could make her give them up, much as he detested them. At Malmaison, she gave free rein to her liking. Birds were her chief delight, and she bought scores. In three years her bill for birds from one dealer was over $4,500. The lakes were filled with swans, black and white, and ducks from America and China; in the parks were kangaroos, deer, gazelles, a chamois; there were monkeys everywhere; and there were no end of trained pets of all kinds—usually gifts. None of these animals were of any practical use; to be sure there was a flock of valuable sheep, but these were kept merely as a decoration to a certain field, the shepherds who guarded them having been brought in their native costumes from Switzerland.
