The next letter is preceded by Lady Morgan's comment: "Mme. Bonaparte, with her airy manner, beauty and wit, would have made an excellent princess, American as she was. One wonders that Napoleon should have been blind to her capabilities—he whose motto was, 'The tools to him who can use them.'"—"Baltimore, 1818. Dear Lady Morgan:... The demand for your work on France was so great that it went through three editions with us.... My son is intelligent, good and very handsome.... You have a great deal of imagination, but it can give you no idea of the mode of existence inflicted on us. The men are all merchants, and commerce may fill the purse, but clogs the brain: beyond their counting-houses they possess not a single idea; they never visit except when they wish to marry. The women are occupied in les détails du ménage and nursing children—useful occupations that do not render them agreeable to their neighbors. The men, being all bent on marriage, do not attend to me, because they fancy I am not inclined to change the evils of my condition for those they could offer me. I have been thought so ennuyée as to accept very respectable offers, but I prefer remaining as I am to marrying a person to whom I am indifferent. My letters from Paris say that Decaze, the minister of police, is created a peer and is to marry Princess de Beauveau. It appears very strange to my recollections of political feelings, but nothing is too surprising with politicians. He is very handsome at least—not a bad thing in a husband: they say, too, that he has talents and sensibility.... Suppose you were to come to this country: it is becoming the fashion to travel here, and you might find materials for an interesting work.... It is impossible for me to return to Europe: a single woman is exposed to so many disagreeable comments in a foreign land. Besides, I have only eleven hundred pounds a year—not enough to support me out of my own family.... I embroider and read. Do you remember Mme. de Staël's description of the mode of life Corinne found in an English country town, the subjects of conversation limited to births, deaths and marriages? My opinion on these topics has long been decided: that it is a misery to be born and married I have painfully experienced.... Have you a good college in Dublin? I might send my son there in two years, as he cannot go to France, and I do not wish him to be educated in England, where his name would not recommend him to favor."
"Geneva, 1819. Dear Lady Morgan:... I should never have ventured on another voyage to Europe could I have found the means of education for my son.... We have been nearly ruined by commercial speculations, and even I have suffered.... My son's education, too, demands no inconsiderable expense, and his father never has, and never will, contribute a single farthing toward his maintenance. We have no correspondence since the demand that he would pay part of his necessary expenditure, which he positively refused.... This town is intolerably expensive—as much so as Paris: there exists, too, an esprit de coterie appalling to women strangers, for men are les bien venus partout. They have a custom parmi les gens du haut of receiving strangers to board at a very high price seulement pour leur agrément, in which houses there is no feast to be found unless it be of reason: the hosts are too spirituels to fancy that we possess a vulgar appetite for meat, vegetables, tarts and custards; but as I cannot subsist altogether on the contemplation of la belle Nature, I have taken an apartment, hoping to get something to eat.... My health is restored, and I am much less in the genre larmoyant than when you saw me.... I am happy not to have gone to Edinburgh: the climate here is finer, living cheaper and the language French—more desirable for my son. Why do you persist in living in Ireland?"
King Jerome afterward allowed his son one hundred dollars per month for seven years, but with malignant cruelty ignored him in his will, which wrong at once to her son and her own wifely fame Mme. Bonaparte contested in Paris with a spirit that elicited the sympathy of Europe; but Napoleon III., for reasons of policy, permitted her defeat, and also at this time discontinued the annuity of fourteen thousand dollars allowed to her son, Jerome Bonaparte, although recognizing him at court as his cousin; but the six thousand dollars per annum granted to her grandson, Captain Bonaparte, ceased only with the Empire.
"Geneva, 1820. Dear Lady Morgan:... Baron Bonstetten came to see me to-day. You were the subject of our conversation: nothing but admiration. M. Sismondi has made my acquaintance—he is married too: I wonder that people of genius marry. I have been in such a state of melancholy as to wish myself dead a thousand times. What think you of a person advising me to turn Methodist? Have you read Lamartine's Méditations poétiques? There are some fine things in them, but he is too larmoyant and of the bad school of politics. Miss Edgeworth is here: she came to see me, but we have not met. She has a great deal of good sense, which I particularly object to in my companions unless accompanied by genius.... They are so reasonable and unmoved in this place, their mornings devoted to the exact sciences, their evenings to whist! There have been some English, but I have seen little of them: they are cold, formal, affected—just my antipodes; therefore we should not please each other: they require a year to become acquainted, and I have too little left of life to waste on formalities.... In this birthplace of Calvinism I found no trace of its originator, either in actual relics or asceticism: it was rather the centre of folly and license."
Baron Bonstetten, savant and philanthropist—whom Lady Morgan styles "that fresh, frisky old darling"—showed Mme. Bonaparte paternal kindness. In a morning visit she found him in his library examining letters. He said, "Asseyez vous un peu, mon enfant, en attendant que je finisse de ces papiers," and she sat for an hour reading letters from celebrities which he tossed to her—among others, perhaps inadvertently, from Mme. de Staël, proving the good baron's admiration for Corinne to have been "warmer than friendship if colder than love." At a ball at Bonstetten's, as Mme. Bonaparte entered the room, a stout, handsome man covered with orders eagerly exclaimed, "Qui est-ce? qui est-ce?"—"La première femme de Jérome Bonaparte," replied the princess Gallitzin. It was Duke William of Würtemberg, uncle of Jerome's second wife. He requested a presentation, took both hands affectionately, and after conversing half an hour led her to his duchess, to whom he said afterward, "Mais, mon Dieu! que Jérome a manqué son coup. Quelle grâce, quelle beauté, quel esprit! Et ma pauvre nièce! il faut être juste; jamais ne pourrait-elle régner comme cette belle Américaine, qui par tout droit est vraiment la reine. Jérome a été bête de la quitter."—"Ah," said Bonstetten, "si elle n'est pas reine de Westphalie, elle est au moins reine des cœurs."
Jerome sent for his son, then a lad, to visit him at Rome, where he remained several months, treated with affection by his father and with maternal kindness by the princess, who went two leagues to meet him, and taking his face between her hands said tearfully, "Ah! mon enfant, je suis la cause innocente de tous vos malheurs." She evinced always the utmost interest in her predecessor. Mme. Rubelle was appointed lady of honor to her when queen of Westphalia, and was meaningly questioned, "Are all the American ladies as beautiful as yourself?" Prince Woronzow said of these rival wives, "Je suis amoureux des deux reines de Westphalie."
On her arrival in France the princess of Würtemberg halted at Raincy to meet Prince Jerome, "who had sworn to me," says Mme. Junot, "never to forget the mother of his son, the young wife who had given him a paradise in a strange land.... The princess was not pretty; she seldom smiled; her expression was haughty.... Her complexion was fair and fresh, hair light, eyes blue, teeth very white.... As the princess had made up her mind to give her hand to Jerome, it was desirable that she should please him, as he certainly regretted his wife; and Miss Patterson was really his wife and a charming woman.... Her dress was in uncommon bad taste—the gown of bluish-white moire, trimmed in front with badly-worked silver embroidery in a forgotten style; a little train resembling the round tail of a beaver; tight, flat sleeves, pressing the arm above the elbow like a bandage after blood-letting. Her pointed shoes belonged to the era of King John, the hair old-fashioned in style. About her neck were two rows of very fine pearls, to which was suspended the portrait of the prince set in diamonds, and much too large to be ornamental, as it dangled from her neck and bestowed heavy blows at every step.... Marshal Bessières had espoused the princess by proxy.... As Jerome entered she advanced two steps and made him her compliments with grace and dignity.... Jerome seemed to be there because he had been told 'You must go.' After Jerome retired the princess fainted."
The duke of Würtemberg was a mere tool in Napoleon's hands, and his pliancy was rewarded. In 1809 the emperor greeted him as mon frère.—"Comment, Sire? No longer your cousin?"—"You were mon cousin: you are now Monsieur mon frère!" And yet the domestic tragedy of this new frère was known to the imperial king-maker! In 1780 the duke had married Princess Caroline of Brunswick, young and beautiful, who was accused of regarding too favorably a page in her service. Letters inculpating them were found, a family and state council was convened, and the page sentenced to death, while all concurred in the guilt of the duchess. A divorce was proposed, but finally her death was decreed. The page lodged in the palace, his door opening on a corridor beneath which were similar corridors, in each of which a trapdoor was now arranged, one below the other, a slight flooring concealing the one immediately above the apartment of the duchess. As the unsuspicious page stole at midnight to the rendezvous, the trap yielded, and from floor to floor he was dashed, mangled and dead, to the feet of the duchess. The infatuated woman, previously warned, had refused to abandon her lover; but now she sought escape, was intercepted, and the city executioner immediately brought blindfolded to the great hall, where he beheld a fair, noble woman bound hands and feet. He implored to be spared his terrible task, but, sworn to secrecy, he was forced under penalty of instant death to strike the fatal blow. He drew up a detailed account of the double murder and sent it to Baron Bretueil, then French minister of state, who laid the matter before King Louis XVI. Jerome's wife was the daughter of this unfortunate princess. The duke afterward married a daughter of George III. of England.
Mme. Bonaparte's last meeting with Jerome was at the Pitti Palace in Florence in 1822, and, singular to say, these once wedded lovers did not know each other! She chanced to be attired in her most recherché costume—a rich silk halfway to the knee, then the mode, displaying dainty prunella shoes; a gauze hat about three feet in circumference, with high-wired bows; a crimson cashmere shawl and large green velvet reticule. In passing through the gallery she was attracted by the eager, persistent stare of a very handsome man whom she did not recognize, but whose strange likeness to her son enchained her. Suddenly the truth flashed to her heart: "It is Jerome!" He meanwhile, gazing at her, said to one of the ladies with him, "Si belle! si belle! qui est-ce?"—"Vous devriez la connaître, c'est votre première femme," replied Mme. Joseph Bonaparte. Jerome started, and with an agitated whisper to the other lady, the princess Catherine, they left the gallery. For one moment only the two "discrowned queens" were face to face. The next day Mme. Bonaparte was driving in the Cascine, when from a passing carriage Jerome nearly precipitated himself in a last, lingering look at the wife of his youth.
At that period Florence was the focus of continental social brilliancy, and Mme. Bonaparte was received with due distinction at its charming court. "My presentation was special," she relates, "and being superbly dressed, though caring but little for chiffons, I advanced with entire composure and self-satisfaction through the apartments of the Pitti Palace, crowded with the élite of the court and diplomacy. Preceded by the chamberlain, I was welcomed by the grand duke and duchess with such kindness as quite to overcome me, and I nearly burst into tears; but saying to myself, 'Good gracious! I shall spoil my lovely satin gown, and be thought bête to make a scene,' this reflection restored my serenity and enabled me to go through the ceremony with becoming dignity."