Famous American Belles of the Nineteenth Century

by Virginia Tatnall Peacock

Napoleon, with his high appreciation of a bon mot, desired to know what favor he could bestow upon a woman capable of this witticism. Elizabeth replied through the French Minister at Washington that she was ambitious, and would like to be a duchess.

The Emperor promised the gift, but never conferred it. Notwithstanding her unremitting yet ever futile struggle for recognition, Madame Bonaparte cherished always the most enthusiastic admiration for the genius of the man who had blighted her life. In one of her letters to her father, written from Europe, whither she returned after the fall of the Empire, she said, "They do not in England pretend to revile Napoleon as we have done. His stupendous abilities are admitted; his misfortunes almost respected by his enemies. I listen silently to any discussion in which he bears a part. I easily perceive that he has more justice done him here than with us."

In a subsequent letter she details more fully her attitude towards the entire family.

"I cannot say," she writes, also to her father, "that I have the least reliance on that family, although I am inclined to reciprocate their kind words and receive their offers of friendship without allowing myself to be deceived by either." And farther on in the same letter she says, in regard to allowing her son to visit Pauline Bonaparte, then the Princess Borghese, at Rome, "My resolution is uninfluenced by personal feelings, never having felt the least resentment towards any individual of that family, who certainly injured me, but not from motives which could offend me. I was sacrificed to political considerations, not to the gratification of bad feelings, and under the pressure of insupportable disappointment became not unjust."

From her letters there seem to have been frequent rumors afloat in regard to her marrying again, both in this country and in Europe, where she was greatly admired. In one letter to her father, written in 1823, she says that while the American newspapers were marrying her she was making her will.

Though she obtained from the Maryland Legislature a divorce, after the fall of Napoleon, it seems to have been rather as a precautionary measure against any possible demands Jerome might make upon her financially than with a view to marrying again.

Tom Moore, whom Lady Morgan sent to her with a letter of introduction, afterwards described her as a beautiful woman, but destitute of all sentiment and with a total disbelief in love, on which, indeed, she bestowed only ridicule. There can be no doubt, however, of the concern and tenderness which she expended upon a dog, Le Loup, which belonged to her son, and which she said was "superior to half the persons one meets in the world." There are many traditions of her wit, which, though tinged with asperity, was ever ready and scintillating. The Honorable Mr. Dundas, who sat beside her at a dinner in London, she speared so unsparingly with the shafts of her sarcasm that his egotism never forgave her. When he asked her, finally, if she had read Captain Basil Hall's book on America, she replied affirmatively. "And did you observe," he continued, bluntly, with the hope of avenging his wounded self-love, "that he called all Americans vulgarians?" "Yes," replied Madame Bonaparte, while the table paused to listen, "and I was not surprised. Were the Americans descendants of the Indians and Esquimaux, I should have been. But being the direct descendants of the English, nothing is more natural than that they should be vulgarians." For both her wit and her beauty she was admired by men and women of fastidious taste, among whom were Sir Charles and Lady Morgan, Talleyrand, Gortschakoff, and Madame de Staël. She so fascinated the Prince of Wurtemburg, uncle of Jerome's second wife, that he confessed his wonderment that Jerome could ever have abandoned her. "Si elle n'est pas reine de Westphalie, elle est au moins reine des cœurs," was Baron Bonsteller's tribute to her.

She seldom alluded to Jerome, though she believed that she always stood first in his heart. She referred in a letter to her father to the probability of his coming to Rome while she was there, but added that she should not see him, "nor would he like it himself after the unhandsome way in which he has always conducted himself. I shall hold my tongue, which is all I can possibly do for him."

Though the greater part of her life was spent in Europe, and she was for a time on terms of considerable intimacy with his family, she met Jerome but once, when they passed each other in the gallery of the Pitti Palace in Florence, Jerome with the Princess Catherine upon his arm. Though they recognized each other, they passed without greeting, Jerome exclaiming, "That was my American wife." Jerome Napoleon, the son of his American wife, was frequently his guest, and was treated with much kindness by the Princess Catherine. Jerome, however, added practically nothing to this son's material comfort, much to his mother's chagrin, and at his death in 1860 it was found that he had not even mentioned his name in his will, a lack of recognition which wounded both mother and son in a more profound sense than his lifelong failure to make provision for him had done. So great was his son's resemblance to his family, and particularly to the Emperor, that the chargé d'affaires of France at Amsterdam, in 1820, refused his mother a passport for him to travel through France. It was a strange coincidence that Madame Jerome Bonaparte herself should bear a remarkable resemblance to the Bonaparte family, particularly to Napoleon and Pauline, even having some of their mannerisms.

In August, 1855, Louis Napoleon offered to create Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte Duke of Sartène, but he declined the honor, as the object was to take away his name and the rights he possessed as his father's eldest son.