Letters (121 page)

There remain the schemes that Joseph favors. Andrew delays them with overpreparation and cross-purpose (it is his idea to have Nicholas Girod’s
Séraphim
built inconveniently in Charleston, and to send Stephen Girard’s Philadelphia vessel to New Orleans to await sailing orders) until his own plan is ready, which his dealings with all these others have convinced him is likeliest to his purpose: at an appropriate moment, he will disappear from Bordentown, slip off secretly with Jean Lafitte on the fastest of the Baratarian vessels (the schooner named, as it happens,
Jean Blanque),
and do the job himself.

What job, exactly?
Nota bene,
my son: to no one more than to the author of a long-term project does the double edge of Heraclitus’s famous dictum apply: he cannot step into the same stream twice because not only the stream flows, but the man. The Andrew Cook who writes these lines, Henry, is not the same you last graced with your company in February; nor is the Andrew Cook who wrote on this date in 1820 the Cook of 1815. Events have at least thrice modified his original ends and means.

At first he wants merely to snatch Napoleon from the Allies and fetch him to Louisiana, let the international chips fall where they may. Then, in the spring of 1819 (Mississippi and Illinois have joined the Union; Alabama is about to; Monroe is buying Florida from Spain; Ruthy Barlow has joined her husband and Toot Fulton in the hereafter; the Atlantic has been crossed by steamship; the U.S.Canadian border is established at the 49th parallel), Betsy Bonaparte makes a curious report from Baltimore: she has it from friends in Rome that a German-Swiss clairvoyant, one Madame Kleinmüller, has become spiritual advisor to Napoleon’s mother (“Madame Mère”) in the Palazzo Rinuccini and has gained increasing influence over both the old woman and her brother, Cardinal Fesch. On January 15 last, according to Betsy’s sources, no less an authority than the Virgin Mary disclosed to Mme Kleinmüller, in a vision, that the British have secretly removed Napoleon from St. Helena and replaced him with an impostor; his jailers oblige his aides to write as if their master were still among them, but in fact he has been spirited by angels to another country, where he is safe and content! Mme Mère and Cardinal Fesch are altogether convinced. Napoleon’s sister Pauline Borghese is not: in a letter to Joseph soon after, she confirms Betsy’s report, deplores their mother’s gullibility, and declares her suspicion that Mme Kleinmüller is a spy for Metternich. Andrew himself dismisses the vision but changes his plan to include the planting of just such an impostor, to facilitate Napoleon’s removal, delay the search for him, and forestall international turmoil until the Louisiana Project is ready.

And he is interested in Betsy’s sources; the more so when, a few months later, she follows this report with another, also subsequently verified by Pauline: so entirely are Napoleon’s mother and uncle under that clairvoyant’s sway, they reject as forgeries letters from the emperor himself, in his own hand, complaining of his failing health and requesting a new doctor and a better cook! Persuaded that Napoleon is no longer on St. Helena, they have sent out a party of incompetents as a blind; Fesch has taken to discarding the emperor’s letters, and Mme Kleinmüller to forging happy ones from “some other island.” Pauline is furious. Andrew, still wondering about Betsy’s information, asks disingenuously whether she knows that a penitential procession by this same Cardinal Fesch was described ironically by Mme de Staël in her novel
Corinne.
Mme B. duly blushes.

Andrew then inquires, on a sudden impulse: has she considered remarrying? Crimson, she asks him why he asks; it is her son she cares about, not herself. Perhaps Andrew has his employer in mind? If so, forget him: Joseph is a sot, a lecher, and a coward, like Jérôme; the only male Bonaparte with spirit is the one on St. Helena. And does she know, Andrew next wonders aloud, that in some quarters there is doubt as to the validity of Napoleon’s marriage to Marie Louise, who in any case has no wish ever to see her husband again and would welcome a divorce?
I do,
replies Betsy, and Andrew divines with excitement that she has anticipated the next modification of his scheme, of which therefore he prudently says no more on this occasion. What better way for her to secure young Jérôme Napoleon Bonaparte’s legitimacy—even his possible accession!—than to marry the emperor himself, as a condition of rescuing him? And how better for Andrew to finance the Louisiana Project than with the combined fortunes of the Bonapartes and one of the wealthiest families in Maryland?

In my mind & in my cyphers,
Andrew writes,
I had for convenience number’d these alternatives A-1, A-2, & A-3, as they all involved rescuing Napoleon & fetching him 1st to the Maryland marshes, thence to New Orleans, & thence west to our future empire. Two obstacles remain’d: the difficulty of finding someone able enough at mimicking the Emperor to fool his own wardens, at least for a time; and the possibility, reconfirm’d in June of this year
(1820)
by Mme B., that Bonaparte preferr’d to consummate his “martyrdom” on St. Helena. A letter from Baron Gourgaud, intercepted by Metternich’s agents, declared that the Emperor “could escape to America whenever he pleased,” but preferr’d confinement like Andromeda on that lonely but very public rock. His young son loom’d large in these considerations. “’Twere better for my son,” Betsy quoted Metternich quoting Napoleon from Gourgaud’s letter. “If I die on the cross—& he is still alive—my martyrdom will win him a crown.”

To deal with these obstacles Andrew devises Plan A-4, with which he ends this letter. But first, nothing having come of his indirect inquiries, he asks Betsy frankly how she hears of these things before Napoleon’s own family, especially now that Mme de Staël—who had always been
au courant
on such privy matters and might imaginably have been in correspondence with Mme Bonaparte—is dead.

She blusht & reply’d, She supposed I had meant to say “before the
rest
of Napoleon’s own family,” whereof she consider’d herself as rightful a member as any not of the Corsican’s very blood. As for her sources, she would say only that I might rely upon their veracity, & that I was not the only American player at the Game of Governments.

She then apprised me of her intended move to Europe in the Autumn, to reacquaint her son, now 15, with his relatives. While there she would determine & report to me the truth of Napoleon’s circumstances & desires—for no one need tell her that Metternich might have fabricated that “intercepted letter” to discourage rescue attempts. And she would advise me then whether to proceed with the Girod/Girard plan or bid Joseph order it cancel’d, as against his brother’s wishes.

Much imprest by her determination & her canny sense of the world, very rare in so handsome & handsomely fixt a woman, I thankt her. But privately I thot of any such report from her, what she thot of Metternich’s; & so I determined Jean & I should make ready & sail as early as possible, not apprising Mme B. or Joseph or any soul else of our journey until its object was attain’d, when they would surely put their houses & other facilities at our disposal. On the Solstice, therefore, I vanisht from Point Breeze; on my 44th birthday I was in Galvez-Town, where I found Jean bored with his New Barataria & ready for adventure. The more so when I described & demonstrated to him what, after much soul-searching, I had resolved upon: Plan A-4.

It is, briefly, to determine Napoleon’s sentiments regarding rescue, not in Rome or Paris or London, but on St. Helena itself, by sailing directly to that island, slipping ashore with the aid of that “local knowledge” Lafitte is so confident the fishermen will sell him, and infiltrating Longwood. Then, if the emperor should in fact prove more interested in inventing
le bonapartisme
on St. Helena than in forging a new empire in the American southwest, to drug and abduct him secretly from the island, leaving an impostor in his place. Once whisked to Maryland’s Eastern Shore, he could not return to St. Helena without publicly pleading for reincarceration, which would reveal the inauthenticity of his “martyrdom.” They would offer him either a life of anonymous freedom or the directorship of the 2nd Revolution, with or without Betsy Patterson Bonaparte as his consort.

But what impostor?

That was the question that had most vext me since A-2,
our ancestor writes.
Napoleon was 7 years my senior, several inches shorter than I, and gone rather potbelly’d, but the fact was I could take him off to a T, down to his Corsican accent, his walk, & his table-manners. I could not hope to fool his aides, whose consent & cooperation therefore I would have to enlist (I had a plan for doing so); but I was reasonably confident I could fool the British, whom Bonaparte had rarely dealt with in person even before his health declined—which last circumstance I could also employ to aid the imposture. And so, having searcht in vain for alternatives, and daring wait no longer lest Mme B.‘s people or someone else’s get to St. Helena before me, I shall sail with Jean two days hence, on the Emperor’s name-day, to take his place in captivity until (the final article of A-4) I can with the assistance of Napoleon’s suite feign illness & death, and then disappear among the fishermen till Jean comes back to fetch me from a disarm’d St. Helena.

’Tis a considerable risk: if I am found out, either before or after N.‘s removal, the British will clap me in jail forever; and my rescue depends on Jean’s good seamanship, good faith, & good luck. But if all goes per plan, by the time the meteors next shower out from Perseus (which are showering over
Jean Blanque’s
yards as I pen this letter), I shall have died again & been re-resurrected, to take my place beside the man whose place I took, at the head of our 2nd Revolution.

Will you be there with me, long-lost wife? Whether or no, may you hear from me next August of the success of another plan, whereof I have spoken not even to Jean Lafitte, & cannot yet speak to you: I mean
Plan B,
and bid you adieu.

He closes and, on August 15, sails. I likewise, Henry, and on 8/15 will fly in pursuit of an “A-1” of my own: not without a “B” up my sleeve, or in my bonnet, learned from our forebear’s final
lettre posthume.
And when I take
my
place, dear son, at the head of our etc., will you be with me?

Whether or no, this time next week you shall hear again from

August 20, 1969

My dear Henry,

Except that you are not here, all is as it should be (i.e., as it ever has been) at Castines Hundred. A grand hatch of “American soldiers” fills the air—in which already one feels a premonitory autumn chill—as they have done every latter August since the species, and Lake Ontario, evolved. I write this by paraffin lantern in the library, not to attract them to the windows; took dinner by candlelight for the same reason, as our ancestors have done since
that
species evolved. A fit and pleasing
mise en scène
for retailing the last of my namesake’s
lettres posthumes:
dated August 20, 1821, addressed to “My dear, my darling wife,” and delivered here at that year’s close.

Be assured of my proper disappointment not to find you here; a disappointment for which, however, I was prepared. Be even more so of my proper tantalization by the report (from our new caretakers, who seem satisfactory) that you apparently
stopped by
—even spent a few days here?—in the interval between caretakers! Were here as I was writing to you off Bermuda! Left only upon the Bertrands’ assuming their duties, as I was writing to you from my
Baratarian!
Indicated that you would “be back,” but did not say when, or whence you came, or whither vanished!

Heartless Henry! True and only son! But so be it: I have been as heartless in my time, as have all our line. I restrained my urge to badger the Bertrands with questions—How does he appear? Did he speak of his father?—lest they think their new employer’s relation with his son as odd as in fact it is. I shall leave sealed copies here, against your return, of both the “prenatal” and the “posthumous” letters of Andrew Cook IV, as well as that one of mine reviewing our history from him to myself. And I shall hope, no longer quite against hope!

But how I wish I could report to you, Henry, confer with you, solicit your opinion now. So many opportunities lie at hand; so many large decisions must be made quite soon, affecting our future and the Revolution’s! Last night, for example, I drove up here from the Fort Erie establishment, where I had stopped to assess Joseph Morgan’s resalvageability. I am satisfied that he is too gone in his “repetition compulsion” to be of future use to us. What I advanced as a kind of lure when I first rescued him for our cause has become an obsession; he is now addicted to his medication, as it were; the only obstacle to disestablishing him altogether is that he happens to be related, through the Patterson line, to Jane Mack. But we must think of something; he is a liability.

So too, I more and more suspect, is Jerome Bray of Lily Dale—more exactly, of “Comalot,” as he has without irony renamed his strange habitation—on whom I paid a call before crossing to Canada. Even to me that man is an enigma: certainly mad, but as certainly not
simply
mad. His extraordinary machine, or simulacrum of a machine—you really must see it. And his “honey dust,” of whose peculiar narcotic virtue there can be no question… ! He is doing us the service, unwittingly, of removing Jane’s daughter from the number of competitors for Harrison Mack’s fortune, while however adding himself to the number of our problems. For him too I have certain plans, and have urged him down to Bloodsworth Island for the “Burning of Washington” four days hence—but how surer I would feel of that strategy if I could review it with you, and you ratify it!

I have, moreover, two further problems of the most intimate and urgent sort, Henry, on which your consultation is of such importance to me that I must, insofar as I can, compel it.