Princesses Behaving Badly (29 page)

Pauline Bonaparte

O
CTOBER
20, 1780–J
UNE
9, 1825
N
APOLEON
’
S
E
MPIRE

I
n 1804, the master sculptor Antonio Canova was commissioned to create a portrait of Pauline Bonaparte, the younger sister of the great Napoleon Bonaparte and an Italian princess by marriage. Pauline wanted to be depicted as Venus Victorious, the triumphant goddess of love. After all, she was in the prime of her beauty—lithe and long limbed, small breasted, milky skinned, wonderfully proportioned. These were her “advantages of nature,” as she called them, and she wanted to show them off.

Canova, however, thought that a nearly naked goddess of love might be a bit too sexy for polite society; he suggested Diana, the
clothed
virgin
goddess of the hunt and the moon. Pauline scoffed. “Nobody would believe my chastity,” she said.

She was right. This was a woman who had her strapping young male servant carry her naked to the bath; who’d been rumored to have slept with half the Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue; who was painted wearing a sheer dress that showed off her nipples and often wore that same diaphanous negligee to court; who’d had a golden cup fashioned in the shape of her breast; and who liked to entertain male guests while lounging in her bath. Not for nothing did Napoleon’s enemies claim that Pauline had been a prostitute at age 14 in a Marseille brothel, that she and her brother were lovers.

When it came to the sculpture, Pauline got her way (as she usually did). She posed reclining luxuriously on a chaise longue, nude from the waist up, one bare leg peeking out, her feet unshod, with only a draped cloth to protect her modesty (not that she had any use for modesty). When it was unveiled that summer, the plaster model of the statue caused a gossipy sensation in Paris and beyond.

Pauline loved it.

Pauline, called Paoletta as a child, grew up during restless times on the island of Corsica. When she was 13, her family was forced to flee to mainland France after their house was burned to the ground by partisans. She could clearly remember when the Bonaparte clan was just a pack of refugees living in a tiny house in southern France, subsisting off the town’s charity and taking in washing to make ends meet.

Pauline grew into an undereducated, oversexed vixen. But she was beautiful, and with her brother’s star very much on the rise as a general of the French Revolution, she set her own sights on total social domination, especially if it meant she got to wear pretty dresses.

Pauline married General Victor Emmanuel Leclerc in June 1797, when she was just 17 years old and he was a brilliant young commander in the new army (a “blonde Napoleon,” as some called him). Marriage did little to mature her. A contemporary recalled that at dinner one night,
she chattered endlessly, laughed at nothing, imitated her elders, and stuck her tongue out at her sister-in-law Josephine behind her back. “She was devoid of principles, and if she did good she did so from caprice.”

Pauline’s behavior only worsened when she arrived in Paris. She was determined to be the most beautiful woman in the room, a feat that would be a whole lot easier if she was the one making up the guest list, so she started throwing parties. Along with entertaining and buying lots of pretty dresses, Pauline spent her time conducting love affairs. Though content with her “little Leclerc,” she was equally happy to spread her affections far and wide. With her husband away on a military campaign, Pauline launched her own offensive on the menfolk of Paris. One story claims that she had simultaneous affairs with three generals, playing them off one another. When they figured it out, they dropped her.

The only thing keeping Pauline’s amorousness in check was fear of her brother. He was the sun around which she orbited. When she and Leclerc had a son in 1798, the boy remained nameless until Napoleon, his uncle and godfather, bestowed one upon him (he chose Dermide). Napoleon was her father figure, the family’s protector, and the only person who could control her or make her feel ashamed. Though they often fought, Pauline loved her brother truly and deeply.

And that love was rewarded. In late 1799 Napoleon named himself first consul of the government after a coup toppled the republican regime. He was now the only star in the sky as far as France was concerned, and Pauline cashed in. Sort of. After years of angling for a post that would lead to some glory or remuneration, her husband was made governor general of the island colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti). It was a post that could prove quite lucrative, if it didn’t kill him first.

Saint-Domingue had shrugged off French rule in 1791 after a slave revolt led by Toussaint Louverture. But the French were hard-pressed to let it go—after all, it was home to some very profitable coffee, sugar, indigo, and cotton plantations. And so in 1801 Napoleon decided to take it back, sending Leclerc, Pauline, and 30,000 troops to do it. When they arrived in
February 1802, they were confronted with a terrifying scene. Le Cap, the capital, was an inferno, the commanding rebel having set it alight rather than surrender it to the French. It took only 40 days for Leclerc to regain the colony; Louverture was taken prisoner, and Leclerc promised not to re-enslave the population. But a far deadlier enemy was about to strike: the mosquito. Yellow-fever season hit, killing men at a rate of 50 to 100 a day; within weeks, 25,000 soldiers had died.

Meanwhile, Pauline ruled the island as a queen, throwing balls and hosting musical events and earning a reputation for promiscuous behavior. Napoleon’s enemies would later claim that she’d experimented with island men and women, that she slept her way through the officers’ ranks, that those nightly musical events were really just orgies. The rumors were mostly untrue; people were too busy dying to worry about having sex.

But the situation in Saint-Domingue was becoming untenable, and local rebels revolted once more. Despite the danger and her husband’s insistence, Pauline vowed to stay put. She very much enjoyed being first lady, even if her “paradise” was crawling with angry insurgents and deadly insects. On September 16, the rebels launched an assault on the recently rebuilt capital. Pauline refused to leave the palace, even though she knew that if the rebels reached her, they would rape her and murder her child. Other women pleaded to be allowed to flee. Pauline, either stupid or brave, scoffed at them: “I am the sister of Bonaparte and I am afraid of nothing.” As the sound of fire grew closer, she turned to her husband’s secretary and demanded that he kill her and her son if the rebels should reach them. He refused and instead dragged her from the palace. Little Dermide was carried out by a soldier, playing with the plume on the man’s helmet.

At the last moment, as the French guard contemplated dumping a struggling Pauline into a galley to row her to a waiting ship, Leclerc appeared—the French had won; the rebels were scattered. “I have sworn to return to France only by your side,” Pauline declared, with tears in her eyes. And that’s exactly what happened, though not in the sense she intended. Leclerc caught yellow fever and died on November 1, 1802. Seven days later, a weeping Pauline, their son, and her husband’s coffin sailed for France. Before leaving, she sheared off her long dark hair, placing the locks next to Leclerc’s skin. As for Saint-Domingue, France would lose the
colony for good the next year.

Pauline truly mourned her husband, but a woman such as herself was unable to keep it up for too long. She was only 22, still beautiful, and, more important, politically important. Napoleon had others plans for his sister than a life in widow’s weeds, like marrying her off to a politically important prince and thereby tightening his grip on the empire.

The prince in question was handsome, rich, and well connected. He was also as dumb as mittens on a cat. Prince Camillo Borghese came from one of the oldest families in Rome. Coincidentally, Napoleon needed to endear himself to the Italian principalities and city-states chafing under French rule, and gaining a Borghese brother-in-law would certainly prove beneficial. Pauline was happy to help, especially since Camillo came with money, a palace, and a heavy box full of family jewels.

Pauline remarried in August 1803, less than a year after the death of Leclerc, and moved to the prince’s villa in Italy. But within a few months, she realized that everyone was right about this guy—he
was
dumb. And even the second time around, matrimony didn’t keep her from pursuing her favorite pastime: sex with lots of different men. On the heels of one love affair that became too public, her brother forbade her to leave her husband and return to Paris, no matter how much she complained about Camillo’s “difficult and disputatious character.” But however much she disliked her vapid mate now, she would absolutely
loathe
him very soon. Because the same summer that sculpture of Pauline’s nearly naked body caused titillation in Italy and France, her dear son Dermide died, and it wasn’t until 10 days later that she knew anything about it.

Camillo, who’d never warmed to little Dermide, had convinced Pauline to leave the boy with his brother while the couple took a cure at a popular spa town. While they were away, Dermide caught a fever and died. Fearing Pauline’s anger, Camillo hid the child’s death from his wife. Turns out he was right to be afraid—when Pauline learned the truth, she flew into a rage. “Leave, Monsieur, I cannot bear the sight of you!” she cried. “You, the butcher of my son!” Pauline was utterly broken. Once
again she cut off her hair and instructed that it be put in Dermide’s coffin. She also threatened to retire from public life forever. It was only her brother’s demand that she be present when he crowned himself emperor that kept her from making good on her promise.

But that was the end of cordial relations between the Borgheses. By 1806, Pauline was referring to Camillo as “His Serene Idiot.” When he was heading off to war with Prussia, Pauline publicly asked her brother to secure for her husband, “after a useless life, a glorious death.” When Camillo sent her notes addressed to the “Princess Borghese,” she sent them back; she opened only those addressed to “Her Imperial Highness the Princess Pauline,” the title her brother had bestowed on her in 1806.

If Pauline had been promiscuous before, she now pursued infidelity with truly reckless abandon. Her seductions were legendary: her lovers included Thomas Dumas, the famous mixed-race general and father of Alexandre, the future
Monte Cristo
writer; various generals under her brother’s command; her chamberlain; a famous actor or two; some musicians; various princes and minor royalty; her first husband’s secretary (when no one else was there to fill in); and pretty much anyone else who came knocking. Her affections flared wildly and were extinguished quickly. She tried to keep her affairs hidden from her brother, but he heard the whispers nevertheless. Those who were involved with her often found themselves conscripted into the army and sent to the front.

Popular rumor claimed that Pauline’s frequent sexual liaisons had rendered her too weak to walk, which explained why she insisted on being carried everywhere and was so often confined to her bed. For once, gossip might have been correct. Dermide’s birth had left Pauline with chronic pelvic pain, which some biographers believe could have been caused by salpingitis, an inflammation of the fallopian tubes; this condition would have made walking very painful. But salpingitis can also be caused by, well, too many sexual partners and the venereal diseases they can bring. The one thing that probably would have helped was the one thing that Pauline wouldn’t do: give up her lovers.

And among those lovers may have been her brother. Empress Josephine claimed that she’d caught the two siblings in the act, and another courtier asserted that Pauline admitted the incestuous transgression to
him. One modern biographer maintains that, given the reputed sexual appetites of both brother and sister, as well as their natural affinity for each other, it is probable the pair did experiment sexually together.

Whatever the truth behind their relationship, one fact remains: Napoleon watched over his sister devotedly. More than once he stepped in to save her from creditors, often paying, with minimal grumbling, the many hefty bills she racked up in her travels. Pauline certainly loved to spend money: she bought a yacht she never set foot on, traveled constantly between spa towns and water-cure resorts, and threw sumptuous balls. Along with her excessive consumption was a streak of diva behavior, which asserted itself in the sorts of outrageous requests that only royals can make. For example, she bathed in milk to preserve her white skin, which was as inconvenient as it sounds. Once, Pauline dropped in on a hapless relative and demanded that he procure milk for her bath, adding too that she would require a shower after. The poor man explained that he didn’t have the equipment for such an undertaking. “Nothing so easy,” Pauline responded. “Just make a hole in the ceiling above my bath, and have your servants pour the milk through when I am ready.” She left his home after just one night, leaving behind a hole in the ceiling and a miasma of soured milk.