The Ambitious Madame Bonaparte (47 page)

Betsy knew that her mother would have offered much the same advice, but that knowledge did little to salve her lacerated feelings. Bo had wounded her as deeply as ever her father or husband did. Not even when she learned a year after the marriage that Susan May had given her a grandson did Betsy’s attitude soften. She was still enjoying herself in Europe, and she honestly did not care if she ever saw Baltimore again.

EPILOGUE: JUNE 1870

S
TANDING alone in the Bonaparte room of her son’s Baltimore mansion, Betsy sighed as she gazed at the miniature of her ex-husband. “Oh, Jerome. Our son is dying. How I wish I did not have to face this alone.”

She glanced from the miniature in her hand to her favorite photograph of Bo, the one that showed his remarkable resemblance to Napoleon. Ever since Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte had restored the French empire, Betsy’s dearest ambition had been to see Bo or one of his sons become emperor of France should the line of Napoleon III fail. Now it seemed that her son, who had throat cancer at the age of sixty-five, would die before his cousin.

So much loss. At her advanced age, Betsy had outlived her parents, her ex-husband, and most of her siblings. If Bo should die too, how would she summon the strength to go on?

When I see him,
she thought,
I must make sure he knows that my love for him has never wavered. If he must die, I want him to go in peace.

“You can come up now,” a man’s voice broke into her thoughts.

Betsy turned to see Jerome standing in the doorway, as handsome as ever with his dark hair and eyes. Gasping, she dropped the miniature and heard the glass break.

Then her nineteen-year-old grandson Charles stepped toward her. “Grandmama? Are you all right?”

Placing one hand on her chest, Betsy exhaled and leaned against the table. “For a moment, you reminded me so much of your grandfather, I thought he had come back to life.”

“I’m sorry I startled you. It was not my intention.”

“That is quite all right.” She held out her hand, and Charley came close so she could take his arm. “I was lost in my memories, you see.”

“You always said that Jerome Jr. favored Grandpapa more than I do,” he replied, referring to his much-older brother. “Are you sure you feel up to this after having such a fright?”

“Do not condescend to me. You may think I am a silly old woman, but I am a tougher bird than you imagine. I have something I must say to your father before it is too late.”

“All right, Grandmama. But take the stairs slowly, OK?”

“Yes, yes, if you insist.”

As they moved toward the doorway, Betsy glanced back and saw the miniature lying on the floor amid fragments of glass. “Your grandfather.”

“Don’t worry. I will take care of that later.”

Turning her back on the shattered image of her husband, Betsy crossed the hall and then slowly ascended the staircase. She kept one hand on the banister and the other tucked into Charley’s arm. As she climbed, she remembered how her father had used Bo’s wedding to take revenge for the trouble her marriage caused him.

He could not have devised a more perfect way to express the resentment he had nursed for twenty-five years. It must have given him great satisfaction to usurp her role as parent so completely that he was able to convince Bo to shut her out of that event. At the time, Betsy thought that having taken his vengeance, her father would let her live in peace. But she had been wrong to assume that William Patterson’s rancor could be appeased by a single act of retribution.

As she and Charley reached the second-floor landing, the old feeling of being choked by outrage seized Betsy, and she had trouble catching her breath.

“Grandmama, are you all right? Do you need a doctor?”

“No, no. Just let me rest a moment.”

He led her to a sofa that sat against a wall not far from the top of the stairs. After easing her onto the seat, he leaned down with his hands braced on his knees. “Grandmama, truly, you look very distressed.”

Betsy forced herself to smile. “All that afflicts me are bitter memories. If you would fetch me some water, I will rest a minute before I go in to see your father.”

“Of course, but—are you sure you are well enough to be left alone?”

Gazing into her grandson’s face, so very like his mother’s, Betsy thought,
How young he is and how little he knows of the decades of loneliness I have had to endure.

“You will be gone only a minute. I believe I shall survive.”

As Charley walked away, glancing back over his shoulder, Betsy returned to her memories. After learning of her son’s marriage, she had remained in Europe five more years, traveling among her favorite places and taking part in the social life she loved so well.

She had even had a last chance at love. In Florence, Betsy formed a friendship with a Russian diplomat named Prince Alexander Gorchakov. He was in his early thirties, thirteen years her junior, and had wavy dark brown hair, a full mustache, and a goatee—not as dashing as Jerome had been but handsome in his own way. With other women of their acquaintance, he flirted, but with Betsy he discussed politics and world events. For her part, she relished the stimulation of debate; no other man except Elbridge Gerry had ever treated her as an intellectual equal. However, after several years of correspondence and intimate conversations whenever they found themselves in the same city, the prince made it clear that he wanted more from Betsy than a meeting of the minds, and she—knowing that his noble family would never accept his marriage to a commoner or a woman past childbearing age—broke off the relationship rather than become his mistress. In the decades since, she had followed Gorchakov’s career with tender admiration and pride. He had become one of the most influential men in Russia.

Finally, nearing the age of fifty, Betsy grew tired of wandering the cities of Europe. Her father wrote warning her of a pending financial crisis in the United States, so she used that excuse to return home and finally meet her daughter-in-law and four-year-old grandson. She found Jerome Jr. adorable and regretted having neglected him so long.

Although Betsy did her best to be cordial, Susan May never forgave her for her initial opposition to the marriage. It saddened Betsy that she was not welcome to live in her son’s house, but she knew that trying to convince the young woman that the criticism had never been personal was a futile task. After all, she herself had never yielded to her mother’s urging to forgive Jerome. Instead of continuing to try to win over her daughter-in-law, Betsy contented herself with being a doting grandmother to Jerome Jr. and much later to Charley, born twenty-one years after his brother. Her relationship with her son eventually grew warm again, although they never completely restored their old closeness.

In 1835, a year after she returned, William Patterson inflicted on Betsy one last grievous injury. When he died, his will revealed that he had deprived her of an equal share of his estate. He left stocks to his sons, his grandchildren, and even his illegitimate daughter Matilda, but not to Betsy. Nor did he bequeath her any money. All that he gave her were a few properties, including the house where she was born. Patterson also denied Betsy her equal share of her mother’s settlement from Grandfather Spear, in defiance of Dorcas’s wishes. More wounding, though, than the scant inheritance were the words Patterson wrote in his will:

The conduct of my daughter Betsy has through life been so disobedient that in no instance has she ever consulted my opinions or feelings; indeed, she has caused me more anxiety and trouble than all my other children put together, and her folly and misconduct have occasioned me a train of expense that first and last has cost me much money. Under such circumstances it would not be reasonable, just, or proper that she should inherit and participate in an equal proportion with my other children in an equal division of my estate.

If Patterson’s final intention on earth was to crush his daughter’s spirit and force her at last into the broken submissiveness he thought appropriate for women, he nearly succeeded. He left instructions for his will to be published in the newspaper so that all of Baltimore would read his condemnation of Betsy. She was mortified.

Betsy was not the only person on whom William Patterson played a cruel joke at the end. He left $100 to Aunt Nancy, who by then was in financial difficulties, but only on the condition that she give up attending the sessions of Congress, a pastime he had never considered proper for a lady. Even more maliciously, he bequeathed a case of brandy to John, who was a drunkard. Yet knowing that others had been mocked in her father’s will did little to alleviate Betsy’s humiliation.

After the initial shock, Betsy mustered enough of her old spirit to fight back. She still had her marriage contract of 1803 in which her father had stipulated that he would leave her an equal share of his estate. She and her son consulted lawyers, including Roger B. Taney, who only a year later became the chief justice of the Supreme Court.

The lawyers found the will so extraordinary that they doubted Patterson’s sanity, but they could not prove he was out of his right mind. As they explained to Betsy and her son, the legal situation was complicated. Although Patterson left no money to Betsy, he did leave a bequest to Bo—which, though sizable, was not as large as what he would have inherited through his mother if she had received her equal share. If Betsy succeeded in using the marriage contract to break the will, she would receive a larger inheritance, but Bo would lose his portion because the estate would be divided equally among Patterson’s children.

Betsy’s legal inquiries delayed the settlement of the estate, and the family reacted furiously. John, Joseph, Edward, and Henry lined up against her and tried to amass evidence that she deserved their father’s censure. They searched Patterson’s papers and took away his copy of the marriage contract, hoping that Betsy had lost hers. They gathered up the letters their father had received from Betsy and paid Aunt Nancy for the letters Betsy had sent her, so they could use their sister’s correspondence against her. As a result of these schemes, Betsy’s relationships with her aunt and four brothers were irrevocably broken.

Only George found the will unjust. He disagreed so strongly with the decision to exclude Betsy from sharing their mother’s money that he signed over his portion to her. She wrote him her thanks and tried to enlist his support in the lawsuit, but when she realized that he did not want to become embroiled in his siblings’ conflict, she did not push him.

The nastiness even affected Bo. Although he never confronted his mother directly, his correspondence to her lost its warmth as though he blamed her for being so imprudent as to lose his inheritance. Sadly, she noted that he never called her “dearest mama” anymore.

Finally, exhausted by the acrimony, Betsy gave up the lawsuit. She contented herself with the city properties her father left her and continued to live off the income from the investments she had tended so carefully since 1810.

The irony was that over time, her urban property grew in value more dramatically than the stock or country estates her brothers had inherited, so her estate was now worth well over a million dollars. In the end, her father benefitted her far more than he had intended. But nothing could heal the knowledge that William Patterson had deliberately held her up to public derision. Betsy became almost a recluse, living in a boarding house, pouring over the mementoes of her past, and taking pride in her grandsons, but rarely traveling or receiving guests. She took little interest in the affairs of the United States, and not even the cataclysm of the Civil War and its destructive effect on Maryland stirred her from indifference.

In the 1840s, Betsy did receive one foreign visitor who brought her some consolation. Marshal Henri-Gatien Bertrand, who had been with Napoleon in exile, came to Baltimore to say that Napoleon had admired her talents to the end and regretted the shadow he had thrown upon her life. The former emperor was grateful that she always praised him, saying, “Those I have wronged have forgiven me; those I have loaded with kindness have forsaken me.”

Sighing at the memory, Betsy glanced up to see Charley coming down the hallway, holding a glass of water. “How are you now?” he asked.

“I am well. It was merely an attack of an old pain, but it has passed.”

She drank the water and then rose. Taking Charley’s arm, she allowed him to lead her down the corridor as slowly as he thought prudent. As they walked, she thought of her older grandson, who bore an uncanny resemblance to his grandfather Jerome and had inherited the military interests of his great-uncle Napoleon. He was serving as a colonel in the French Army. “It is a pity Jerome Jr. cannot be here.”

“Grandmama, he cannot leave France right now. They say tension is brewing with Prussia.”

“Yes, yes, I know.” She refrained from reminding him that she had been following French politics since decades before his birth. “But surely, as cousin to the emperor, Jerome could take leave during a family crisis.”

“Papa forbade us to send him a wire. He believes he will recover.”

She stopped and tilted her head to look up at him. “Do you think he will?”

Charley shook his head gravely and opened the master-bedroom door.

Bo was lying in the massive mahogany four-poster with his wife sitting beside him, one hand laid upon his chest. As Betsy entered, Susan May stood. “I will leave you alone.”

“No need, my dear,” Betsy said. “I have nothing to say to my son that you cannot hear.”

Charley carried the chair from his mother’s dressing table to the side of the bed and helped Betsy into it. Then he and Susan May withdrew to a far corner.

“Mama,” Bo said in a harsh whisper that hurt Betsy’s heart. She grasped his hand. They gazed at each other a long moment and then he whispered, “Forgive me.”

“Oh, my dear boy. I forgave you long ago.”

For an instant, his eyes shifted to his wife across the room and then he refocused on Betsy’s face. “Understand—don’t—regret my choice.”

“Nor should you,” Betsy said firmly, speaking loudly enough for her daughter-in-law to hear. “Susan May has been an excellent wife and mother.”

Bo winced, whether from emotional or physical pain Betsy could not tell. Then he spoke again in the same agonized whisper, “Sorry—excluded you.”

“I blame that on your grandfather,” Betsy said, unable to restrain her anger even though she knew how much Bo had loved her father. “That bad old man wanted to pay me back for marrying against his wishes.”