Wondrous Beauty: The Life and Adventures of Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte (4 page)

For his part, William Patterson had no desire to create an international incident by acceding to what he considered a daughter’s foolish whim. For him, there were too many unanswered questions about the marriage: Would England interpret it as an overture to an American alliance with France? On the other hand, would any opposition to it by Napoleon be read as another French insult to the United States? Would influential Americans suspect William Patterson of reckless ambition? The possibility that his own business interests would suffer because of his daughter’s impetuous step surely disturbed him.

William felt it his duty to protect his daughter, but he acted to protect himself as well. He asked his brother-in-law Sam Smith to secure letters of support for the marriage from President Jefferson and Secretary of State Madison. He wanted Smith to make it clear to all parties that he had done nothing whatsoever to promote or encourage the relationship between his daughter and the brother of Napoleon Bonaparte. But if and when the marriage did take place—and it now seemed to William inevitable—it should be presented to the Bonapartes as a socially acceptable alliance. American government officials agreed. In his instruction on the matter to the U.S. ambassador to France, Madison took care to emphasize that the proposed marriage was no insult to France’s first consul’s sense of self-importance, for it joined families of similar, if not equal, social rank. William would, no doubt, have been pleased to hear himself described as
“a man of the fairest character, of real responsibility, [and] of very great wealth.”

Still, not all of William’s concerns were quieted. There was the question of Jérôme Bonaparte’s age. Had he reached his majority, and was he thus able to marry without parental consent? Jérôme had not been forthcoming on answering this question. William assigned Smith the task of discovering the truth. When pressed, Jérôme reassured Smith that he had recently turned twenty-one. But whether Jérôme was twenty-one or several years younger than he declared, it might not matter. For Pichon informed Smith that a recent law in France declared that no marriage was valid without parental consent if the groom was under twenty-five.

This was a new twist. William set his lawyer the task of researching marital law. The lawyer reported that marriages were governed by the laws of the country in which they took place, and it was standard practice for such marriages to be accepted as binding in other countries. As Maryland set a man’s maturity at twenty-one, Jérôme would need no parental consent. The lawyer seemed satisfied, but William Patterson was not. The moment the couple arrived in France, William realized, Napoleon or any member of the Bonaparte family, might—and under French law, could—challenge the marriage. In November, just as the wedding was to take place, he informed his lawyer that the engagement was off.

The danger of annulment by Napoleon was very real to William, but by November he had discovered other reasons for preventing the marriage. In his letter to the lawyer, Alexander Dallas, he had noted that “some circumstances of no great importance” had occurred the day before the ceremony was to take place. But those circumstances were far from inconsequential, especially to the father of a naïve daughter. For William had received an anonymous letter from someone who claimed to know Jérôme’s true character.

The letter writer did not mince words.
“Is it possible, sir,” he or she began, “you can so far forget yourself, and the happiness of your child, as to consent to her marrying Mr. Bonaparte”? What followed was a litany of Jérôme’s deceits and dissipations. He had “destroyed the peace and happiness of a respectable family in Nantz by promising marriage, then ruined, leaving her to misery and shame.” The pattern had continued in the
West Indies, where he “ruined a lovely young woman who had only been married for a few weeks. He parted her from her husband, and destroyed the family!” As for Jérôme’s motives for proposing marriage to Elizabeth Patterson, they were obvious: his brother Napoleon had gotten wind of this dishonorable behavior, and Jérôme “now wishes to secure himself a home at your expense” until his brother’s anger cooled. When Napoleon forgave his errant brother, Jérôme would abandon William’s daughter and “laugh at your credulity!”

William never knew who wrote this letter. He never knew if the accusations were true. But the warning resonated with his deepest suspicions and doubts. He would not allow Jérôme Bonaparte to humiliate his daughter—or to make a fool of her father. Exercising his parental authority, he whisked Betsy off to the countryside.

Betsy knew nothing of the anonymous letter, and thus for her, Jérôme remained the devoted lover who would ensure her happiness—and her escape from the stifling world of the Patterson household and the larger Baltimore society. She did know, however, that news of the cancellation of the wedding would spread quickly. Gossips noted that Betsy had been sent away; perhaps, as Rosalie Stier Calvert told her mother, she had been
“driven off to one of her relatives in Virginia.” Jérôme’s whereabouts were no mystery: he had headed to New York. The young lovers were not able to communicate, yet someone kept Jérôme well informed of Betsy’s whereabouts. Soon after she was allowed to return home, he appeared in Baltimore once again.

It was now clear to all that persistence had won out over prudence: the wedding was rescheduled for Christmas Eve. On the night before Christmas, a small group gathered at the Patterson home. Among the guests were Jérôme’s personal secretary, Alexandre Le Camus; the mayor of Baltimore; and the French consul at Baltimore, M. Sotin. Louis-André Pichon, certain that Napoleon’s wrath would soon descend upon him, did not attend. Although the Pattersons were Presbyterian, William had arranged for a Catholic ceremony, officiated by the highest of church officials, the Right Reverend John Carroll, first archbishop of America. Thus, in the eyes of the French Church, the marriage would be valid. And even if somehow the worst should happen, Article IV of the marriage contract, signed that very day, ensured that
“if the marriage should be annulled, either on demand of the said Jérôme Bonaparte or that of any member of his family, the said Elisabeth Patterson shall have a right in any case to one-third of the real, personal and mixed property of her future husband.”

At the ceremony, the bridegroom was resplendent in a coat of purple satin, embroidered and laced with gold. Diamonds sparkled on the buckles of his shoes, and his dark hair was powdered. But if Jérôme’s appearance was a bit overwhelming, it was Betsy who created a stir. Jérôme had brought her a number of fashionable new dresses, bought during his stay in New York, but she chose to wear a simple muslin gown, decorated only with lace and pearls. It was shocking, not because of its simplicity but because beneath this sheer dress she wore only a single undergarment. As one guest described it, the bridal gown
was little more than
“a mere suspicion of a dress.” There can be no doubt that the dress, which Betsy kept all her life, did not conform to the standards of propriety, as measured by multiple layers of undergarments and a near obliteration of the outline of the female figure. The dress may have reflected Betsy’s delight in startling Baltimore’s conventional community. Or it may only have been a sign that she had embraced the latest French fashions as eagerly as she had embraced a French husband. Unfortunately for her, that husband turned out to be only nineteen and thus was not old enough to marry, either in America or in France, without parental permission.

News of the wedding spread rapidly throughout the country, with announcements appearing in newspapers in Baltimore, Boston, Richmond, New York City, and Elizabeth, New Jersey. By February 1804, London papers were announcing that Jérôme and
“the agreeable Miss Elizabeth Patterson” were married. Their social life as newlyweds was eagerly followed in the press and in private correspondence. Betsy was now a celebrity, and she proved more than happy to give everyone something to write about.

After a brief stay at one of the Pattersons’ country estates, Betsy and Jérôme decided to make their way to Washington. Although the capital city was the hub of American politics, it was far from elegant. The distance between government buildings was often broad, and getting around could be challenging. Unpaved streets, muddy after rainfall or snow, were not passable on foot, and tree stumps often blocked the paths. Wildlife was abundant within sight of the Capitol. While a scattering of elegant homes housed elite members of the government, such as Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin and the French minister, Pichon, many of the petty bureaucrats and office workers lived in rented rooms. Despite all the inconveniences, political figures and their families enjoyed balls and lavish dinners,
evenings playing cards, and even the occasional theatrical performance. It was this active social life that attracted the young Bonapartes.

Washington City was only forty miles south of Baltimore, but even under the best of circumstances, the journey could be long and tiresome. In the winter of 1804, travel conditions were especially bad. Heavy snows blanketed Baltimore and the surrounding areas, and Washington itself was said to be bitterly cold. Jérôme rejected the idea of traveling by public stage; instead he borrowed Joshua Barney’s personal carriage. Despite their comfortable transportation, the couple suffered an accident. The coach driver fell from his perch, the horses bolted, and though Jérôme attempted to take the reins and slow the horses’ pace, the carriage went out of control. Betsy recognized the danger and, with considerable aplomb, jumped to the safety of a snowbank beside the road. She could, it became apparent, take care of herself when necessary.

It was not her bravery but a far different daring that made Betsy the talk of the capital. She set tongues wagging when she appeared at balls and dinner parties dressed in the latest European fashion.
“Of Madame—I think it is no harm to speak the truth,” wrote one Washington matron following a ball given in Betsy’s honor. “She has made a great noise here and mobs of boys have crowded round her splendid equipage to see what I hope will not often be seen in this country, an almost naked woman.”

Like Betsy’s wedding dress, her ball gown was far more revealing than the older generation thought decent. It was made of
thin, unstiffened white crepe, and thus it clung to her body, so
“you could see the color and shape of her thighs.” The dress had an empire waistline that, to another observer, was
“scarcely any waist” at all. Betsy’s arms, neck, and back were bare. In Paris, it was fashion; in America, it was indecent exposure.

To her critics, Betsy’s attire reflected more than a lapse of one individual’s personal morality or good taste. By 1804 fashion itself had become political. As the revolutionary fervor of the eighteenth century faded, a concern about the virtue necessary to sustain the republican experiment known as the United States grew. European decadence seemed to be creeping into American life, and although Jeffersonians laid the blame at the feet of the Federalists, it was a generational concern that crossed party lines. Would the recent effort to refine American society weaken it? Would American women, who had been designated as the torchbearers of patriotism and sacrifice, abandon their task of instilling these values in their sons and daughters? Modest dress was becoming the visible symbol of modesty in character—and Betsy’s gown left her in every way exposed.

Betsy’s embrace of Parisian and London fashion could also be—and was—read as a rejection of American domesticity. A woman who bared her neck and arms was surely a woman who would refuse to be a docile, obedient wife. Although Betsy was not alone among the younger generation in adopting the new foreign fashions, her appearance at social events on the arm of a Frenchman, and a Bonaparte at that, made the challenge to traditional manners and mores more disturbing.

Betsy’s boldness both repelled and fascinated. Boys gawked,
and grown men were said to
“take a look at her bubbies while they were conversing with her.” Small wonder that one of the men at the ball penned a bawdy poem about her, declaring:

Betsy ignored the criticism, for at eighteen, she was not sophisticated enough to recognize the fine line that divided celebrity and notoriety. Her social triumphs were heady and made her deaf to criticism. She was proud of her new husband, eager to show off the Parisian fashions he had bought for her, and thrilled by the admiration she read in the eyes of men and the envy she saw in the eyes of women. When a delegation of older women warned her that
“if she did not change her manner of dress she would never be asked anywhere again,” she ignored them. She knew the threat was empty; all of Washington society clamored for a sight of the beautiful young woman some called “Lady Eve.”

Not everyone disapproved of Betsy, of course. The portrait artist Gilbert Stuart, commissioned to paint Jérôme and Betsy, found her a living work of art. Seeing her, he decided to venture a composition he had never attempted before: three heads of a woman on one canvas. And Aaron Burr wrote to his daughter
Theodosia Alston that Madame Bonaparte was
“a charming little woman” who dressed with “taste and simplicity.” Burr, who had raised Theodosia quite unconventionally, encouraging her to read widely and to think independently, approved of Betsy’s “sense and spirit, and sprightliness.” Meeting Betsy at a dinner party, Catherine Mitchill found her to be
“remarkable friendly” despite her exposed “bubbies.” She saw Betsy for what she was, vivacious and witty, with “a fondness to be heard.” One could not expect such a sociable person to always be prudent, Mitchill declared, but she was very likely to always be amusing. It was to Catherine Mitchill, a sympathetic soul, that Betsy insisted that her sociability was nothing more than an antidote to misery and sorrow: “She says she is miserable, and is compel’d to fly to company for relief from sorrow.” Mitchill seemed unconvinced, however. How could the young, beautiful wife of Jérôme Bonaparte need relief from sorrow?