Ambition and Desire: The Dangerous Life of Josephine Bonaparte (38 page)

Many mornings, Napoleon woke up in pain, suffering from stomach spasms or a headache. As his servants tried to rub him down with eau de cologne and dress him, he tore off his clothes if they annoyed him, and slapped his valet for trying to put his coat on him. All the while, he was looking at police reports and newspapers, bills and letters. When he was dressed, he doused himself with more eau de cologne—he went through sixty bottles a month—was given his handkerchief, snuffbox, and tortoiseshell case of finely cut licorice. At nine, he would conduct private audiences with his officials, stopping at eleven to take breakfast. Then he would go to his study, pacing up and down as he dictated letters and orders to his secretary, Claude de Méneval, who had to create a new, faster form of shorthand to keep up. He would finish by dictating a few articles for the newspapers and then stomp off to find Josephine. After lunch with her, he returned to giving audiences, meeting the Council of State or dictating further orders to his officials and ministers about the business of governing his empire. After dinner, he
might spend a short while in the Yellow Salon with Josephine and his generals and their wives, playing chess or billiards before retiring to his desk once more and working into the night.

When he undressed, he might throw his clothes on the floor and hit the valet to purge his frustrations from the day. Unsurprisingly, he was a poor sleeper and sometimes rose from his bed, plunged into a hot bath, and called Méneval to take down yet more orders and commands, continuing for hours until he felt tired. When he himself wrote, he scribbled so fast and shook his pen so impatiently that the paper was covered in big blots of ink.

Napoleon had always bolted his food, but as emperor, he could scarcely bear to waste a moment eating. If he demanded a meal, he expected it—and Josephine—to be in front of him immediately. Fond of roast chicken and potatoes fried with onion, he would eat as fast as he could, often not bothering with a knife and fork. He preferred Josephine not to eat in his presence—which was fortunate, because she barely would have had the chance to do so. He wanted everything around him to be hot with energy, so he had a fire lit at all times; his courtiers and attendants often fainted from the heat. His skin was almost yellow, his digestion was terrible, and he suffered from awful coughing fits that brought up blood. Sometimes he was so ill after eating that his courtiers found him lying with his head in Josephine’s lap, groaning. His mind spun even when he was trying to sleep; he found that the only way to rest was by reciting army lists over and over.

Napoleon was impatient, brimming with nervous energy, and only ceaseless activity could slake his restless mind. Even when he maintained a cool mien in public, he was constantly fidgeting under his robes, taking snuff or pushing mint pastilles into his mouth. His armchair had to be changed every three months because it was the piece of furniture that most suffered from his penknife. Beneath the imperial surface, he was still the little boy who had pulled apart chairs in school.
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Josephine provided the calm and stillness that he could not derive from himself. While sitting for his portrait to commemorate the Battle of Arcola, he had fidgeted so much that Josephine had come to the studio and placed him on her lap in order to keep him still. Only she was allowed to pour
his coffee after dinner and add sugar to it with a special gilt spoon. She was his refuge, and he relied on her to be there when he needed her. Josephine understood this. As she later wrote to Caroline, “The pride of women consists in submission and we should have no other power than such as a mild and gentle character imparts to us.”
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Napoleon was a genius at creating a cult of empire, and for this, the visual arts were vital. He preferred artists and craftsmen who had been beloved by the Bourbons, such as Isabey and the Jacob brothers. Jacques-Louis David, the man who had signed Alexandre’s death warrant and would have signed Josephine’s, too—and who had refused to draw Louis XVI, as he would not allow his pencil to reproduce the features of a tyrant—became Bonaparte’s great ally, eulogizing him again and again in paint. He portrayed him crossing the St. Bernard Pass, turning his hero into Hannibal on a rearing horse, rather than a dreary mule, as had been the case. His
Napoleon in His Study
showed the first consul hard at work in the early hours of the morning. And, of course, he painted the celebrated coronation portrait. But Napoleon never quite completely trusted David and favored the work of his pupils, chiefly François Gérard, Antoine Gros, and Jean-Auguste Ingres. Their paintings were unashamedly excessive and flattering, with Gros’s
Napoleon at the Battle of Eylau
showing him tending to the dying. Ingres’s almost ridiculous
Napoleon I on His Imperial Throne
(1806) portrayed the plump little emperor as a god—part Jupiter, part Augustus, and part Charlemagne.

Napoleon was particularly fond of Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, who created romantic, sensual portraits of his wife. The empire was a time for painters to become famous, but only if they agreed to lavish praise on the imperial couple. Gold and money poured into their workshops as they did the bidding of the emperor.

J
OSEPHINE TOOK CARE
of the matters of power that Napoleon could not bear. She heard petitions, patronized artists and musicians, planned dinners, fetes, and celebrations, and presided over receptions and tributes. Napoleon dreaded the evening dinners and balls. “I am not made for pleasure,” he rued.
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Her days rarely varied. In the morning, she and Napoleon awoke together. His valet, Constant, would go to her apartments between
seven and eight
A.M.
and sometimes find the pair still asleep. “When the Emperor asked me for tea or for an infusion of orange flowers and started to get up, the Empress would say to him smilingly, ‘Must you get up already? Stay a little longer.’ His Majesty would answer, ‘You mean you are not asleep?’ and he would roll her up in her blanket, giving her little taps on her cheek and on her shoulders, laughing and kissing her.”
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Then her four maids would come in and busy themselves with the task of making her look like an empress.

While Napoleon dictated his plans for conquest, Josephine was bathed, and then her face was plastered with the heavy makeup that Napoleon liked. He preferred an image that was more embellished than that of Versailles and, to the British, looked like the maquillage of courtesans. Her assistants smeared rouge in great tear shapes over her fine cheeks. She then put on her lace dressing gown as her hair was arranged by the hairdresser. As he created curls and tamed recalcitrant strands, Josephine’s ladies brought in piles of gowns, shawls, and hats for her to pick her attire for the morning—muslin and cambric in the summer, despite Napoleon’s complaints against that fabric—and velvet and wool for the winter. Marie Antoinette had chosen her clothing similarly, except she had used a book of swatches and samples to keep track of her unwieldy wardrobe. Josephine changed every item of her dress three times a day and never wore the same pair of stockings twice. The whole operation of choosing outfits, picking them up from the baskets, and trying them against her was a lengthy one. Eight dressers attended Josephine, while the mistress of the robes and the lady of honor regarded from afar.

T
HE EMPRESS WAS
given an annual allowance of 600,000 francs to maintain her household and person, with a further 120,000 for charity. It was not enough. In modern terms, her personal expenditure would come close to two million dollars a year. Indeed, it seems surprising that she did not spend more. Her wardrobe was spectacularly costly, her jewels ludicrous, and her apartments were filled with expensive knickknacks: boxes, statues, ornamental books, vases, and glass. In addition, she saw creating an art collection for the nation as one of her most important tasks and spent huge sums on paintings. Even though she barely
had the chance to visit Malmaison, she was always packing it with more seeds and plants and attempting to buy animals for her menagerie.

After she had dressed, merchants and shopkeepers would crowd into her apartments, along with artists, musicians, and entertainers. She snapped up diamonds, shawls, silks, and trinkets, never asking the price. She commissioned portraits and purchased thousands of francs’ worth of gifts. In every fashionable shop in Paris, someone was making something for the empress. The smallest gathering was an opportunity to order a new gown; one such gown was adorned with lace said to be worth 100,000 francs (one sixth of her yearly allowance). She would sometimes pay 12,000 francs for a shawl and then use it as a cushion or a blanket for her dog. She would wear a superbly expensive dress for a day and then give it to her ladies or maids, who would promptly sell it. Mademoiselle Avrillion recalled that at Mainz, she and the other ladies had offered Josephine’s old gowns as payment for the exquisite goods of the local tradesmen, who swiftly sold them to the local dignitaries. “I remember a ball there at which the Empress might have seen all the ladies of a quadrille party dressed in her cast-off clothes—I even saw German Princesses wearing them.”
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Everyone around Josephine was making a profit from her.

Napoleon fumed about her “mad extravagance,” but she would not listen. “Every day I discover new instances of it, and it distresses me. When I speak to her—on the subject I am vexed; I get angry—she weeps. I forgive her, I pay her bills—she makes fair promises; but the same thing occurs over and over again.”
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Under his passion for grandeur, he was an old penny-pincher at heart and made frequent decrees to reduce spending, such as instructing that all the sheets in the courtiers’ apartments should be changed only monthly. Josephine never economized and was too kindhearted—or too indolent—to haggle with merchants pressing goods on her.

As well as her gifts, her household, and her charities, she also supported her family. She sent money to her mother on Martinique and pressed her to come to court, where she would have high status as the mother of the empress. But Rose-Claire remained alone with her servants at La Pagerie. Josephine’s other relatives were not so principled.
Her uncle Tascher came over, and she paid his debts and supported him and five of his children in the house on the rue de la Victoire, finding them positions at various embassies. Her maternal cousins also accepted her invitation to come to France, at her cost, and she gave generous gifts to her goddaughter, Josephine Tallien. Josephine had long since sent away Euphémie Lefèvre, her maid and probable half sister, but supported her with a pension, and Euphémie eventually was able to buy a rather large property near Malmaison. Josephine also gave money to the family of her former husband, including his aunt and her daughter, his wet nurse, his illegitimate daughter, and most generously of all, his former mistress Laure de Longpré, who once cruelly conspired with Alexandre against her. No doubt there was a superior pleasure in helping Laure. As Josephine wrote in the margin of one letter, “this lady is very infirm.”

The word got around that those in need only had to ask Josephine for help. She gave money to poverty-stricken royalists and émigré aristocrats, as well as anyone who ever served her. Her official charities were the expected ones: those that supported mothers, orphans, the sick, and the old. In 1805 her annual donations had reached 72,000 francs; by 1809, they had soared to 180,000. These sums did not include the casual amounts given to supplicants who conveyed messages to her or charities she encountered while traveling.

In 1805, in an effort to curb her spending, Napoleon declared that all merchants should be sent first to Josephine’s comptroller, but she found ways of seeing them in secret. When the emperor found an elderly milliner waiting in the blue salon, he shouted for the guards, who dragged the woman away to be imprisoned. He quickly realized his error and sent a message to release her, but the poor woman’s awful experience did not dissuade others. The merchants continued to flock to the biggest purse in town.

One of Josephine’s greatest expenses was jewelry. Though Marie Antoinette had been brought low by a diamond necklace, it seemed that Josephine could appear covered in diamonds and no one would complain. One of her ladies-in-waiting claimed that her jewelry collection could have “figured in a tale of Arabian nights.”
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Marie Antoinette’s old
jewel box was actually too small for the empress’s sparklers. A favorite necklace of twenty-seven huge diamonds was particularly coveted by Tsar Alexander, who bought it after Josephine’s death. When celebrating the marriage of her niece to the Crown Prince of Baden, Josephine wore pearls in her hair valued at a million francs. She had the crown jewels of France, as well as Napoleon’s excessive gifts of diadems, necklaces, bracelets, and every possible precious stone he could order back from his expeditions, including Oriental rubies, stones from Brazil, and ten necklaces of real pearls. The Jacob brothers made her an incredible jewel cabinet. Designed by Charles Percier, it stood at an incredible height, nearly ten feet high. Now in the Louvre, the whole thing is a monument to excess: The body was made of yew, the thirty interior drawers of solid mahogany, and it was decorated with mother-of-pearl designs—and bronzes that hid secret locks (useful to ward off Napoleon’s investigations). The central design was of the birth of the Goddess of the Earth, to whom the other goddesses and cupids hurried to give presents. Delivered in 1809, the cabinet was the most expensive item the brothers ever made, and still it was not big enough for her collection. In 1811 an inventory was made of Josephine’s jewels, which assessed them at over five million francs. The “good easy-going woman,” the Martinique plantation daughter, had become the imperial empress, bowed under the weight of precious stones.
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