Ambition and Desire: The Dangerous Life of Josephine Bonaparte (5 page)

With such money, the young couple would be so rich that no one could snub Marie-Josèphe for her countrified ways. But their wealth existed only on paper. There was no arrangement to bring the furniture from Martinique, and Edmée had a life interest in her gifts to Marie-Josèphe, so she would not be able to use them until her aunt died. Edmée had assessed Joseph’s contribution on the basis of the value of the properties in the Caribbean, but the sum was impossible. He could hardly afford his expenses in Paris, and he was supposed to give the couple six thousand a year as interest on their dowry. In reality, the newlyweds would be living off Alexandre’s money and whatever cash they could borrow.

On December 13, 1779, Marie-Josèphe was married. The chill, dark church at Noisy-le-Grand was filled with Alexandre’s friends and relations, and the ceremony was overseen by her new father-in-law, the marquis. She was virtually alone. Her father was too ill to attend, so she was given away by a distant cousin. Euphémie, her maid (and probably her half sister), was the only person she knew well. Her position of dependence and inferiority hardly could have been clearer. On the register, her wobbly and childlike “M.J.R. Tascher de La Pagerie” now appears poignant, the sole feminine signature among fourteen names.
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Alexandre had conferred on himself the title of vicomte, even though he was not yet entitled to it, so Marie-Josèphe was now the vicomtesse de Beauharnais. That night Alexandre took her to his bed; after their first night together, Marie-Josèphe only adored her husband more intensely.

“The union is your doing, their happiness must be your work also,” the bride’s mother wrote to Edmée.
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It was an optimistic view of Madame Renaudin’s powers. La Pagerie had been poor preparation for the cruelty of Marie-Josèphe’s new world. Parisian ladies discussed the philosophy of Montesquieu or the labyrinthine politics at court. Marie-Josèphe—who had never seen an opera, knew nothing of poetry, and could not comment on art—was out of her depth. At dances, she was shy and awkward, and people laughed at her behind their hands.

She refused to give in to sadness. Full of the joie de vivre of youth, she reminded herself that she was married to a handsome man her school friends would envy. She was eager to see fashionable society and be a good wife to her husband. Every day she waited excitedly for her
invitation to court, since it was customary for aristocratic brides to be introduced to the queen. She longed to see the Versailles her father had extolled. But when word came from the court, it was not in their favor. As the Marquis de Beauharnais had created a newfangled title, and the family had been fined before for claiming false titles, the couple would have no place at Versailles. Alexandre was furious at the insult and harbored great resentment toward the king and queen.

He also despaired of his wife’s coarse manners, but on the other hand, her intense need for him and her fervent adoration suited his egotistic soul. It also made him complacent and convinced he could treat her as he chose. Mortified by her provincial behavior, he left her at home when he visited his friends and relations for dinners and soirées. He found her childish and too dependent, and her incessant questions annoyed him. He disliked her maid, Euphémie, deciding she was too rustic (perhaps he also thought the family resemblance too obvious). Marie-Josèphe’s lustrous chestnut hair, pretty eyes, and gentle heart had no effect on him. He called her an “object who has nothing to say to me,” and returned to his regiment soon after the wedding.
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“Instead of spending my time at home with a creature with whom I can find nothing in common,” Alexandre wrote to Patricol, his former tutor, “I have to a great extent resumed my bachelor life.” Laure de Longpré was by then heavily pregnant with his child, and he had fallen in love with her. “I have until now attached myself only to persons incapable of inspiring a violent passion,” he wrote of his conquests before Laure. “I have never experienced true love.”
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With her husband away, the young vicomtesse de Beauharnais was lonely, unoccupied, and perpetually cold. The chilly, airless rooms at rue Thévenot were impossible to heat. Her father remained unwell, and she was still a little afraid of her aunt. She sent letters to her husband rebuking him for not writing to her. He replied, accusing her of trying to “poison the pleasure which I take in reading what you write by reproaches which my heart does not deserve.”
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She begged him for attention, complained about being lonely, and upbraided him for leaving her alone. He responded with anger. “She has become jealous,” he fumed, “and wants to know what I am doing.”
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Fatigued by her begging and unhappiness, Alexandre decided to embark
on a project of reforming his wife. In public, Marie-Josèphe was socially embarrassing, and her slight education had not given her the resources to amuse herself while alone. She needed to acquire the semblance of an accomplished and educated mind, as well as interests that might distract her from complaining. He had a plan to “recommence your education and repair by my zeal, the first fifteen years of your life which has been so tragically neglected.”
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Under the supervision of Aunt Edmée, the vicomtesse would be put to work studying history and geography, learning by rote the works of the great poets, and reading the theory of drama. Alexandre also wished to correct her poor posture and hired a dancing master in an attempt to instill in his wife the poise and grace required of a Parisienne.

Marie-Josèphe promised to work hard, and Alexandre rewarded her with rapturous praise. “I am delighted at the desire to improve yourself which you have demonstrated to me,” he puffed. “You will acquire knowledge that will raise you above others, and combining wisdom with modesty, will make you an accomplished woman.”
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He was too hopeful. Marie-Josèphe had taste and sensitivity, but her mind was too ill disciplined to absorb her studies without a great effort of will, and this she was too lazy to attempt. She had a kind heart and a generous manner, but these counted for little in a time when accomplishments and elegance were the definition of female excellence. In her husband’s eyes, she corresponded to the most unfortunate Parisian prejudices about ignorant Creoles.
¹⁴
His wife was hopeless at everything and, worse still, without money.

Marie-Josèphe learned little poetry, and her dancing did not improve. Exasperated, Alexandre became even more intensely attached to Laure de Longpré. Any thought of separation from her induced in him “the deepest despair.”
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In the spring, she gave birth to their son, and her triumph over his heart was complete.

B
UT
M
ARIE
-J
OSÈPHE HAD
a card up her sleeve. By early 1781, after a successful winter visit from her husband, she was quite sure she was pregnant. Alexandre was pleased by the news and made plans to leave his regiment for the birth. But, once home, he was soon disenchanted with her once more, frustrated by her disgraceful reluctance to improve
herself. “If my wife really loved me, she would make the effort … to acquire the qualities which I admire and which would bind me to her,” he fumed to Patricol.
¹⁶

Despite the pregnancy, after little more than a year of marriage, Alexandre and Marie-Josèphe were on the brink of separation. Patricol applied himself to reuniting them and wrote to Edmée, encouraging her to tell her niece to restrain her jealous demands: “[B]rusqueness and bossiness are two of the worst ways to attract to her a husband.” It was wise advice, but Marie-Josèphe could not control her emotions. Pregnant, lonely, and afraid, she became even more despondent and needy.

O
N
S
EPTEMBER
3, 1781, eighteen-year-old Marie-Josèphe gave birth to a boy, baptized Eugène Rose. Alexandre was thrilled by his legitimate son. But within a month, he lost patience with his wife, affronted by the appointment of Euphémie as his child’s nurse. Edmée decided to send him away on an Italian tour in the hope that his travels might mature him, and that time away from Laure de Longpré might encourage him to appreciate his legitimate family. But this meant that Marie-Josèphe was alone once again. She was struggling to manage on the money her aunt and father-in-law chose to give her. She began to run up debts, using the goods and money in her marriage contract as security.

Alexandre returned in the summer of 1782 to find that his father-in-law, Joseph, stepmother, and aunt had traveled to Martinique. He and Marie-Josèphe were finally able to take a lease on their own house, on the rue Neuve Saint-Charles. Alexandre was delighted with their new home and pleased by Eugène, now a bonny toddler. He felt more kindly toward Marie-Josèphe, and she quickly fell pregnant again.

Alexandre decided his wife was at least a little improved from her first days as his fiancée. He began taking her to the salons of Paris, the idea factories of the pre-Revolution era, having developed a passion for liberal ideas and the notion of a different future France, one with a constitution and a political government. Choderlos de Laclos’s novel
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
had captivated the city, and everyone discussed its political implications. Even Marie Antoinette read it in secret. In the exciting furnace of new ideas, women played a prominent role, celebrated and powerful. Marie-Josèphe listened to and participated in the
conversations around her, though she could not help feeling jealous as she watched her husband flirt with everyone but her.

After just a few weeks with his wife, Alexandre yearned to be with Laure again. He crept away from Paris in the middle of the night, writing to Marie-Josèphe on the journey to ask for her pardon for “having left you without farewell, for having gone away without warning, for having fled without having told you again, a last time, that I am all yours.”
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At Brest, he found no letter waiting for him. “Love for my wife and the love of glory both hold absolute sway in my heart,” he lied crossly. “If I yield to the latter it is for your future good and for that of your children.”
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He decided to return to Martinique to assist its fight against the British. He had an incentive—Laure de Longpré’s father had died on Martinique, and Laure wished to return to the island. He and Laure would take the same ship out.

“Kiss little Eugène with all your heart and guard his little brother,” Alexandre wrote as he waited to depart, certain that the child in her womb was a son.
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He was less pleased with Marie-Josèphe’s failure to write to him. “This neglect is inconceivable,” he seethed. “If, as I begin to fear, our marriage turns out decidedly badly, you will only have yourself to blame.”
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Used to nurturing older women, who cooed over his cares, he felt aggrieved and deserted. Friendless, worrying about money, pregnant, and the mother of a young child, Marie-Josèphe could not provide the support he needed. He scribbled melodramas onto the paper. “Amidst the risks of war and of the seas, where I go to seek death, I shall without sorrow and without regret see a life taken from me whose moments will have been reckoned only in misfortunes.”
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His was the classic strategy of attacking the spouse as a way of blotting out his own guilt.

At the end of December, Alexandre finally set sail and divided his time between upbraiding Marie-Josèphe and playing lotto with Laure. “I was often bored by the game but amply recompensed by the pleasure which I derived from the journey,” he wrote to his wife, enjoying rubbing salt in the wound.
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Alexandre arrived on Martinique in January 1783 and was appalled. He had not seen the island since he was five and had cherished dreams of orderly tropical beauty. Instead he found chaos and impropriety.
“The morals, the multitude of people of color, in their indecent costumes, their manner of living, their dwellings, the appearance of libertinage, all this has amazed me.”
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He was deeply disappointed by La Pagerie. Rather than living in a fine house surrounded by a bustling plantation, his in-laws were huddled in the sugarhouse, struggling to control malcontent slaves. Manette, the girl he’d first desired, was now sixteen and very ill.

Peace negotiations had begun in London the week before his arrival, and Alexandre had missed all the military action. With Laure occupied by her family, he tried to be a good son-in-law, talking of a marriage between Manette and one of his fellow officers. “Your mother loves and always misses you,” he reported to his wife.
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But he soon lost interest, and after only two days at La Pagerie, he returned to Fort Royal and threw himself into the social life of the island, accompanied by Laure de Longpré. In the daytime, tired and a little sick from wine, he dwelled on his annoyances with his wife. Hurt and angry at his slights and his continuing affair with Laure, Marie-Josèphe had stopped writing entirely. Alexandre was predictably aggressive.

“Finally I have proof of your inconstancy! With my own eyes, I have seen the proof! Yes, with my own eyes, I have seen that you have written to your parents, and me, I alone have been forgotten,” he scrawled. “Should you want information about me, my father will always know my news and through him, if you are curious you can find out what country I am living in … I am abandoned!”
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On April 10, 1783, Marie-Josèphe gave birth to a little girl, Hortense-Eugénie. Struggling for money and already receiving demands for payment of her debts, she sold jewelry to pay for the baptism. She sent word of the birth to her parents but not to her husband.