Wondrous Beauty: The Life and Adventures of Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte (19 page)

Just as the battle over William Patterson’s will had once reunited mother and son, now Betsy and Bo again found a cause that joined them. Together they busied themselves poring over the evidence they were readying for Berryer. As they worked, France seemed to buzz with excitement over the controversy produced by Jérôme’s will. The distribution of Jérôme’s worldly possessions was not dwelled upon in the press, for the king of Westphalia had lived his entire life far beyond his means. That life had ended, as it had begun, in dependence on support from relatives. His bequests did reveal, if only tangentially, his disregard for marital fidelity, for he provided a pension for his third and last wife, who had begun her relationship with him as his mistress while Catherine was alive. His daughter Princess Mathilde had received her share of her father’s estate at the time of her marriage. A second son had died years before. As there was no mention in the will of Jérôme’s first marriage or the family it had produced, Plon Plon emerged as his father’s primary heir.

Although his father’s estate might be small, Bo was determined to have his share of it. With Betsy, he filed a suit demanding an accounting, liquidation, and distribution of the deceased’s estate. But money was not the issue that sparked the controversy in the minds of other Bonapartes. Jérôme’s death led one of Lucien Bonaparte’s sons to reopen the question: Who would succeed Louis-Napoleon? He requested a family council to sort out where members of his generation of Bonapartes stood in the line of succession. While this request was troublesome, it was not what concerned the family most. What sent Bonapartes scurrying to head off a confrontation was the possibility of a second challenge by Betsy and Bo.

Perhaps it was the emperor himself who tried to avert the crisis that everyone knew was brewing. Perhaps it was his wife. But Junior, who had remained in France when his father departed in 1857, was soon contacted by a gentleman who asked, in effect, what it would take to dissuade Bo from going to court over his legitimacy. The Bonapartes were willing to offer Betsy’s son one-third of his father’s estate if he would abandon his plans to press his claims of legitimacy.

There was an implicit threat in the letter Junior received.
“I am confident,” this intermediary wrote, “that the E. will do all in his power to prevent the suit, as it will produce much scandal.” Junior declined to play any part in a scheme to silence his father. But he was astute enough to see that the emperor hoped to placate Plon Plon. It was a clear signal that Bo’s half brother would have the upper hand in the events that would follow.

Despite the politics involved, Pierre Berryer believed he
could make a good legal case for the legality of Betsy’s marriage and thus the legitimacy of her son. He was able to present to the court 139 pages of evidence, including proof of Betsy and Jérôme’s marriage, the birth and baptism of their son, some sixty letters from members of the Bonaparte family recognizing Bo as a “dear son,” “a nephew,” or in Plon Plon’s own case, “a cousin.” The hearing began in January 1861, with both Betsy and Bo present in the courtroom.

Berryer’s argument was, by all accounts, brilliant, moving, and convincing. He challenged Napoleon I’s power to annul the marriage; he placed into evidence letters from Bonaparte family members, including Madame Mère, that demonstrated their acknowledgment of the legitimacy of the marriage; he cited Jérôme’s letters to his young wife, assuring her of his faithfulness to her; he presented proof that the pope considered the marriage valid; and he reminded the court that the Civil Code forbade
“the children of a second marriage to ask the nullity of the first during the lifetime of the parties to that marriage.” He painted Betsy in the most sympathetic terms, telling the story of the romance and marriage between a young, naïve, and beautiful Baltimore girl and a handsome French naval officer, and of that husband’s cruel abandonment of both wife and infant son. Although “Mademoiselle Patterson found herself repudiated—abandoned,” she faced her betrayal with dignity, and for fifty-five years, she had led “a life without a stain.” She never remarried but devoted herself, with “brave maternal love,” to the child she had borne to her faithless husband. Now an elderly woman of seventy-five, “she comes from her distant
home beyond the Atlantic; she appears before this august court asking for the declaration of her rights and demands the vindication of her honour and the establishment of her child in the position due to his birth.”

Prince Napoleon’s lawyer painted a far different story. The Patterson family knew from the beginning, he insisted, that Jérôme was a minor and could not marry without his family’s permission. But they had entrapped this young, inexperienced boy, who had been so unfortunate as to visit Baltimore, a city known for vice and a “Sodom of impurities.” Betsy must surely have been amazed to hear her native Baltimore, which she had always described as staid, boring, and utterly bourgeois, compared to the biblical city of immorality. She might have conceded, however, that her own father’s “impurities” were many and that the memory of his infidelities still stung her. But Plon Plon’s lawyer did not use William Patterson’s mistresses as an example of Baltimore’s sinfulness.

Instead, the lawyer moved to an attack on Betsy’s character, a strategy designed to counter Berryer’s image of an innocent and betrayed wife with a portrait of a conniving, selfish woman. He used the condemnation in William’s will to paint her as a willful and disobedient daughter, inclined to foolish acts of misconduct. In the heat of oratory, perhaps the logical flaw in his argument slipped by the court: if the Patterson family had indeed conspired to entrap Jérôme Bonaparte in an invalid marriage, Betsy’s role in the plot made her an obedient daughter rather than a rebellious child. This inconsistency in his argument passed without notice.

Betsy, he continued, was not simply willful or disobedient; she was greedy and a schemer. Proof could be found in her willingness to accept a pension from the first emperor Napoleon, a bald admission, he added, that her marriage to Jérôme was invalid. And he reminded the court that she had filed for and won a divorce in Maryland in 1812 for the sole reason, he insisted, that she wished to protect her growing personal wealth. The woman who emerged from his account was neither loyal nor devoted; she had burned with ambition in 1803—and she burned with it still. He begged the court to put an end to her dreams of power: uphold the family council’s 1856 decision, he pleaded, and rule against the American Bonapartes.

As the trial progressed, Betsy had few friends with whom she could share her feelings of frustration, anger, and weariness. But chance brought her an opportunity to pour out her emotions to her old love, Alexander Gorchakov. Gorchakov had followed the trial in the papers and contacted Betsy.
In a long letter, she vented her anger at her ex-husband. Perhaps, on reflection, she considered this too vicious and cold, for she later annotated it as “unsent.” But perhaps her memory did not serve her well, for Gorchakov replied to her on the same day, February 19, that she penned a second letter in which her contempt for Jérôme was more muted. Still, she could not restrain herself from describing her former husband as a
“personage, whose poverty of intellect … was exceeded by the littleness, baseness & meanness of his ignoble character.” And as she noted sadly, his death had not ended her suffering at his hand, for Catherine’s son continued to persecute her.

Gorchakov’s reply offered sympathy and respect for Betsy’s capacity for endurance and survival:
“This drop in eternity that we call life has no greater value than the one that teaches us never to forsake our selves. This conviction was always embodied by you in every situation.” His fondness for Betsy had endured, and he wrote feelingly of his regret that he no longer had “in my reach the fine and remarkable insights which I enjoyed there on the bank of the Arno, when public life did not yet have any thorns for me.” His diplomatic duties weighed as heavily on him as her legal battles did on her; all he could do was recommend resignation to both their “desperately tried souls.”

In the end, political considerations would once again desperately try Betsy’s soul. The court’s decision would rest not on Berryer’s brilliant defense, or on the mountains of evidence presented by Betsy and her son, but on the complications that Bo’s legitimacy would pose to the succession to the throne. Should anything befall Napoleon III’s own son, the prince imperial, then Plon Plon was designated to wear the crown. Neither sympathy for an aging American woman nor the legality of her son’s birth could outweigh the importance of ensuring a smooth transition of power. Thus, on February 15, 1861, the court handed down its decision against the American Bonapartes. But if anyone thought the Bonaparte family peace would not be disturbed again, they were wrong. Betsy and Bo remained confident that they had the better legal argument, and Berryer agreed. It was decided to appeal the case.

Throughout the spring and early summer, Betsy retained a
slim hope of achieving justice. But on July 1, 1861, the appeals court handed down its decision against the appellants. It found that the annulment of the marriage of Elizabeth Patterson and Jérôme Bonaparte was “
in order and … unquestionably justified” and thus the case was “inadmissible.” Betsy and Bo were ordered to pay a fine and to cover all the expenses incurred by the appeal. Thousands of dollars had been wasted, and their cause was lost.

Betsy’s bitterness and disappointment were palpable. Once again political considerations had trumped legality. Almost six decades before, Napoleon had sacrificed her to his ambitions, and now the emperor and his nephew Plon Plon had sacrificed her to theirs. She could not respond with the resignation Prince Gorchakov had urged, for it did not suit her character. As she had once written to an English friend, she had never met fate
“with Philosophy, resignation, or forgiveness, but … I did ever combat it with unbending courage.” Yet she was realist enough to know that further efforts to establish Bo’s legitimacy would be fruitless.

That summer Betsy sent her French lawyer a brief letter, in which her acceptance of defeat did not negate her fury. She advised him that she had urged her son
“to follow my example of abstention from all further pursuit of that which is unattainable, justice from any court in France.” The failure of her cause, she assured Berryer, could not be laid at his feet. “After the eminent talent, sir, which distinguishes yourself had failed before two courts to have our rights recognized, we ought to rest convinced that the Court of Cassation, equally servile, and curbed
under the same pressure, would give the same illegal and unjust decision.” And, writing to Bo, she declared,
“I will never be dupe enough ever to try Justice in France under this Dynasty.” She urged her son to take solace in their moral victory, for it was clear to her that “we have the Sympathies, from the Cottage to the palace of all France; & the opinion is universal that I, Mme P, have been most shamefully treated by the Bonaparte family from the First to this last advent of mine to France.” With that, she packed her bags and returned to America. By August her ship had docked at New York—and she would not cross the ocean again.

Betsy’s confidence that she and Bo had won in the court of public opinion, if not in the courts of France, was well founded. From the beginning, the series of trials and appeals had stirred strong responses, especially in the American and English press. Articles in the English papers found little to favor in the emperor or in Plon Plon or in the defense lawyer’s arguments. Even before the final ruling on the case, an article in London’s
Daily News
had criticized both Plon Plon and the man Betsy called “the Royal Bigamist.” Articles like this one gave her confidence that the English press would “render me justice.” And so it did: on the whole, the public expressed little sympathy for the late king of Westphalia or his second family.

Despite their victory in the trial, Prince Napoleon and Princess Mathilde were so embarrassed by the negative coverage in the press that they arranged for a highly favorable memoir of their father to be written and published shortly after the trial ended. But the
Memoirs and Correspondence of King Jérôme and
Queen Catherine
did little to stem the tide of criticism against Jérôme or his second family.

Betsy might have taken some satisfaction in reading the review of the memoir published that August in
The Athenaeum.
The review did not mince words when it came to Jérôme’s character: he had, they wrote, “an unlimited faculty for spending money, [and] getting into debt and disgrace.” He had begun life as a “spoiled, noisy, troublesome boy,” and age did not improve him. Despite his title as king of Westphalia, Jérôme, it continued, hated responsibility and was never more than “a parvenu to the backbone, and his vulgarity was engrained. To appear in a state carriage, to receive attentions from high personages, to be flattered, to spend unlimited pocket-money, to have nothing to do but to go to
fetes
and public amusements, these were his notions of royal felicity.”

But if the review dismissed Jérôme as a
“fool and a poltroon” rather than a true villain, Betsy did not emerge as an innocent victim of love and betrayal. She was, the article conceded, “extremely beautiful … agreeable, witty, clever,” but she was also ambitious. Indeed, “her character was not unlike Jerome’s, in her love for all the vanities of life.” She craved attention and admiration and “desired to shine in a wider horizon” than Baltimore, Maryland. True, she was young and might be forgiven her “female susceptibility” to a man to whom her own native country and the citizens of her native city were so eager to offer admiration and homage. But it was Betsy’s desire to be envied by other women that banished any chance that good sense would prevail. And thus the marriage had taken place—and the
betrayal had soon followed. In the end, the author of the review granted Betsy a measure of dignity; in the face of abandonment and humiliation, she had refused to be crushed. She had proved, as the years went by, “equal to her situation.”