Wondrous Beauty: The Life and Adventures of Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte (26 page)

Kilbride, Daniel. “Travel, Ritual, and National Identity: Planters on the European Tour, 1820–1860.”
The Journal of Southern History
69, no. 3 (August 2003), 549–84.

Lewis, Charlene Boyer. “Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte: ‘Ill Suited for the Life of a Columbian’s Modest Wife.”
Journal of Women’s History
18, no. 2 (2006), 33–62.

_____. “Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte: A Woman Between Two Worlds,”
in L. Sadosky et al.,
Old World, New World: America and Europe in the Age of Jefferson.
Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010.

Quynn, Dorothy MacKay. “The Marriage of Betsy Bonaparte and Jerome Bonaparte.” Unpublished manuscript, Maryland Historical Society.

_____. “The Truth About Betsy Patterson.” May 1953. Unpublished manuscript, Maryland Historical Society.

Sung, Carolyn Hoover. “Catherine Mitchill’s Letters from Washington, 1806–1812,”
Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress
34 (July 1977), 182–84.

Betsy’s father, William Patterson, in his early thirties, by noted English artist Robert Edge Pine. Posed as a prosperous young merchant, Patterson joined General Horatio Gates, George II, and Maryland’s Charles Carroll as one of Pine’s elite subjects.
(Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society)

In 1806 Gilbert Stuart painted three aspects of the beautiful young Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte. Fifty years later, George D’Almaine created this pastel copy of Stuart’s famous portrait.
(Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society)

Girolamo Buonaparte, born on the island of Corsica, later known as Jérôme Bonaparte, was the youngest brother of Napoleon I. This watercolor portrait of Jérôme in his naval uniform, painted by Francesco Emanuele Scotto, was probably completed in 1806, when Jérôme was twenty-one years old.
(Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society)

Edward Patterson, brother of Betsy, painted by the self-taught artist William Edward West around 1839. Edward, born in 1789, was Betsy’s confidant and favorite sibling. Although a talented pianist, Edward gave up any musical ambition to join his father’s shipping business.
(Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society)

Pauline Bonaparte, the Princess Borghese, the sister of Napoleon I and Jérôme Bonaparte, reputed to be the most beautiful woman in Europe as well as one of the most libertine. Born in 1780, she died in Rome at the age of forty-four of pulmonary tuberculosis.
(Photograph: Walter Marc. © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY. Chateaux de Malmaison et Bois-Preau, Rueil-Malmaison, France)

Around 1817, Flemish painter and miniaturist François Kinsoen completed this oil painting of the thirty-two-year-old Betsy Bonaparte. Between 1808 and 1813, Kinsoen had been the official court painter for Betsy’s former husband, Jérôme, King of Westphalia.
(Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society)

Jérôme Bonaparte at sixteen years old and beginning his career as an officer in the French navy. Oil portrait.
(Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society)

Arthur Wellesley, first Duke of Wellington, was forty-five years old when Sir Thomas Lawrence painted this portrait in 1814, only a few months before the Battle of Waterloo.
(Wellington Museum, London)

Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte in his midforties. Daguerreotype, photographer unknown. “Bo” was born in England and grew up in Baltimore, where he lived until his death in 1870. In 1829 he married the heiress Susan May Williams. Their two sons, Jerome (known as Junior) and Charles, were Betsy’s only grandchildren.
(Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society)

Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte, Jr., older son of Betsy’s only child, “Bo,” was around twenty when he sat for this portrait. He graduated from West Point Academy in 1852 but resigned his commission in 1854 and went on to serve with distinction in the army of his cousin, Napoleon III of France.
(Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society)

Charles Joseph Bonaparte and his wife, Ellen Channing Day Bonaparte
(Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society)