The Ambitious Madame Bonaparte (42 page)

“It was all a delusion, my girl,” she said. “All the time the prophecy was leading to this moment when you would be forced to admit that your dreams were vanity.”

As if she were ten years old again, she recalled the other statement Odette had made, the one she had so long forgotten:
Do not seek how to be high and mighty, seek how to have wisdom.

“And how do I do that now that I have based my entire life upon a misapprehension?”

Moving to her dressing table, she picked up the miniature of Bo she kept there, and a sweetly intense love for him flooded her. No matter what else went wrong in her life, she could never regret having given birth to her son. He was her purpose for living.

I may not have high rank,
but my son was born for something better. I must fight to secure his future. If only I can succeed at that, nothing else will matter.

XXXII

O
N a grey afternoon in October 1817, Betsy walked the deck of the
Maria Theresa,
a ship bound for New York. Even though she wore a woolen cloak with a fur-lined hood, the wind cut through her garments and made her shiver. The sky was filled with dark clouds and a light mist was falling, but the weather was balmy compared to the storms that had dogged the ship since its departure from Le Havre. Uncertain when she would have another chance to escape her cabin, Betsy had gone up for fresh air as soon as the most recent storm abated.

Her traveling companion, who remained below, was Anna Maria Tousard, the widow of Bo’s former tutor. During her stay in Paris, Betsy had been delighted to renew her friendship with Tousard and was grieved when the sixty-eight-year-old colonel died. Afterward, Betsy called often upon his widow. Now they were sailing together because Madame Tousard planned to settle in Philadelphia, where her stepdaughter lived.

Gazing at the white-capped, greenish-grey waves rolling to the horizon, Betsy found herself wondering what to say to Bo when she saw him again. In spite of her promises, she had remained in Europe more than two years. Eighteen months earlier, depressed after a long winter of being barely able to afford food, Betsy traveled to Le Havre with the intention of sailing home as soon as possible, even though she had not accomplished her goal of visiting schools. During a meeting with Mr. Callaghan, her agent in France, Betsy had just told him, “If any letters arrive for me after my departure, please forward them to my father,” when she experienced shortness of breath. Within seconds, her heart was racing, and her body had broken out in a sweat. She had so much difficulty breathing that she feared she would die. Pressing her hand against her chest, she stared at Mr. Callaghan in distress, praying that he would read the appeal for help in her eyes.

He stammered, “M-Madame Bonaparte? What can I do? Do you have smelling salts?” He reached for her reticule, but Betsy shook her head vehemently. A moment later, she sighed as the surge of panic began to subside. As her heartbeat slowed to normal, she felt terribly weak. Mr. Callaghan asked one of his clerks to bring her a cup of strong, very sweet tea, and while she sipped it, he urged her to delay traveling until she could seek medical advice. Once they were certain that the worst of her symptoms had passed, Mr. Callaghan escorted Betsy to her hotel.

Frightened, Betsy returned to Paris where she consulted with the physician husband of her friend Lady Morgan. Sir Charles believed she was again suffering an excess of black bile and prescribed a regimen of hot baths and dietary changes.

By summer 1816, Betsy felt healthy enough to investigate schools for Bo. During her time in Paris, she often met with Albert Gallatin seeking financial advice, and the ambassador strongly recommended the Swiss boarding school he had attended as a boy.

Betsy traveled to Geneva to visit it. Located in a French-speaking part of Switzerland near the border with France, the city stood where the Rhone River exited the stunningly blue Lake Geneva. Mountains surrounded the city on several sides. The climate was cooler than that of Paris, but Betsy found it preferable to sweltering, fever-ridden Baltimore.

The Academy of Geneva, founded in 1559 by John Calvin, was a prestigious school that prepared students for university. Although it originally focused on Protestant theology, the school now taught philosophy, humanities, and science—exactly the rigorous curriculum Betsy wanted for her son. The only problem was that she could not afford the tuition.

Betsy returned to Paris and once again prepared to go home, intending to overhaul her finances based on Gallatin’s recommendations. Then, in August, an excruciating toothache confined her to bed for two weeks. After it subsided, her attacks of rapid pulse and panicked breathing returned, with several occurring during the month of September. By then, the Morgans had left for Dublin, and Betsy did not know where to seek medical advice. She went back on the regimen Dr. Morgan had previously advised, and her condition slowly improved.

It had grown so late in the year that any Atlantic crossing would be risky. Worried, Betsy consulted a French physician one of her friends had referred her to, and he advised her not to sail until spring because her tendency to have
mal de mer
in rough seas would undo all the progress she had made toward restoring her health. Betsy wrote Bo to explain her trouble and beg him to forgive her for the delay.

Once winter passed, Betsy decided that it would not make much difference if she postponed her departure a few weeks more. Paris was so beautiful in the springtime, and the lavish blossoming of the city symbolized to her the cultural exuberance she found in Europe. She pursued her social life with a new desperation, born of the desire to stockpile memories of the advantages Baltimore lacked. Betsy went to concerts and the opera, where she heard works by Beethoven and Rossini, and she visited the galleries in the Louvre to gaze on masterpieces only to be found in Europe. In her journal, she kept long lists of the cultural attractions that Bo must see when he finally came to France. When her health permitted, Betsy attended weekly balls, not only to dance but also to engage in the clever repartee Parisians considered
de rigueur.

In addition, she redoubled her efforts to lay the groundwork for her son’s future. Her long-ago conversations with Oakeley had given her the idea of preparing Bo for a diplomatic career, so she used every opportunity to make contacts that he could draw upon as a grown man. Wherever she went, she spoke of her desire for him to be a European, not an American.

Such conversations gave her a sense of purpose, but they also kept her longing for her son uppermost in her mind. By late spring, Betsy missed Bo so much that she spent hours crying over his letters. Her appetite failed and her stomach pains returned, and she wondered if the separation itself was causing her illness. As she wrote to her son at the end of May, she realized that she had dawdled so long she was going to miss his twelfth birthday. Spasms of guilt prostrated her for the rest of the afternoon.

Still she lingered, knowing that once she returned to America it might be years before she came back to Paris—and until she did, boredom and an unslaked thirst for culture would torment her. For Betsy, the dilemma was agonizing: She could stay in Paris and lock away her maternal heart in an iron box or return to Baltimore and similarly lock away her mind. After shilly-shallying for weeks, she realized that if she put off the trip much longer, she would have to stay in Paris a third winter. The next day, she began to put her affairs in order so she could leave.

The goad that finally forced her to book passage was a letter from home, reawakening Betsy’s distrust of her father. When Betsy first left for Europe, Marianne had agreed to look after Bo, but her asthma had deteriorated so much that her doctors advised a change of climate. For the past year, Robert, Marianne, and two of her sisters had been in Europe, leaving William Patterson in charge of Bo during his school holidays. Then, in the summer of 1817, Aunt Nancy wrote that Providence Summers had borne Patterson a daughter named Matilda, conceived while the housekeeper’s husband was away on a long voyage. According to Aunt Nancy, the only reason Patterson managed to hush up the scandal was that Captain Summers had been lost at sea before he learned of the betrayal.

The unsavory situation reawakened Betsy’s fears that her son might develop the same debauched nature as Jerome. How could she teach him the need for honor when his grandfather acted so disgracefully? Ashamed that she had let Bo stay with such an unsuitable guardian for so long, Betsy said good-bye to her friends and sailed for America.

Now, pacing the deck, she fumed over her father’s hypocrisy. For two years, she had lived amid the sexual license of Parisian society without a single stain on her reputation, yet her lecherous father continued to berate her for impropriety. He of all people had no right to complain of anything in her character. Patterson was sixty-four years old while Providence was only twenty-seven, five years younger than Betsy herself!

His was not the only family scandal. Since coming to Europe, Marianne had become the Duke of Wellington’s favorite, and all of fashionable society believed them to be lovers. Adding zest to the rumors was the fact that Wellington and Marianne had exchanged portraits. Robert maintained that the mutual admiration was innocent, but Betsy did not believe it. She knew Wellington’s reputation with women and doubted he would spend months dancing attendance on a virtuous Marianne. Furious that her brother was being cuckolded, Betsy urged him to separate his wife from her lover. Robert, however, grew offended by her meddling, so Betsy washed her hands of the affair, congratulating herself that she had never been taken in by Marianne’s angelic demeanor.

It still enraged Betsy that, with such disgraceful goings-on, her father should label her insane because she preferred living in Europe. She suspected that his anger had a much different cause. In every aspect of her life, Betsy defied his most cherished beliefs about women. She was succeeding in a man’s sphere, managing money and property on her own. Patterson refused to see that her abilities were the equal of any man’s, and Betsy had worn herself out trying to persuade him that she was not so much disobedient as determined to find a manner of life in which she could exercise her talents. He simply would not admit that women had any function other than bearing a dozen children and running the house, the very roles that were anathema to Betsy. She wondered if they would ever bridge the chasm between them.

BECAUSE HER HOUSE was rented to a tenant, Betsy went to South Street when she arrived in Baltimore. Edward was married to their cousin Sydney Smith now, and Henry had moved south temporarily for his health, so the house held only her father, George, and the servants. Even so, Patterson declared that he no longer wished to deal with the “confusion” that attended Betsy’s stays. He offered to let her and Bo occupy one of his rental properties.

Betsy’s first priority before moving to the new house was to be reunited with her son. The day after her return, she wrote Dr. DuBois asking permission to visit Bo at St. Mary’s. After receiving an affirmative reply, she hired a carriage, traveled to Emmitsburg, and presented herself in Dr. DuBois’s office the next morning. The office had dark, austere furnishings, but above the fireplace hung an Italian oil painting of a golden-haired Virgin Mary, and behind the headmaster’s desk hung an elaborately carved crucifix showing Christ in writhing agony.

Dr. DuBois had thin, greying hair, which he wore short and parted in the middle; the two curves of his hairline mirrored perfectly arched eyebrows. His expression was serene, and he habitually folded his hands over his ample stomach. “Jerome is doing well. He is the top student in his English class, he has progressed to the most advanced level of French, and he shows an exceptional aptitude for mathematics.”

“I am grateful to hear that he has applied himself. Does he know that I am here?”

“No.” DuBois pursed his lips, and Betsy read in his face that he had not been certain she would keep her word. “I thought it best not to distract Jerome from his work by telling him of your visit beforehand. I will send someone for him.”

He stepped out to the antechamber where a young priest worked as his secretary. A moment later, DuBois returned. “Jerome is in Latin class but will be here shortly.”

“Thank you.” Too agitated to remain seated, Betsy went to the window, hoping to see her son cross the lawn on his way from another building. It felt odd to be back in Maryland with its spread-out towns, rolling hills, and unkempt forests. Even though only two years had passed, she had grown so accustomed to the crooked, tightly packed streets of Paris that her native state seemed alien.

After a few minutes, the door opened and she turned to see an older, brown-haired student enter. “You sent for me, sir?” Betsy realized then that this big boy was her son.

“You have a visitor,” Dr. DuBois said with a smile, gesturing in her direction.

“Mama?” Visibly stunned, Bo remained where he was, and Betsy ran her gaze over him eagerly. He had grown several inches taller than she was, and his face was developing the prominent chin of the Bonapartes, but the hazel eyes were still those of her baby.

When he continued to hang back, Betsy said, “You have grown so tall. Are you too great a personage now to come hug your mother?”

He came, and Betsy clasped him tightly, trying to fathom that this husky fellow was her boy, but Bo pulled away too quickly for her to accustom herself to the new feeling of him.

Dr. DuBois said, “Jerome, please show your mother into the visitor’s parlor.”

“Don’t I have to return to class, sir?”

“Not today.”

Bo led his mother through the antechamber across a central hall and into a small parlor. Because it was used to entertain families, this room had more frills than the headmaster’s office. Betsy took a seat on a gold-striped sofa and patted the cushion next to her, but Bo took the maroon wingback armchair on the other side of the patterned rug.

Betsy sighed. “Are you angry with me, Bo?”

He glanced up, startled by her directness. “No.”

“Darling, I know I promised to come home after a year, but I wrote and explained that my health made it impossible.”

“I know.”

“Then why are you upset with me?”

“I am not,” Bo said, but he scowled and would not meet her eyes.

Betsy folded her arms. “I am still your mother, and I can tell when you are angry.”

He jumped up and went to stand by the fireplace. Keeping his back to her, he repositioned a marble figurine of the Virgin Mary. “Were you really ill, Mama? Your letters were full of stories about parties, and Grandfather says that people who are truly sick do not have the strength to chase after amusement.”

“So has your grandfather become a physician in my absence?”

Bo faced her with a frown.

Betsy said, “It is true that I was not sick every minute, nor did I spend every waking hour confined to bed. But I was prey to debilitating attacks the like of which I hope you never experience. They would come without warning and leave me prostrate for days. I can show you written opinions by the doctors who attended me if you require proof.”