THE BONAPARTE WITH TWO WIVES.
T ICE story of the Bonapartes of America and the Bonapartes of Europe might be a model for a novelist There is in it sorrow and pain, caused not by any clumsy impersonation of extraordi- nary wickedness, but by the collision of natural human passions, and the tragedy necessary for the interest has been so wrought,
that of the contending parties in Paris today, we cannot name • a single person to blame, or one who could have altered the destiny which brings the sons of the same father face to face, as foes in a court of law.
In December, 1803, Jerome, the youngest brother of the great Napoleon, was married at Baltimore, in Maryland, to Miss Pater- son. The marriage was made known to the First Consul and to Madame Letizia, and no opposition was announced. The next year, Napoleon became Emperor, and announced his intention of
obtaining the annulment of the marriage ; he also caused Madame Letizia, mother of the young husband, to protest against this marriage of her son, a minor, as contracted without her consent. He demanded from Pope Pius VII. a bull dissolving the marriage, a request the Pope had the courage to refuse. The Emperor, further, commanded Jerome to leave his wife, and the younger brother, though evidently loving his wife, obeyed. The Arch- bishop of Paris issued a sentence annulling the marriage, as having been "clandestine, without the publication of bans, with- out the consent of the minor's mother, without the presence of a proper priest, in a foreign country." The main facts were the other way ; the marriage was not clandestine ; a license gave it authority higher than bans ; a Bishop of the Roman Catholic Church—surely a "proper priest "—performed the ceremony ; "without the consent of the minor's mother," and "in a foreign country," are the only objections based on truth. But what is truth against a great Emperor, who had battalions at his back, servile priests to do his bidding, who had a weak brother ready to obey him, and who, having just overthrown Germany, could com- mand German wives for the brothers whom he wished to drag up as mock kings and vassals of his own ? Lucien was tempted at the same time. He, also, had married a wife of non-royal rank. One of the very few interviews that occurred between him and his Emperor-brother was, it is said, after the battle of Jena. The story goes that Napoleon unrolled the map of Europe, and offered his brother any throne in Europe, from that of Prussia down- wards ; asserting that, by his compact with Alexander of Russia, and by the might of his own sword, he could command any of them. In return, Lucien was to divorce his wife, marry a Prin- cess, and attach himself to the fortunes of the Emperor. Lucien refused, as we know now by his published letters, indignantly re- fused to "make his wife a concubine." Jerome as we also know, yielded, and married the Princess Caroline of Vurtemberg. She, poor girl, knew little of her future husband, and wept bitterly at leaving her German home, and on her arrival at Fontainebleau ; but, anticipating the dates of our narrative, we may record that, though an unwilling bride, she was a faithful, loving wife. When her husband ceased to be King of Westphalia, and was again no more than Jerome Bonaparte, she shared his fortunes against the command of her father, and escaped by night from the Palace at Wurtemberg to follow him into exile.
The first wife, née Miss Paterson, returned to America before the sentence of divorce was pronounced; but she never recognized the sentence as valid, and refused invitations to give up the son born in about a year and a half after the marriage. Husband. and wife never met again, though the husband, the old Prince Jerome of our own time, only died the other day, and she is still living. She visited Europe in 1819, and was recognized and affectionately received by all the family. In 1827, her son visited Europe, and the Bonapartes all received him as a kinsman. At this time, however, the family fortunes were not high; the ex- Kings and ex-princes were affectionate, without reasons of state to leaven their love. In 1854, this Jerome Bonaparte (a nephew of the great Emperor by birth, who, had Louis Napoleon, like his' elder brother, fallen in his early Italian campaigns, might have himself played the coups at Strasburg, Boulogne, and Paris, which led to a throne) came to Paris. A Napoleon was again on the throne; and the drama becomes again interesting, with even. a spice of political importance. In June, 1854, Louis Napoleon, married eighteen months, was childless, and without any imme- diate prospect of an heir, and next to the throne was the eldest son' of his uncle Jerome. Who was that eldest son ? This American Bonaparte, son of the first wife, or the Prince Napoleon, known to ourselves in England as son of the second wife, the Wurtem- berg Princess ?
Napoleon III. received the young American with friendliness; he invited him, as Prince Jerome, to dine at the Tuileries ; and, when he came, executed quite a little coup de thatre—dictated. apparently by kindheartedness—by handing him as he entered the Palace, a declaration of his legitimacy, adding that he was, "French by birth," and that "if he had lost the character, a decree can restore it to him, in virtue of the 18th article of the Civil Code." One might ask, why not have issued the decree at once, and decided the question ? but it is not etiquette to ask Emperors questions. Shortly after, the old Prince Jerome and Prince Napoleon—the son of the second marriage—objected to this son of the first marriage staying in Paris • the Emperor Na- poleon stood by the American—or as he admitted him to be French "—Bonaparte, and added that "Napoleon [that is the son of the second marriage], if he conducted himself well, had nothing to fear from family revelations." A great inducement to Prince Napoleon to be a loyal cousin l But the influence of the ex-King prevailed, and the American son,—as we call him for sake of distinction' —received in 1855, a request to assume the title of Duke de Sartene, "to put an end to difficulties you are aware of." He refused. A Conseil de Famine, the same year, decided that he might retain the name of Bonaparte, but denied ,
his "right of succession." As far as regards the property of old Prince Jerome, his father now dead, the American son now ap- peals from this decision to the Tribunal of First Instance, in Paris ; and in the appeal he is joined by the widow—late first wife—of the ex-King. The point of law we may leave to the French law- yers. Very recently, the marriage of a French minor in England, without the consent of his parents, was annulled in France ; but, whether that precedent will hold good throughout this case, we cannot say.
It is curious to see how the natural love and affection be- tween husband and wife, and between kinsmen, was, and is, checked and iced by the stiff etiquette round thrones. Will our American kinsmen, thereupon, read us a Republican lecture—if their own little curtain lectures in Carolina afford time—on the a,banrdity of Royal " institutions ? " Or, as the Monde suggests, will/they, wanting a military dictator, take back their American Bonaparte—the grandson of old Jerome is a captain of dragoons— and enable him to effect a coup d'etat in Washington against the threatened invasion of Maryland and Virginia Volunteers ? The other year, their magazines were quite deeply discussing the ques- tion—Have we a Bourbon among us ? apropos of some crazy tale that a missionary, named Williams, was really the Dauphin, said in history to have been done to death in the Temple. A real Bonaparte is better than a sham Bourbon. The great Napoleon, on whom falls all the original sin of this scandal—for his brother, Jerome, was but a light tool in his hands —was a man strikingly unhappy in all his dealings with women, and with family affairs. He wanted delicacy of apprehension in all matters where the heart came into play. This might have been expected and excused in a soldier of the Revolution, but he wanted altogether that larger generosity which might have been a good substitute. He was not naturally an unkind man, and he could be lavish of gifts, but he was never magnanimous. He separated from his first wife, she whose love and influence gave him that first glorious command in Italy. It is said that when Napoleon announced to her the divorce, she, superstitious, as many cleverer women are, took him to the window of the Palace, and showed him two stars ascending together. "Such have been our united careers," she said, "you only ascend with me." The tale may not be true, but the prediction was fulfilled ; he never won a decisive victory after the divorce, as if fortune that hour had deserted him. Strange it is, too, that Josephine's " star "—to keep up the astral metaphor—remained in the ascendant ; her descendants are today allied with several of the reigning families of Europe, and her grandson' no descendant of the first Emperor, is now Emperor of the French. The great Napoleonwas not more happy in his second wife ; his love for her appeared sincere, but it was ur_returned. At the Congress of Vienna fetes, she was guilty of an act needlessly unbecoming; she appeared in public, leaning on the arm of Wellington—the man her husband hated most ; and, on her retirement to Parma, her infidelity as a wife was not concealed, even while the prisoner of St. Helena was sending messages of love to "the Empress," and asserting her dignity as his wife. The last gleam of the Napoleon star died out with the Duke de Reichstadt, who lived to see the French throne vacant, and Frenchmen ignoring the pompous Senatns Consultum of the Em- pire. At St. Helena, Napoleon boasted that he never had had a maltresse en titre, and that no woman ruled his politics.
Their influence might have saved him more than once from acts that were as unwise as they were unkind. His rudeness to the beautiful Queen of Prussia, his paltry persecution of Madame de Stael, were things which no man accessible to the finer influences of association with women would have committed ; and, as to his St. Helena "boast," was not Agnes Sorel a benefactress to France, whatever her position at the Court of Charles VII? and is the memory of Henri Quatre less loved or revered in France today, because women loving and loved are twined with his history and the story of his personal career ? This very lack of the best kind of love for women left Napoleon the Great a coarse man, making all his life the grand mistake of thinking to rule by force, fraud, and appeals to material interests alone. By forcing marriages right and left between his brothers and foreign Princesses, he thought he could manceuvre attachments as he could armies. In St. Helena he talked of his intended escape to America and how by promoting alliances with the great families—" the !Washing- tons, the Jeffersons, and the rest," he could attain power ! The same coarseness of moral feeling induced him to believe that Wellington, returning to England, would be tempted to overthrow the throne! What a contrast between him and Garibaldi, to whom, however, faulty as a politician, we cannot refuse our love ; who makes unselfish errors in administration, but who "does nothing low or mean," and rules by love so many million hearts !
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