restored to his rank in the navy and was cruising off Genoa, whence
he wrote, through his secretary, Alexander le Camus, to Mr. William
Patterson, of Baltimore, expressing his dissatisfaction at Elizabeth's
having gone to England, that country being at the time at war with
France. The tone of the letter betrays the change that was already
working in Jerome's feelings, though he was at that time sending
Elizabeth by every available opportunity messages and pledges of his
unswerving love for her.
When we judge him, let us bear in mind not only his youth and all the
circumstances of his life, but, above all, that soul-crushing will
which he, weakly enough it seems to us, was striving to stand against.
In a subsequent letter to Mr. Patterson, written also by Mr. le Camus,
in the course of which Jerome expressed the desire that Elizabeth
should return to America and wait there in her own home till he
obtained her recall from the Emperor, one feels instinctively that
between the lines is written the finale to the short chapter of the
romance of Elizabeth Patterson and Jerome Bonaparte.
She returned to her father's home in the fall, though she had written
shortly before that she was glad to be among strangers, because "in
Baltimore, where people are always on the watch," she would be more
observed.
On August 12, 1807, Jerome married Princess Frederika Catherine,
daughter of the King of Wurtemburg. As King of Westphalia he offered
Elizabeth a home within his dominions, with the title of Princess of
Smalcalden and a pension of two hundred thousand francs per year. In
regard to the former, she replied that Westphalia was a large kingdom,
but not quite large enough for two queens, and with regard to the
pension, having already accepted Napoleon's annuity of sixty thousand
francs, she made the oft-quoted response that she preferred "being
sheltered under the wing of an eagle to being suspended from the bill
of a goose."
Napoleon, with his high appreciation of a _bon mot_, desired to know
what favor he could bestow upon a woman capable of this witticism.
Elizabeth replied through the French Minister at Washington that she
was ambitious, and would like to be a duchess.
The Emperor promised the gift, but never conferred it. Notwithstanding
her unremitting yet ever futile struggle for recognition, Madame
Bonaparte cherished always the most enthusiastic admiration for the
genius of the man who had blighted her life. In one of her letters to
her father, written from Europe, whither she returned after the fall
of the Empire, she said, "They do not in England pretend to revile
Napoleon as we have done. His stupendous abilities are admitted; his
misfortunes almost respected by his enemies. I listen silently to any
discussion in which he bears a part. I easily perceive that he has more
justice done him here than with us."
In a subsequent letter she details more fully her attitude towards the
entire family.
"I cannot say," she writes, also to her father, "that I have the least
reliance on that family, although I am inclined to reciprocate their
kind words and receive their offers of friendship without allowing
myself to be deceived by either." And farther on in the same letter
she says, in regard to allowing her son to visit Pauline Bonaparte,
then the Princess Borghese, at Rome, "My resolution is uninfluenced
by personal feelings, never having felt the least resentment towards
any individual of that family, who certainly injured me, but not
from motives which could offend me. I was sacrificed to political
considerations, not to the gratification of bad feelings, and under the
pressure of insupportable disappointment became not unjust."
From her letters there seem to have been frequent rumors afloat in
regard to her marrying again, both in this country and in Europe, where
she was greatly admired. In one letter to her father, written in 1823,
she says that while the American newspapers were marrying her she was
making her will.
Though she obtained from the Maryland Legislature a divorce, after
the fall of Napoleon, it seems to have been rather as a precautionary
measure against any possible demands Jerome might make upon her
financially than with a view to marrying again.
Tom Moore, whom Lady Morgan sent to her with a letter of introduction,
afterwards described her as a beautiful woman, but destitute of all
sentiment and with a total disbelief in love, on which, indeed, she
bestowed only ridicule. There can be no doubt, however, of the concern
and tenderness which she expended upon a dog, Le Loup, which belonged
to her son, and which she said was "superior to half the persons one
meets in the world." There are many traditions of her wit, which,
though tinged with asperity, was ever ready and scintillating. The
Honorable Mr. Dundas, who sat beside her at a dinner in London, she
speared so unsparingly with the shafts of her sarcasm that his egotism
never forgave her. When he asked her, finally, if she had read Captain
Basil Hall's book on America, she replied affirmatively. "And did you
observe," he continued, bluntly, with the hope of avenging his wounded
self-love, "that he called all Americans vulgarians?" "Yes," replied
Madame Bonaparte, while the table paused to listen, "and I was not
surprised. Were the Americans descendants of the Indians and Esquimaux,
I should have been. But being the direct descendants of the English,
nothing is more natural than that they should be vulgarians." For both
her wit and her beauty she was admired by men and women of fastidious
taste, among whom were Sir Charles and Lady Morgan, Talleyrand,
Gortschakoff, and Madame de Staël. She so fascinated the Prince of
Wurtemburg, uncle of Jerome's second wife, that he confessed his
wonderment that Jerome could ever have abandoned her. "Si elle n'est
pas reine de Westphalie, elle est au moins reine des coeurs," was Baron
Bonsteller's tribute to her.
She seldom alluded to Jerome, though she believed that she always
stood first in his heart. She referred in a letter to her father to
the probability of his coming to Rome while she was there, but added
that she should not see him, "nor would he like it himself after the
unhandsome way in which he has always conducted himself. I shall hold
my tongue, which is all I can possibly do for him."
Though the greater part of her life was spent in Europe, and she was
for a time on terms of considerable intimacy with his family, she met
Jerome but once, when they passed each other in the gallery of the
Pitti Palace in Florence, Jerome with the Princess Catherine upon his
arm. Though they recognized each other, they passed without greeting,
Jerome exclaiming, "That was my American wife." Jerome Napoleon, the
son of his American wife, was frequently his guest, and was treated
with much kindness by the Princess Catherine. Jerome, however,
added practically nothing to this son's material comfort, much to
his mother's chagrin, and at his death in 1860 it was found that he
had not even mentioned his name in his will, a lack of recognition
which wounded both mother and son in a more profound sense than his
lifelong failure to make provision for him had done. So great was his
son's resemblance to his family, and particularly to the Emperor,
that the _chargé d'affaires_ of France at Amsterdam, in 1820, refused
his mother a passport for him to travel through France. It was a
strange coincidence that Madame Jerome Bonaparte herself should bear
a remarkable resemblance to the Bonaparte family, particularly to
Napoleon and Pauline, even having some of their mannerisms.
In August, 1855, Louis Napoleon offered to create Jerome Napoleon
Bonaparte Duke of Sartène, but he declined the honor, as the object
was to take away his name and the rights he possessed as his father's
eldest son.
At the request of his half-brother a family council was called, before
which the celebrated Berryer pleaded the cause of Madame Jerome
Bonaparte and her son, whose rights were ultimately defined as limited
exclusively to the use of the name.
On November 3, 1829, Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte, to his mother's intense
dissatisfaction and disappointment, married an American, the lovely
Miss Susan Mary Williams, of Baltimore. During a long residence abroad
Madame Bonaparte had become imbued with the idea that it was a duty
her son owed both to her and to himself to ally himself matrimonially
with some European family of distinction. Writing to her father from
Florence, where she was residing at the time of her son's marriage, she
said, "I would rather die than marry any one in Baltimore, but if my
son does not feel as I do upon this subject, of course he is quite at
liberty to act as he likes best."
Her father died in 1835. He had never been in sympathy with her desire
to live in a foreign country, and had frequently upbraided her for
her prolonged absence from home. In his will he denounced her as an
undutiful daughter, bequeathing her a few small houses besides the home
in which she was born, on the east side of South Street, with the lot
surrounding it.
In April, 1879, Madame Bonaparte, who was then in her ninety-fifth
year, having outlived her son and all of her own generation, passed
from the sphere where she had been so conspicuous a figure. She died
in a boarding-house in her native city, where she had acquired the
reputation of being a keen, eccentric old woman. The sorrows of her
youth, belonging to the early days of the country, were too remote to
be remembered by her later-day contemporaries, who discovered in her no
trace of the bewitching Elizabeth Patterson who had taken by storm the
heart of the youthful Prince Jerome.
She rests to-day in Greenmount Cemetery, Baltimore, in a small
triangular lot which she selected shortly before her death, saying that
as she had been alone in life, so she wished to be in death. On her
monument are graven the words that express so much for her,--"After
life's fitful fever she sleeps well."
THE CATON SISTERS
Among the belles of the early century loom the forms of those gracious
women whose names are interwoven with those of the most historic
figures of their age, the Caton sisters of Baltimore. Granddaughters of
Charles Carroll of Carrollton, one of the most illustrious Americans
of the period, they became through marriage identified with the most
distinguished families in England.
In 1787 Richard Caton, an Englishman who had settled in Baltimore two
years before, and engaged in the manufacture of cotton goods, succeeded
in winning the fair hand of Mary Carroll. Rumor said that it had been
already partially plighted to her cousin John Carroll of Duddington
Manor. Cousin "Longlegs," however, as Kitty, her irreverent younger
sister, called him, was in Europe at the time with her brother Charles,
and in those days of slow travel Mary had probably capitulated to the
young Briton before John even knew that he had a rival.
Her father, who was reputed the wealthiest man in America, and who
provided liberally both for his children and grandchildren, settled
upon Mary at the time of her marriage to Richard Caton, the beautiful
estate of "Brookland Wood," in the centre of the suburb which has since
sprung up and been named for them, Catonsville. Their four daughters
were born there and grew up to beautiful womanhood,--Mary, Elizabeth,
Louisa, and Emily. They derived every grace of mind and body from
a cultivated and accomplished mother who had been educated abroad,
and who, accompanying her father to Philadelphia when Congress met
there, had known the best there was of social life in America. Closely
associated, moreover, from their infancy with their grandfather, a
most courtly gentleman, who ever beheld in woman an object worthy
of his most chivalrous devotion, they bore every evidence of that
innate refinement which created distinction for them in England as the
"American Graces."
The life at that time surrounding such men as Carroll was idyllic.
Honored by his countrymen, blessed with the wealth giving him every
material comfort and luxury, owning his town house, his estate of
Doughoregan, and his plantation the famous Carrollton, sought out by
the most distinguished men and women at home and from abroad, to say
nothing of the myriad resources which such a man as Carroll possessed
within himself, he already saw his family--the third generation born in
America--well established, with the roof-trees of his son and daughters
close by his own. His granddaughters were much with him, and though
they were the belles of Baltimore town from their earliest girlhood, a
very delightful phase of their life was that portion of it spent on
their own and their grandfather's estates. There is frequent mention
both in the journal and letters of Charles Carroll of visits from them
and also of that princely hospitality that is ever associated with the
names of many of the old Maryland estates.
In one letter he alludes to a ball to be given by Captain Charles
Ridgley of "Hampton," for which three hundred invitations were out, and
to which Mary, Betsy, and Louisa were all going. In another he mentions
a ball given by Louisa, who was entertaining the Misses Pinkney at his
place at Annapolis.
Many a belle in those days went to balls on horseback with a blanket
thrown over her muslin gown to protect it from the dust. Yet it was
not too much of an undertaking to go all the way from Annapolis to
Baltimore, or _vice versa_, for the pleasure of being present at
somebody's ball or dinner-party. Roads and weather permitting, the
Catons occasionally made the trip in winter time in a "sled." Roads and
weather had much to do with the timing of one's visits in those days
of primitive transportation facilities when Charles Carroll recorded
that he sent his servant from Doughoregan with a led mare to fetch Miss
Nancy Robinson who had been visiting at Homewood, his son's estate.
Nature lent her perfecting hand to the rural life of these people, for
nowhere was she ever more munificent in the bestowal of her epicurean
gifts than in the State of Maryland, whose lands and whose waters alike
cater to the gastronomic proclivities of the _bon vivant_.
Oliver Wendell Holmes at a later period attributed a lack of
appreciation of literature which he fancied he had detected among
the Baltimoreans to the preponderance of these very blessings, and
suggested that the highest monument in the city should be crowned with
a canvas-back duck.
There were club-houses and merrymaking in plenty, with oysters,
soft-shell crabs, terrapin, canvas-back ducks, and a roasted young pig
with an apple in its mouth, or a turkey stuffed with oysters, as _pièce
de résistance_, with a nip of punch for sauce. Miss Ridgley depicts it
very temptingly in her little book.
Foremost among the beautiful women whose presence lent piquancy to
this life were the Catons. In 1807 Mary, who was at the time nineteen
years old, was married to Robert Patterson, the eldest son of William
Patterson. She thus became the sister-in-law of the unhappy Madame
Jerome Bonaparte, between whom and herself there seems to have existed
no great sympathy, through no fault of Mary Caton's.
[Illustration: Mary Caton
(Lady Wellesley)
From portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence]
The event was a welcome one to William Patterson, who was at the time
the wealthiest merchant in America. The wedding ceremony was performed
in the private chapel of the Carroll family by Archbishop Carroll, who
four years previously had similarly united Elizabeth Patterson and
Jerome Bonaparte. In April, 1811, Robert and his wife, accompanied by
her sisters Elizabeth and Louisa, went abroad, sailing from Baltimore
on one of his father's ships and landing in Lisbon in the latter
part of May. Robert Patterson had already travelled and lived much
in Europe. To the Catons it was the first of a series of numerous
trans-Atlantic trips.
While in Spain they met the Duke of Wellington, who was there at that
time conducting the peninsular war, and Colonel Sir Felton Bathurst
Hervey, who had been his aide-de-camp at Waterloo and whom Louisa
Caton afterwards married. Charles Carroll, writing of Hervey after his
marriage to Louisa, which occurred on the 1st of March, 1817, said,
"All who know him love him." He was a gallant soldier and had lost his
right arm at Vittoria.
The Duke of Wellington's ardent admiration for Mrs. Patterson drew him
within the wake of the little American party as they progressed in
their travels over Europe, lending them the prestige which opened for
them the most exclusive houses in England. Apparent as his admiration
was, not the least breath of scandal ever touched the name of this
beautiful young matron. The Prince Regent, to whom Wellington presented
her, spoke later to Richard Rush, the American Minister, of her unusual
beauty. When she came, later in life, into contact with William IV. as
first lady in waiting at Windsor, she won the sincere admiration of
that sovereign on account of the high standard of morality which she
maintained.
After the marriage of Hervey and Louisa Caton they were entertained by
the Duke of Wellington at Walmer Castle. The Duchess of Rutland gave
them a ball, and bestowed upon the sisters on that memorable night the
title under which they became famous,--the "American Graces." Hervey's
death occurred in 1819, and Robert Patterson's at Baltimore in the
fall of 1822. The widow of the latter shortly afterwards rejoined her
sisters in England, where they were again entertained at Wellington's
country-seat. While there they met for the first time his eldest
brother, Richard Wellesley, Earl of Mornington, and like himself a
soldier and a statesman. In 1797 he had been made Governor of India by
George III., who, in return for the services he rendered there, had
created him Marquis of Wellesley. At the time he met Mrs. Patterson and
her sisters he was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Two years later, when
Mrs. Patterson and Elizabeth Caton visited Dublin, he entertained them
royally, bestowing the most devoted attentions upon the former, to whom
he subsequently offered himself.
After a brief engagement they were married at the viceregal castle,
the ceremony being performed twice, to accord with the religious
convictions of both the bride and the groom, the Archbishop of Dublin
marrying them according to the rites of the Catholic Church, and the
Lord Primate of Ireland according to those of the Church of England.
Unusual magnificence marked the festivities which followed this event,
as well as those of the remainder of Lord Mornington's reign as viceroy.
On July 4, 1827, Bishop England, of South Carolina, gave the following
toast to Charles Carroll, who was the last survivor of the signers of
the Declaration of Independence: "To Charles Carroll of Carrollton: in
the land from which his grandfather fled in terror his granddaughter
now reigns a queen."
It was rather a strange coincidence that two daughters of the little
American town of Baltimore, Elizabeth Patterson and Mary Caton,
neighbors and contemporaries, should have married brothers of two of
the most formidable characters in modern history,--Napoleon Bonaparte,
the self-styled conqueror of the world, and the Duke of Wellington, his
conqueror.
Madame Jerome Bonaparte, who was in Europe at the time of her
sister-in-law's second marriage, thus wrote to her father concerning it:
"HAVRE, November 21, 1825.
"DEAR SIR,--I write by this packet to announce to you the marriage
of Mrs. Robert Patterson. Mrs. Brown received a letter from Betsy
Caton the day on which it was to take place. She has made the
greatest match that any woman ever made.... The Marquis of Wellesley
is Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He is sixty-five. He married an
Italian singer, by whom he had a family of children. She is dead. He
has no fortune. On the contrary, he is over head and ears in debt.
His salary is £35,000 per annum as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He
will be there eighteen months longer, and if the King does not give
him another place he is entitled as a poor nobleman to at least a
thousand pounds a year. He is brother of the Duke of Wellington.
Mary's fortune is reported in Europe to be £800,000 cash. It has been
mentioned in all the papers at that sum."
Wellesley retained his position in Ireland till 1828. He was then
appointed Controller of the Royal Household of William IV., and his
wife first lady in waiting at Windsor Castle. Wellesley's death
occurred in 1842, the Marchioness surviving him over eleven years. The
latter part of her life was spent at the Royal Palace at Hampton Court,
where Queen Victoria presented her with a house in recognition of her
husband's services.
Louisa Caton was married for the second time in 1828 to the eldest son
of the Duke of Leeds, Francis Godolphin D'Arcy Osborne, Marquis of
Carmarthen, who came into his title and estates ten years later.
This marriage called forth another letter from Madame Jerome Bonaparte
to her father: "Louisa has made a great match. He is very handsome, not
more than thirty-eight, and will be a duke with £30,000 a year."
Elizabeth Caton married once, and that much later in life than her
sisters. She became, in 1836, the wife of Baron Stafford, whose family
name was Jerningham.
Emily Caton, the youngest of the four sisters, and the only one who
left descendants, married John Mactavish, a Scotchman, who had settled
in Canada, whence he was sent as consul to Baltimore. Josiah Quincy,
who met her at dinner at her grandfather's in 1826, recorded in his
journal that he had been much impressed with her air of high breeding.
MARGARET O'NEILL
(MRS. JOHN H. EATON)
To the student of social history few careers surpass in interest that
of Margaret O'Neill. Born of humble parentage, she ran the gamut of
social possibilities, exercising more influence over the political
destinies of her country than any other American woman has ever done.
Unlike other great belles who owe their fame to the universal
admiration they evoke, Margaret O'Neill owed hers quite as much to the
animosity she roused. Her cause hotly espoused by the President of
the United States, her conduct made the subject of cabinet debates,
she rose to fame as broad as the land of her birth, and later beyond
the seas to a fame unshadowed by enmity, though not dearer to her
patriotic soul. Born late in the last century, she came to be a belle
in so far as having beaux makes a girl a belle in the days when the
native Washington girl had few rivals. The shriek of Fulton's steamboat
had not yet startled the world. The stage-coach was the universal
means of conveyance, though the daughters of some Southern and Western
Congressmen, from districts unfamiliar even with its lumbering
proportions, ambitious to taste the pleasures of a season at the
capital, used frequently to make the tedious journey on horseback. Her
girlhood belleship had well terminated, indeed she had married and
brought children into the world, before the completion of the great
canal in 1826, which made the more sanguine voyager of that day hopeful
that eventually eight miles might be travelled in an hour!
Though she never knew the exact date of her birth, she had heard
it frequently related that she was two weeks old at the time of
Washington's funeral, December 18, 1799. She was the eldest daughter
of William O'Neill, a descendant of the O'Neills of Ulster County,
Ireland, and himself a native of New Jersey, who had migrated to the
capital with the hope of improving his fortunes. There he opened a
tavern in the western section of the city, a short half-mile from the
President's house. He was a genial host, and his house soon attained
popularity with the _jeunesse dorée_, as well as with military men
and Congressmen, though it was a long way from the Capitol. The Union
Tavern, in Georgetown, however, which was also popular with our early
law-makers, was still farther away. From its door to the Capitol the
old 'bus known as the Royal George, one of Washington's earliest
institutions, made frequent trips, stopping at O'Neill's and other
taverns and boarding-houses along the route to pick up its patrons.