Ambition and Desire: The Dangerous Life of Josephine Bonaparte (25 page)

While Napoleon was working, Josephine attended to her correspondence and saw her dressmakers, milliners, portraitist, and tradesmen. In the afternoon, she sat with her ladies and played cards or listened to a little music. Few guessed how dreary she found her new life. Her mien was gay and pleased with what she saw. She always seemed eager to greet people at the Tuileries and host endless dinners, many with up to 150 guests. She met thousands of people at home and abroad, all of whom expected a special word of recognition.

Many days, Josephine simply had to wait, beauteously dressed and perfumed, for the moment when Napoleon might burst through her doors without warning and demand tea.
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He always came at five to watch her dress, and if he had a free moment, he would dash downstairs to see his “little Creole.” Sometimes he sat quietly, contemplating a military problem, and she sat with him (also in silence, until he chose to speak). Other times he would play his customary tricks on her, teasing and laughing, overturning her makeup pots, pulling her hair out of its style, and pinching her. “Do stop, Bonaparte,” she would say, for he wished to be treated as a naughty child. She worked hard to be his perfect companion, always ready to listen, to read, to go out driving with him, and to assume the soothing, unruffled air that so pleased him. “Josephine possessed an exact knowledge of the intricacies of my character,” he explained.
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She was the only one allowed to call him “tu” or Bonaparte.
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She was not allowed to feel tired at the midnight dinners or to eat her lunch before he appeared. He expected her to be fully made up and coiffed, with no hint of fatigue or ill health, and perfectly gowned in exquisite French clothes that were not too revealing. He spent every
night with her in an overheated chamber with the window firmly closed—neither liked the cold. “We were a very bourgeois couple,” he wrote, “sharing a bedroom and a bed,” ensuring “the wife’s influence and the husband’s dependency.” Cleverly, Josephine had persuaded him that occupying the same room would ensure his safety. “I told him,” she said, “that I was a very light sleeper, if any nocturnal attempt against him was made, I should be there to call for help in a moment.”
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Thanks to this, “no action of mine escaped Josephine,” he said. “She guessed, she knew everything, which was sometimes inconvenient for me.”
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She participated enthusiastically in the effort to fete Napoleon and shore up his image of himself as the ruler of a new world. She had befriended the painter Jean-Baptiste Isabey, former artist at Versailles, while he was a teacher at Madame Campan’s school. Josephine was fond of Isabey’s studied style; in 1797 he had created one of her first portraits, a sketch of her in a white dress and head kerchief, the ideal republican heroine. She introduced him to Napoleon, who saw no irony in the former artist of Marie Antoinette becoming his painter for hire. Isabey became Josephine’s makeup artist and the key director of the appearance of Napoleon’s ceremonials.

In public life, Napoleon was utilizing Josephine’s diplomatic skills to win over aristocrats, crusty bankers, and military men alike. She was by his side at dinners, balls, and receptions and hosted grand occasions of her own. She supplied the dignity, grace, and elegance that he lacked. Napoleon was “deficient in education and in manners,” Madame de Rémusat would explain, and had no idea how to enter or leave a room, how to make a bow, or even how to stand up properly.
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Josephine was acutely sensitive to social etiquette. More important, she was equable and engaging where he was boorish. His way of showing friendliness was to pinch the ear or bash someone on the arm or call them a fool. Josephine was kind, and her charm attracted “many persons to his court whom his natural rudeness would otherwise have kept away.”
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Her honeyed tones won people over when his shouting failed. When Bonaparte arrived in the drawing room, all eyes were fretfully directed toward him to try to guess his mood. If Josephine presided alone, everything was “gaiety and ease.”
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Nothing in Josephine’s upbringing had prepared her for such a life.
Though she was unhappy in her new role, she had to learn to manage. She had a knack for remembering people; her time as a mistress had schooled her in the importance of showing interest in and attention to everyone, even those who bored her; and she was truly skilled at putting guests at ease. Josephine was also a human display of Napoleon’s power: her gowns, her jewels, her possessions, and her art all showcased his brilliance and wealth.

Even if Napoleon had stuck with his original plan of keeping his wife from power, she received so many letters from people begging for help that it was impossible to exclude her. Her correspondence in the months following the coup d’état is full of letters from influential figures requesting favors and promotions. Most of all, she was trying to help the émigrés—stripped of their wealth during the Revolution—restore their assets and clear their names from the list of enemies of the Republic.

Napoleon spotted Josephine’s postbag and saw another way she could be useful (his instruction to her to stay out of politics hadn’t lasted long). He needed the support of the royalists and the émigrés, for they had power, money, and, his spies told him, support from Britain. In fact, one of his first acts as consul was to abolish the law by which any returning émigré could be put to death. However, allowing them to return would be seen as undermining the principles of the Revolution. Josephine would be his device for covering his tracks. She would receive requests from the exiled aristocrats and apply to the ministers to have their names removed from the list of enemies of France. If republicans demanded an explanation, Napoleon would simply say that his wife had too kind a heart.

Josephine was delighted to receive requests from the greatest families in France and to entertain them in her salon. Previously so indolent, she read applications from morning until night. Eventually, Napoleon told Fouché, minister of police, to ensure that she did not go too far. She wrote letter after letter. “Would you oblige me, citizen Minister, by speeding up the processing of citizen Michon de Vougy’s forthcoming case with the commission of those inscribed on the list of emigrants,” she wrote to the minister of justice.
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She also asked for favors, begging
Fouché to “receive favourably Mme. Pasquier, one of my oldest friends.”
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Josephine assisted thousands of émigrés in returning to France. They called her the embodiment of “grace and goodness,” and she was respected and loved in equal measure for “inexhaustible charity.”
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In the first year alone, more than forty thousand families were reunited. The returnees felt loyal to her husband and less likely to ally together to reinstall a king. She was particularly generous to the relations of her first husband, including her brother-in-law François, who had been a member of the Army of the Princes at Koblenz, a group of young aristocrats who had plotted to invade France in 1792. Bonaparte was so led by his Josephine that he gave François a diplomatic post. By 1802, nearly all exiles had been permitted to return, apart from men who fought against the French in foreign armies (unless, of course, they were François). They were not allowed to retrieve any property seized by the government or army, but otherwise they had free movement in the country. Still, few of them truly liked the new, highly moralistic and repressive social regime Napoleon was leading. There was to be, as one returning émigré put it, “no more flirting, no sentimentality, no godlessness, no more sparkling wit, no more easy relationships, no more joy.”

With the arrival of the émigrés, Josephine hoped that her husband might feel more sympathetic to the exiled Louis XVIII, son of the dauphin and Maria Josepha of Saxony. The forty-five-year-old younger brother of Louis XVI was living in exile at Courland (modern-day Latvia) in a palace owned by Paul I of Russia. There he had written a biography of Marie Antoinette and attempted to create an opulent court like that of Versailles.

Not long after Napoleon’s installation, Louis wrote to Josephine that he hoped she would use her influence to bring him back as monarch. To her husband, he was even more gaily optimistic, suggesting Napoleon use his military might to restore him to the throne. “I wish you would act more quickly. You and I could secure the magnificence of France,” Louis plaintively wrote to the first consul. “You would have to climb over 100,000 corpses first,” Napoleon replied. He offered small consolation: “I will gladly do what I can to make your retirement pleasant and
undisturbed.”
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Napoleon sent his answer to the press to be printed, much to the pleasure of the republicans.

Privately, Josephine begged her husband to reconsider. After years of insecurity, she believed that a monarch was the only way to stop any further bloodshed; she even took Hortense to plead with her. “I implore you, Bonaparte, don’t go making yourself a King.” The consul brushed off their tears. “You see ghosts where there are none, my dear Josephine. You have been taken in by the Faubourg Saint-Germain,” he said, commanding her not to refer to the subject again.
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“They should return to their knitting and leave me in peace. But I don’t hold it against them,” he said to Bourrienne.
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An old snob to the core, Napoleon loved Josephine’s links with the aristocracy and her passion for royalty. But he knew that the people still saw him as the protector of the Republic, a caretaker until the installation of a proper government, and he was determined to prove them wrong. “To be at the Tuilieries is not enough,” he acknowledged to Bourrienne. “I need to ensure that I stay.”
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He could not do so without Josephine.

Thanks to her guile and finesse, she had emerged triumphant. Napoleon knew that he needed her. The rise of the Martinique girl, mocked by high society for her gruff accent and plump figure, seemed complete. Despite her spendthrift ways and failure to produce an heir, she had become Napoleon’s ideal wife, albeit largely for propaganda reasons: Her time in prison and her links to the aristocracy sparkled like the diamonds around her neck.

The British, who had laughed at the lovelorn Bonaparte’s letters, shook their heads at her continuing influence. In a caricature by an anonymous British artist, entitled “Johnny Bull on the Look-out or—Bonaparte Detected Drilling His Rib, at the Play of King and Queen of England—Scene St. Cloud” (1803), the couple’s power roles are playfully subverted.
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Johnny Bull is meant to represent England, while Napoleon and Josephine are seated on thronelike chairs. Josephine is larger and taller than Napoleon, and it is she who holds an orb and scepter and wears a crown. Her pose is dominant, masculine, in charge.

J
OSEPHINE MIGHT HAVE
been winning the battle against those who wanted to see her fail, but she was spending huge amounts of money to
do so. Napoleon wished to see her in lavishly decorated apartments and set apart from other women, always grandly dressed and covered in jewels. He wanted her followed in the haute couture magazines. Periodicals such as
Journal des Dames
and
Costume Parisien
would circulate pictures of the finery worn by Parisian ladies, and they often reported on the styles of Madame Bonaparte. Once upon a time, European courts had looked to France as the leader of fashion. Napoleon was eager for those days to return.

After the simplicity of the post-revolutionary dress, Napoleon dreamed of his wife as an ancien régime fashion plate. Still, he forbade gowns that were brightly colored, declaring that they made his head hurt. He hated dark gowns as well. He threatened to burn Josephine’s cashmere shawls, which were an incredible luxury, and forced her to wear woolly wraps made from properly French sheep. And she had to keep her weight down as he had an “invincible hatred of a fat woman.”
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His fantasy woman was slender and graceful, clad in white, and he tried to make every woman dress the same way.

On the excuse of boosting the French silk industry in Lyon, the consul banned the import of Indian muslin, a fabric Josephine cherished.
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Whenever Hortense and Josephine appeared before him, he would immediately ask, “Is that muslin you’re wearing?” They lied that it was St. Quentin linen, but smiled despite themselves, and he would promptly rip the gowns into pieces with his hands.
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Napoleon demanded their clothing be made of more ostentatious fabrics, such as satin, velvet, and taffeta. What Josephine wore set the trend: Women began wearing heavier clothes with straighter skirts and stiff bodices, lengthened their sleeves, and raised their necklines.
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When Napoleon spotted Madame de Staël at a ball in a low-cut gown, he bellowed, “You must have nursed all your children yourself, Madame?”
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Josephine’s favorite high-waisted gown was the perfect way for her to show off her still-impressive form without revealing too much skin. The shorter bodice of the “Empire-line” gown was much closer to the neck and suited her figure entirely. Men, too, eschewed the more romantic look. They wore darker, thicker fabrics with a frock coat, tailcoat, and straight waistcoat, very like military dress. Secretly, though, Josephine yearned for the fashions of her youth, the freedom of flowing
dresses and natural hairstyles. She had been at her most beautiful in her mid- to late twenties and spent the rest of her life trying to dress in similar fashion, even when it had become very outdated.