Ambition and Desire: The Dangerous Life of Josephine Bonaparte (33 page)

At Saint-Cloud, Napoleon and Josephine slept together every night, as usual, allowing her access to him in his most private moments. Then she threw a jealous scene about a mistress, and Napoleon lost his temper. “I resolved not to return to my subjugation,” he recalled.
¹⁴
He took up residence in a room across the corridor, though he continued to spend many nights in her bed.

Although Josephine had no official title, she was the queen of Saint-Cloud. She was expected to preside over the social life of the palace. As one of her ladies-in-waiting said, “social events constitute the canvas which she embroiders, which she arranges and which give her a subject for conversation.”
¹⁵
Napoleon, who could hardly bear the small talk and endless courses of banquets and receptions, might scuttle off on the excuse of business, leaving her to entertain the guests. He decided that all young women at the court should learn to make the “Versailles Curtsey,” a low dip, and perform it when he and Josephine entered the room for formal receptions. On other occasions, ladies would have to stand when Josephine entered the room and again when she departed. Pauline and Caroline Bonaparte were spitting with fury at having to stand for Josephine, who sometimes threw them a sly smile as she floated by. The revolutionary heroine was moving into the position Marie Antoinette once occupied. In fact, the most prestigious invitation of all was to one of Josephine’s weekly dinners in her apartments. The guests would be received by the first consul and his wife, seated on thrones.

Josephine herself was rather unnerved by her new position. When ambassadors were presented to her, Napoleon commanded her to remain sitting, in the same fashion as the old queens of France. Josephine could not: She rose to meet them, holding out her hand. “I feel that I was not born, my child, for such grandeur, and I would be happier in retirement, surrounded by those I love,” she wrote to Hortense. She had always been disquieted by Napoleon’s lofty ambition; now she was positively afraid. On one occasion, witnessed by Bourrienne, she came in her “gentle and beguiling way” and settled herself on her husband’s knee, “caressed him and brushed her fingertips softly across his cheek
and through his hair. Her words came in a tender rush. ‘Bonaparte, I implore you, don’t go making yourself a king. It’s that horrid Lucien who puts you up to such schemes. Please, oh, please, don’t listen to him.’ She had begged him before not to make himself a king—and Bonaparte laughed off her pleas. ‘You must be out of your mind, Josephine,’ he smiled.”

Josephine did not impress everyone, particularly the British. The writer Mary Berry thought her “distinguished looking” but much older than her portraits made her out to be. Another thought her rather ordinary. “If chance had not placed her on a pinnacle, she would escape minute observation.”
¹⁶
Certainly, her teeth—which gave her much pain—were in poor shape. All agreed, though, that Josephine’s tact and grace worked wonders; people forgot her fading beauty and rather humble past. “Her sense of the right word and the right action and her irresistible attraction convinced us all that she might have been born for the role fortune had given her.”
¹⁷

Costume took up ever more time in her day. Napoleon told her that she must outshine every woman present. “Mme. Bonaparte, who understood to a high degree the art of being well-dressed, set an example of the greatest elegance,” observed Laure d’Abrantès.
¹⁸
Josephine bought spectacular outfits. One celebrated pink crepe dress was covered entirely with real rose petals. A tribute to her love of roses, it was divine, but she could not sit and could barely move in it. Another fine gown was made of toucan feathers, each one adorned with a pearl. She adored luxurious gloves and purchased more than a thousand pairs a year.
¹⁹
When she desired a fresh pair, they would be brought to her on a silver tray.

Napoleon wished for his wife to look opulent, but he did not always comprehend the cost. On one occasion, Claire de Rémusat saw him lecturing Josephine that she should appear “at her dazzling best in jewels and dress.” When she did not respond, he prompted, “Did you hear me, Josephine?” “Yes,” she replied sweetly, “but then you will reproach me or even go into a tantrum and refuse to pay for my purchases.” She gave him such a gently flirtatious smile, “the desire to please him so unmistakeably bright in her eyes that he would have had a heart of stone to resist her.”
²⁰
She dreaded the times when she had to present her accounts to him. He railed that she spent excessively, gave too many
presents, and did not understand the value of money. He used her spending to torment her, then compelled her to spend more.

Napoleon was trying to stake a claim to a court of spotless virtue, but he never criticized Josephine for her past. When he found out that Talleyrand had a mistress, Catherine Grand, a divorcée and former demimondaine, he forced him to marry her immediately, declaring that the diplomatic corps would protest at his behavior. At the Tuileries, Napoleon berated Catherine in front of the whole company, saying she must atone for her immorality by behaving with dignity. “In this respect, as in all others, I cannot do better than to model myself on Mme. Bonaparte,” she replied. Talleyrand resented having to marry her: He found her annoying, she was losing her looks, and his family thought little of her. Bonaparte, as Madame de Rémusat thought, “took a malign pleasure in making Talleyrand marry.”
²¹
From then on, Talleyrand became an enemy.

The British were particularly fond of titillating gossip, and the scabrous cartoonist James Gillray loved to recall Josephine’s dubious past. He drew her and Madame Tallien dancing naked behind a gauzy curtain, with Barras enjoying the spectacle while drinking wine and a tiny Napoleon spying from behind. Barras, Gillray said, had offered Napoleon his great promotion on the condition that he take Josephine off his hands, even though she was “smaller & thin with bad teeth, something like Cloves.”
²²
Another cartoon,
The Progress of the Empress Josephine,
showed her different incarnations: prisoner, empress, Barras’s mistress, and “loose fish”—or lady of low morals.
²³
But few paid much attention. Only one visitor, Lord Morpeth, refused to let his wife be presented to her. And certainly Napoleon did not see Josephine as his Achilles heel; for him, she was all grace and excellence.

“Love is a singular passion, turning men into beasts,” Napoleon said. “I come into season like a dog.”
²⁴
Even though he was growing plump and had crude manners, once he was made consul for life, he found he had more sexual opportunity than he could have ever imagined. In the autumn of 1802, he dismissed Bourrienne, declaring him guilty of financial corruption. He took the keys to his secretary’s old room, adjacent to his study, and had it filled daily with fresh flowers. Actresses, dancers, and demimondaines crept in to be his lovers. His
skills of seduction had not improved; he still sat and stared at those he wanted until they blushed and gave in, dazzled by his riches and power. Mademoiselle Duchesnois, an actress from the Comédie-Française, was once shown to Bourrienne’s former room by Napoleon’s faithful valet, Constant. The consul was working late in his study, and when Constant knocked on the door, he cried out, “Tell her to wait!” An hour later, Constant knocked again and he replied, “Tell her to get undressed.” The actress did as she was bade and waited undressed. Constant knocked once more and Napoleon cried: “Tell her to go home!”
²⁵

In the early days of their marriage, Napoleon had been delighted by Josephine’s expressions of jealousy. Now, when he was no longer faithful and was taking many lovers, her teary questions only annoyed him. “As soon as he acquired a new mistress,” wrote Claire de Rémusat, “Bonaparte became hard, violent, pitiless towards his wife.” He told her the details and liked to show an “almost savage surprise that she did not congratulate him.”
²⁶
If she wept and complained, he turned on her ferociously.

Napoleon never understood why his wife cared about his dalliances. “She is always afraid that I will fall seriously in love,” he told Rémusat. “Does she not know then that I am not made for love? It is not in my nature to surrender to any such overwhelming feeling. Why does she worry about these fancies in which my affections are not engaged?”
²⁷
Indeed, he was too busy to fall in love, but he had plenty of time for fast seductions. After all, as he proudly told one mistress, he could get the job done within three or four minutes. But Josephine, unable to bear his child and hated by the Bonaparte family, remembered his intense passion for her in the early days and dreaded him falling for another woman with the same ardor. Napoleon would point out that her past conduct gave her no right to complain, but she was still jealous, upbraiding him and weeping and paying spies to report back to her about his affairs.

Mademoiselle Duchesnois, like all the rest, did not last long. Soon Napoleon became entranced by her archrival on the Paris stage, the fifteen-year-old actress Marguerite-Josephine Weimar, or Mademoiselle George. The grand battle between the divas captivated all Paris. Duchesnois was generally judged the better actress, although rather plain. George was no great tragedienne, but she was beautiful. In order to try
and beat her rival, she went all out to capture the first consul. An affair with Napoleon would catapult her to stardom.

Mademoiselle George met Josephine and watched her carefully, saying, “It was impossible not to succumb in the face of that soft, mysterious charm.”
²⁸
Cleverly guessing that the best way to capture Napoleon was to be as gentle as his wife, she feigned the mien of innocence. After she followed his summons to Saint-Cloud, flunkies took her upstairs and then left her in a room “with an enormous bed and heavy curtains of silk.” Napoleon arrived, and she played the virtuous maiden for an hour or so before claiming that she could not help but give in to his charms.

Napoleon was delighted by his schoolgirl-age mistress. “I am very fond of the name Josephine but I shall call you Georgina, if you’ll allow me.”
²⁹
With her he acted the child, romping around the staircases and playing hide-and-seek behind the curtains. All Paris heard of the affair, and when Napoleon openly visited Georgina at the theater, Josephine felt humiliated. One night Napoleon and Josephine went to see Mademoiselle George play the lead role of Emilie in
Cinna,
a play written in 1639 that Napoleon favored, as it congratulated absolute power. In the play, the Roman emperor Augustus orders the death of Emilie’s father. She begs Cinna, who is in love with her, to kill Augustus in revenge. In the final act, Augustus challenges Cinna, and Emilie attempts to free him by saying she seduced him into it.

Georgina was ready for her stardom. At the dramatic high point of the play, she paused before giving the line: “I have seduced Cinna, I shall seduce many more.” The crowd roared with delight, leaped up, and turned to applaud Napoleon in his box. He smiled and puffed out his chest. Josephine had to sit, ramrod-straight and smiling, hiding her humiliation.

One night she was in her Yellow Salon with Claire de Rémusat, tormenting herself with the knowledge that Napoleon was in Bourrienne’s chamber with Georgina. “I cannot stand it any longer; Mlle. George must be up there. I am going to surprise them.” She marched up the stairs with Claire following. They nearly got there—and then thought they heard Napoleon’s rather terrifying guard coming toward them. “He’ll kill us,” cried Josephine. Claire fled in terror, and Josephine
chased after her. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, they began to laugh, and Josephine realized she had been deluded to think she could storm into the room.
³⁰

One evening some weeks later, Josephine heard Georgina screaming in fear. She dashed to Bourrienne’s room, along with valets and guards, only to find Napoleon suffering from a seizure and Georgina making her exit in a state of undress. The actress was terrified that the consul had died and she would be blamed. Josephine stood there and saw with her own eyes the evidence in the rumpled sheets: Her husband could find sexual passion with women other than her.

Not long afterward, Napoleon stuffed forty thousand francs down Georgina’s dress as a goodbye present and set off in search of a replacement. He tried his hopelessly boorish seductions on every young woman he saw. Men found him naturally charismatic and fascinating, but he left women cold. Mademoiselle George had used his attentions for her advantage, but there were many women who had to submit because they had no protectors. Napoleon used them all for pleasure.

When General Junot and his young wife, Laure, came to stay at Malmaison, Napoleon promptly sent Junot away. He had known eighteen-year-old Laure since she was a child, and he had proposed to her mother, Madame Permond, before meeting Josephine. Such family connections did not dampen his fervor. At five
A.M.
he entered Laure’s room, sat on her bed, and read his morning correspondence. He gave her a pinch, and she pretended to be asleep. He left the room. Laure begged her husband to disobey orders and remain with her. The next night, she locked the door before going to bed—and within an hour or so, she heard Napoleon rattling at it in vain. Not to be dissuaded, he set off to find a master key. He burst into the room, ready for love, but found Junot in bed with his wife and exploded in fury.

Even when a mistress fell out of favor, Josephine knew it would not be long before another beautiful, younger woman would be frequenting her husband’s chamber. She knew Napoleon loved the way she presided over the court with grace and diplomacy, and that her presence mollified the royalists and the aristocrats. But she would no longer be his good-luck charm if one of his mistresses became pregnant.