Alluring woman an early celebrity
Print Edition
“Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte was an American celebrity,” Carol Berkin declares. Indeed, she was “perhaps the first of her era.” The extraordinary story told in this slim volume goes some way toward justifying that extravagant claim.
Berkin’s heroine, known as Betsy throughout “Wondrous Beauty,” was born into a prosperous Baltimore family in 1785. As a young woman she cast spells: “The English ambassador considered her the ‘most beautiful woman in America’.” At 17, she met Jérôme Bonaparte, the youngest brother of Napoleon, at that time first consul of France, and within a year they married.
Betsy’s father opposed the union, and the conflict between him and his daughter continued until his death in 1835. He was, Betsy wrote, “the Plague sore of all my life.” Jérôme’s famous brother was even more resistant. When he heard the news, he was furious. Napoleon expected to control his relations, and an American Bonaparte didn’t fit into his plans.
Although Betsy was six months pregnant by the time the couple sailed to Europe in 1805, the emperor (as Napoleon now was) banned her from France. She found a berth near London, where her son was born while her husband went off to make peace with his brother. But Jérôme never came back. He and Betsy would not meet again until decades later, and even then it was accidental. The feckless Jérôme had been bought off with a minor European crown and a dull wife, Napoleon having had his marriage to Betsy annulled.
Betsy and her son, named for his father but known as Bo, sailed back to Baltimore, though Berkin repeatedly notes that Betsy preferred Europe. The emperor “hurled me back on what I hated most on Earth,” she complained, “my Baltimore obscurity.” But she managed to crisscross the Atlantic, the guest of princes and dukes. She engaged in a long, futile lawsuit to change her father’s will, and in another expensive battle (also futile) to establish the legitimate right of succession in France for Bo and his descendants — though when her son married an American, Betsy turned against him.
Berkin, whose previous work includes “Revolutionary Mothers” and “Civil War Wives,” is the Baruch presidential professor of history at the City University of New York. She has researched sources diligently. Yet her book has certain problems. Some of the history is unnecessarily simplistic. At times, the book reads like a romance novel.
Berkin perseveres, and so did Betsy, until her death in 1879. A reporter noted that at 85 she retained “traces of a once wondrous beauty,” hence the book’s title.
She also turned out to be a shrewd investor, and by the end of the Civil War approached millionaire status. “Once I had everything but money,” she remarked. “Now I have nothing but money.”
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