My step great grandmother continues describing Naughty Margaret’s album.
There are prints of Elise, Grand Duchesse de Toscane, “donné par sa fille, la Comtesse Camerata”, of Caroline Annunziata, Queen of Naples, of Joseph, and of nearly all the members of the Bonaparte family, amongst them a charming childish one of the Duc de Reichstadt, of Napoleon I, Josephine and Marie-Louise; in fact Mrs Bryan seems to have had a cult for the whole race.
Zenaïde Bonaparte contributes a charming pencil sketch, “Le Château de la Reine Berthe”, and Charlotte, Lucien’s daughter, several sketches in pen and ink and in colour.
To appreciate this orgy of Bonaparte name-dropping it is helpful to know about the thirteen children spawned by Carlo Bonaparte and his wife:
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- Napoleone Buonaparte (born and died 17 August 1765).
- Maria Anna Buonaparte (3 January 1767 – 1 January 1768).
- Joseph Bonaparte (7 January 1768 – 28 July 1844) King of Naples and Sicily, King of Spain and the Indies, and Comte de Survilliers, he married on 1 August 1794 Marie Julie Clary.
- Napoleon Bonaparte (15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), namesake of his deceased older brother and Emperor of the French, he married on 9 March 1796 Josephine de Beauharnais and secondly on 2 April 1810 Marie Louise, Archduchess of Austria.
- Maria Anna Buonaparte (born and died 1770), namesake of her deceased older sister.
- Maria Anna Buonaparte (14 July 1771 – 23 November 1771), namesake of her deceased older sisters.
- A stillborn son (1773).
- Lucien Bonaparte (21 March 1775 – 29 June 1840), Prince of Canino and Musignano, married on 4 May 1794 to Christine Boyer and secondly on 26 October 1803 to Alexandrine de Bleschamp, widow of Hippolyte Jouberthon, known as “Madame Jouberthon”.
- Maria Anna (Elisa) Bonaparte (3 January 1777 – 7 August 1820), namesake of her deceased older sisters, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, married on 5 May 1797 Felice Pasquale Baciocchi, named Prince of Lucca.
- Louis Bonaparte (2 September 1778 – 25 July 1846), King of Holland, married on 4 January 1802 Hortense de Beauharnais.
- Pauline Bonaparte (20 October 1780 – 9 June 1825), Sovereign Princess and Duchess of Guastalla, married 5 May 1797 to Victor-Emmanuel Leclerc and secondly married on 28 August 1803 Camillo Borghese, 6th Prince of Sulmona.
- Caroline Bonaparte (25 March 1782 – 18 May 1839), Grand Duchess of Berg and Cleves, wife of Joachim Murat, later queen consort of Naples
- Jérôme Bonaparte (15 November 1784 – 24 June 1860), King of Westphalia, married on December 24, 1803 to Elizabeth Patterson and secondly on 22 August 1807 to princess Catharina of Württemberg. (Wikipedia)
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Jerome Bonaparte, Ex-King of Westphalia, breaks into reflections not original, it is true, but inscribed on delicate pink paper, as became this lover of the ladies, and decorated below his signature with a large Imperial eagle, crown and ‘J’; it is headed “Souvenir” and from what we know of Jerome he probably wrote it in many books.
“Une femme qui sait combien elle gagne par la Bonté met de la Coquetterie à être bonne et indulgente, celle-lá rehausse les qualités qu’elle possède et supplée à celles qui lui manque. Je connais une Mathilde qui pense comme moi sur ce sujet, aussi peut elle être admirée sans danger pour elle et sans craindre la médisance puisque tous ces sentiments tendres song concentrés dans ses devoirs; elle peut dire hautement qu’elle aime ses amis, même lorsqu’ils n’ont que quarante années.”
A rough translation might read;
“A woman who knows how much she earns by goodness makes coquetry to be good and indulgent, that enhances the qualities she possesses and makes up for those she lacks. I know a Mathilde who thinks like me on this subject, also she can be admired without danger to her and without fearing slander, since all these tender feelings are concentrated in her duties; she can say loudly that she loves her friends even when they are only forty years old.”
It appears that Mathilde was Jerome’s private name for Margaret. He called his daughter, born in 1820, Mathilde.
Jerome was a great friend, the godfather of one of her children, Jeromina, to whom he gave a very curious bracelet composed of agate, cornelian, jasper, etc taken from the ruins of St Paul beyond the Walls, and inscribed “Donné par le Prince de Montfort”. There is a print of him with a long inscription underneath, now unfortunately undecipherable, and two beautifully carved medallions by Morelli, one an Oriental topaz, the other a sardonyx of King Jerome and his wife Catherine of Wurtemburg. Judging by this portrait of her, the Ex-Queen of Westphalia was no beauty of the type likely to keep the fancy of a butterfly husband. She, at any rate, was quite a respectable artist, as shown by a little pencil sketch of the Château de Chillon, Lac de Genève, signed “Catherine”.
I have yet to visit the Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls, something that will be rectified next time I am in Rome.
To be continued.