Naughty Margaret did not confine her friendships to the Bonaparte clan, as her album reveals.
Many of the sentiments are merely quotations from Lamartine, Metastasio, or La Fontaine, like those signed “Henry Prince of the Netherlands”, “Alexander of the Netherlands”, or merely with the Napoleonic “N”. Lady Morgan even descends to an extract from Nursery Rhymes, which, it is true, she illustrates; in fact every page is more or less illustrated, Casimir Delavigne’s contribution, for instance, being surrounded by a trailing vine.
A sketch of a nymph and centaur, doubtless the design for a statue, appears above the signature of Thorwaldsen; he also presented her with this very striking portrait in oils. Canova’s portrait, a beautiful head, accompanies it, and is probably the work of the same artist who painted Lady Shrewsbury and her sister.
So she trolled the Royal Family in the Netherlands but also had friends in the Arts. Casimir Delavigne is a French poet and dramatist. (His poem Les Vêpres Siciliennes has nothing to do with Verdi’s opera.) Bertel Thorwaldsen is a Danish sculptor of great distinction who moved to Rome in 1797 and whose work was admired by Canova, who needs no introduction.
One of Thorwaldsen’s best is this memorial to Pope Pius VII in St Peter’s, Rome – apparently the only work by a non-Catholic in the basilica.
Perhaps the finest of the large portraits Mrs Bryan annexed is that of Cardinal Consalvi, Prime Minister to Pius VII; the red soutane and olive complexion and flashing eyes of the anything but priestly-looking prelate make a glowing canvas. Pius IX sat for his portrait to Cavalliere Caballti, who painted it for Mrs Bryan; it represents him as a very young man, with a penetrating, yet benign expression; and looking at it one can understand the early years of his Pontificate before Fate and Garibaldi had proved too strong for him, when he was the people’s idol, and won the hearts of all by his wonderful sweetness and charity, and was, as yet, apparently without that weakness of character that marked the latter end of his career.
The portraits illustrated in Gwendoline Bellew’s article have almost all been dispersed. The only one I have seen is of Pius IX. It hangs in an outer hall at Barmeath. Her article refers to many more entries and it concludes:
As souvenirs of her stay in Brussels she has kept prints of King Leopold, who was her son’s godfather, and of Lord George Seymour, then Ambassador, with suitable inscriptions underneath. She seems to have had a cheerful time in Brussels to judge from the few letters left extant, and she used to say that she had danced with every crowned head in Europe which, though possible, it is improbable she ever did, though no doubt she tried to.
In 1840 the death of her niece, the Princess Guendaline Borghese, plunged all the family into mourning. Much has been written of this beautiful and saintly woman; a cameo head of her is all that her aunt, Margaret Bryan, seems to have kept as a memento. After this the Album was neglected and, save for a poem on “Youth” signed Lebermuth and one or two insignificant contributions, the book is ended, unless one includes a couple of notes from Father Matthew, the temperance preacher.
Princess Guendaline Borghese is the daughter of Naughty Margaret’s sister, Lady Shrewsbury. She died aged 22 of scarlet fever. I must visit her tomb in the Borghese Chapel.
It seems to represent mainly just a few years of the life of its owner, then in the prime of womanhood. Other albums she doubtless had but they have disappeared – been given away or burnt, as have her letters. And all that remains in her old home of the personal and intimate belongings of one who must have been a very beautiful and, for her brief span, a very successful woman.
So, was she a naughty girl? All I can contribute is that my grandfather pooh-poohed her dancing, saying she slept with every crowned head in Europe.