Napoleon’s Favourite Sister

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30686, 27 February 1965, Page 4

Napoleon’s Favourite Sister

Pauline. By Pierson Dixon. Collins. 206 pp. Appendices, Sources, Index.

The British Embassy in Paris in the Rue de Faubourg St Honore was bought in 1814 by the British Government just after the first abdication of Napoleon. This magnificent residence, the Hotel de Charost, was the property of the deposed Emperor’s sister —known variously as Paoletta, Paulette and finally Pauline —a woman of great beauty, who was Napoleon’s favourite relative, but who was to suffer as much as the rest of his family from his dynastic ambition. Sir Pierson Dixon, the present British Ambassador in Paris has drawn an indulgent picture of this frivolous, amoral self-willed woman, whose only outstanding virtue was her loyalty to her tyrannous but magnificent brother. She accompanied him to Elba, and sold large quantities of jewellery, to help him after his escape to regain his former glories. It does, however, seem very unlikely that there was any truth in the scabrous gossip of the time that their relationship was incestuous. Both of them were such assiduous amorists that they must have lacked the inclination to indulge in unnatural practices. Pauline was only fifteen when she formed her first romantic attachment. This was in 1796, when Napoleon’s star was rising, and the object of her affections was Freron, an aging Commissioner of the Directory, who had begun to slip on the treacherous, upward political path, and had no money—both insuperable bars to his eligibility in the eyes of the parvenu Bonaparte. While firmly vetoing her choice Napoleon did, however, realise that this precocious young beauty must be married quickly and advantageously, and he arranged to bestow her on the young General Leclerc, one of his

staunchest admirers, and comfortably rich. Pauline dried her tears for Freron, and was quite pleased to accept her new suitor, and the birth of a son cemented their happy relationship, though during her husband’s numerous absences on military duty she provided herself with consolations from among his officers.

With calm disregard to their domestic bliss Napoleon despatched Leclerc in 1800 to quell a native rising in the French possession of San Domingo, in the Caribbean, and prudently arranged for his susceptible sister and her son to accompany the expedition. It was in the appalling climate of San Domingo that the unfortunate girl started upon the long decline in health which brought her to her grave at the early age of forty-five. Leclerc fell a victim to yellow fever, and his widow, wretched and resentful, re-

turned to France with her child in 1803. From now onwards Napoleon’s gigantic personal ambitions and global plans for military conquest were constantly interrupted by the need to curb the extravagance and indiscretions of his favourite but wholly maddening sister. With Josephine (who, in common with her family, she heartily hated), and Madame Recamier, she set out to be the best-dressed, the gayest and the most renowned hostess in Paris. Though she had a wholesome fear of her brother she was purely and simply a socialite, and when Napoleon married her, for the second time, to Prince Camillo Borghese—an Italian francophil with vast estates in Italy and a large income—she was quite complaisant. It was at this time that the Hotel de Charost was purchesed for the princess who was

only too happy to enjoy her new eminence and social prestige, and was briefly prepared to love her husband. Once more her tiresome brother intervened. To consolidate good relations with Italy he ordered the Borgheses to leave Paris and reside in Rome. Here Pauline, under his orders, exerted her charm to the full and won all hearts, but alas, Borghese did not come up to her expectations as a lover, and she remarked resentfully “I would rather have remained the widow of General Leclerc with an income of 20,000 francs than have become the wife of a eunuch!”

Napoleon, engaged upon his “great affairs” threatened to repudiate her if she did not immediately drop this mutinous behaviour, and the outward appearance of marriage was kept .up between them till the end of her life, though when she was at last permitted to return to Paris she did not to charge Borghese for his board and lodging every time he came to stay at the Hotel de Charost. The death of her little boy in 1804, and her subsequent ill-health brought her to a very low ebb, though it is to be noted that a really hectic love-affair was all that was needed to repair it. Napoleon proved his very real affection for her by providing handsomely for her extravagant way of life, but with his downfall her position became desperate, and with the help of the Pope’s intervention her abortive marriage was somehow patched up, and Borghese generously provided for her during her recurring bouts of illness until her death in 1825.

The author has a kindly eye for Pauline's scandalous weaknesses, and if the book has a failing it is that he allows himself to enter into her thoughts in a manner which detracts from its value as a factual biography, but it is an entertaining chronicle of a beautiful inconsequent woman who regarded the world as her oyster.