THE AMERICAN BONAPARTES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16927, 29 December 1922, Page 6

THE AMERICAN BONAPARTES.

DESCENDANTS OF JEROME. It may or may not be true that King Boris of Bulgaria is anxious to make an American Queen of Bulgaria; but it is quite certain that Napoleon's youngest brother, Jerome, married an American lady, who would have been Queer, of Westphajia. if she had not been “ kept out of her rights.” The incident (writes Francis Gribble in “John o’ London’s Weekly”) constitutes one of the lea.st-known chapters of Bonapartist biography, and is worth recalling. A DISAPPOINTED AMBITION. Jerome was a sailor, and Napoleon cherished the dream that he might grow up to be an Admiral, fit to cope with Nelson; but that was not to be. The British fleet chased him from pillar to post—from the West Indies to the. ! United States; and there he made the acquaintance of Miss Elizabeth Patterson. Her father was an Irish immigrant from County Donegal who had made a fortune by gun-running for "Washington. He was one of those typical Americans who readily turn their hands to any money-making enterprise ; and before he died he had been both a bank president and a railway director. Jerome fell in love with his daughter, and was married to her, bv the Bishop of Baltimore, on Christmas Eve. 1803. NO ADMITTANCE. Then the trouble began. .Napoleon, who was on the point of raising himself from the status of First Consul to that of Emperor, forbade the banns. Jerome, lie said, might have a mistress in America, but he could not possibly have a wife there, seeing that his mother’s consent to his marriage vas necessary, and had not been given. 1., therefore, Miss Patterson (whom he refused to call Mdme. Bonaparte) arrived at any European port under French, control, she would not he allowed to land. And he kept his word, Jerome pleading with him in vain. Mme. Bonaparte was refused admission, first at Lisbon and then at Amsterdam. Finally she took refuge in England, where her only sou, Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte, was born, in Park Place. Camberwell, on July 7, 1805.

Napoleon’s persecution continued. He told the Pope that, he wished the marriage dissolved, and he tried to bribe him to dissolve it with the gift ti a golden tiara decked with diamonds and rubies; but his Holiness replied that all the precedents had been examined and that no reason for nullifying it could be discovered. “ Marriages between Protestants and Catholics,” he wrote, “though disapproved of by the Church, are nevertheless regarded as valid,” whereupon the Emperor ignored his ruling and caused the union to be cancelled both by the Galilean Church and by ft civil tribunal. That is the beginning of the story of the American Bonapartes. The rest of it is mainly the record of Mme. "Bonaparte’s resolute determination to live up to the rank which she believed to bo rightly hers, to conciliate her Bonapartist relatives, to educate her son worthily, and to get him adequately married. To that end she brought him to Europe, shortly after the Napoleonic wars were over, sent him to school at Geneva, and took him to Rome, which was a veritable nest of Bonapartes at the time. “BO.” They were all very friendly, readily taking the view that “80. ’ as his mother called him, must be accepted as one of the family, and it was agreed among them that the best way of healing all differences would be for •‘Bo” to marry his cousin Charlotte, the daughter of Joseph Bonaparte, who was then living in exile in the United States. His father smiled on the proposal. and so did his uncle Louis, sometime- King of Holland, and so did Mme. Mere. Joseph, raised no objection, and the young lady herself was reputed to be willing. So “ 80, ’at the age of seventeen, was sent across the ocean • u search of a wife. When the young couple met. however. the negotiations were precipitately broken off. “Bo” was particular, and Charlotte was anything but a beauty. She was, in fact, extremely ugly, and a dwarf to hoot, so that “Bo” readily gave way to another suitor. Prince Aohille Murat, the son of the King of Naples. He, too, however, cried off*, preferring an American lady. Washington’s grand-niece, Miss Willis, and Charlotte eventually married the elder brother of the future Napoleon ITT. “Bo,” meanwhile, went to Harvard, where he distinguished himself nfto* being rusticated for drinking punch on a convivial occasion and then, in 1829. married Miss Susan May Williams. HER ONE COMFORT His mother was much annoyed, and wrote some very disagreeable letters cu the subject. Her one comfort was that the lady had money ; but she felt, nevertheless, that her son was marrying beneath him, just as she herself would have been if she had accepted the wealthiest and most distinguished American in America for a second husband. Mme. Bonaparte and her liusband were to meet once more, but not to speak. They passed each other, one day, in the Pitfci Gallery at Florence, and the ex-King of Westphalia was then heard to whisper to the ex-Queen ; “ Look there! That is my American wife!” “ Bo.” on the other hand, remained on friendly terms with his father and his other French relatives. Tim American) Bonapartes achieved ; considerable success in life. Mme. Bonaparte eventually returned to Am- : erica, where she lived to the. great age of ninety-four, dying in 1879. “Bo” had two sons, both of whom j did well. Mme. Bonaparte’s sister-in-law. Mrs j Robert Patterson, married, en seconder j ndees. the Duke of Wellington’s brother, the Marquess of Wellesley.