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Napoleon Wins Round One

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It was now clear to Betsy Bonaparte and her traveling companions–which included her friend Eliza Anderson–that, despite the fact that Betsy was pregnant with his niece or nephew, Napoleon wasn’t going to let them land in any port that he controlled. That would include Amsterdam, where they were currently moored, under armed guard. The same day that the ship Erin finally received fresh provisions from the Dutch Admiral, the ship’s captain also received a written order to leave the port–as though, after they’d almost come under fire from the Dutch, there could possibly be any doubt about whether they were welcome.

So, where to go next? At this point Napoleon controlled enough European territory that there weren’t many options. Of course, one possibility would have been to turn around and sail back to the United States. And Betsy’s husband Jerome had been ordered by Napoleon to tell her to do just that (although there’s no evidence he had sent her such a message at this point). But–given that Betsy was due in only two months, and sea voyages could easily take six weeks–an Atlantic crossing was risky. Besides, Captain Stephenson apparently had other cargo to deliver to Amsterdam and needed to return, once he had rid himself of his problematic human cargo. Nor was Betsy ready to give up on her hopes that Jerome would convince his brother to recognize the marriage.

Betsy’s own brother Robert, who was in Holland on business and had heard of the stand-off in Amsterdam harbor, desperately tried to get a message to her telling her to proceed to Emden, in Germany. But apparently that message never got through.

It’s not clear exactly how the discussion unfolded, because Captain Stephenson reports rather laconically that “when the wind came fair we put to sea and after we were outside debated where we should go[.] [W]hen it being determined for England, we made for that country and next afternoon anchored off Dover.” (Betsy, alas, was even more laconic, reducing the whole episode to the comment, “not being permitted to land in Holland obliged to go to England.” It’s really too bad we don’t have Eliza’s impressions of the Amsterdam adventure. Judging from what I’ve read of her letters, she would have provided quite a vivid account.)

England was, in some ways, a logical choice: it was close by, and–given that England and France were at war–Napoleon certainly wasn’t going to be able to prevent them from landing there. But, if Betsy was still hoping to curry favor with her putative brother-in-law, choosing to have her baby in the land of his sworn enemies, the British, probably wasn’t the smartest move.

Betsy and Eliza vs. Napoleon, Part III

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So, back to Betsy and Eliza and their party, hovering near the mouth of the Amsterdam harbor in May of 1805…

According to the captain of the ship, Stephenson (whose journal is transcribed in a 1953 article in Maryland Historical Magazine by Dorthy Quynn and Frank White), a few hours after the incident with the confused pilot, the Erin was forcibly put under guard between two armed warships. And, “by way of doubly securing us if it was not already done,” two additional boats rowed around the Erin all night.

The next day, buffeted by strong winds, the passengers on the Erin began to feel the want of food: a month had now transpired since their last stop, in Lisbon, and they had expected to land in Amsterdam some days before. “Our fresh provisions were all consumed,” Captain Stephenson recorded, “and we found ourselves reduced to salt Beef and Biscuit, fare not very well relished by passengers particularly ladies.” And of course, at this point Betsy–seven months pregnant–was eating for two.

The captain tried to communicate the problem to the armed sloop hovering nearby–many times. “To all of which someone on board with true Dutch Sang-froid answered Yaw, Yaw, and paid us no further attention.”

Then, for some reason, the Dutch ordered the Erin to unmoor, despite the strong winds–which resulted in the ship being blown too close to the armed sloop. At that point, someone on the sloop “told us that if we came near enough to touch him, they would fire into us, and send us to the Bottom, and that we might fully comprehend the force of his generous offer, he repeated it in very good English.”

It’s clear from the journal that Stephenson himself had more than a little sang froid, or at least a dry sense of humor. He follows this report with the comment that “we could not reconcile ourselves [to the] thought of drowning, especially in a climate as cold as Holland is, where to drown is a double death, as you are sure of being half frozen before you get comfortably full of Water…”

He goes on to say that no one “but the principal officers” knew why armed force was being used to prevent the Erin from landing. He later found out that various rumors were circulating: the ship was carrying yellow fever, or “combustibles to destroy the Dutch fleet.” Some even thought the Erin–an unarmed merchant ship–had “some designs of taking Holland.” The captain added, “It never once entered the heads of those poor people that all this stir was only to prevent a man and wife coming together.”

Stephenson then came under pressure from the passengers–particularly Betsy’s brother William–to send out one of the Erin’s lifeboats in an attempt to procure some food. The captain strongly urged against this plan, saying it was too risky, but at length was obliged to give in. William Patterson, accompanied by “the surgeon” (a Dr. Garnier, who presumably was around to attend to the pregnant Betsy), and some seamen set off in the boat, but there was an immediate outcry from the warships. The captain called to “Mr. P.–told him it would be madness to push the business any farther as the guns were pointed and matches holding over them.”

The sight of guns pointed at them seemed at last to have a discouraging effect on the boating party, and they turned back. The captain remarked that “the surgeon who was warm for going appeared to be in full as great a hurry to get back, as he did not take time to step into the ship but rolled over the ship’s side in on deck.”

The whole abortive incident at least caught the attention of the Dutch admiral–who apparently hadn’t understood the situation–and the next day “brought a full supply of everything, an assortment of wines and liquors, and a very polite message from the Admiral.”

At least Betsy and Eliza and the rest had something decent to eat and drink. Now–since it was pretty clear they weren’t going to be landing in Amsterdam–the only question was where to go next.

Betsy and Eliza vs. Napoleon, Part II

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After the elderly pilot scampered off into the Amsterdam harbor–fearing for his life because he had almost disobeyed Napoleon’s orders to prevent the ship Erin from landing–Betsy Bonaparte and her little traveling party (including her friend Eliza Anderson) were somewhat demoralized, to say the least. When the circumstances were explained to Betsy, the ship’s captain said, “they afflicted her very much, as it at once proved to her, she would not be received by the French government.”

Here we might pause to consider what had happened to Betsy’s errant husband Jerome, who had parted from her in Lisbon with the promise that he would see his brother Napoleon and convince him to recognize the marriage. Jerome has taken something of a beating from historians and commentators in light of what later transpired, but all the evidence from 1805 indicates that, (a) he really did love Betsy, and (b) he did try, sort of, to get Napoleon’s approval.

Shortly after they parted in Lisbon, Jerome wrote to Betsy: “Don’t cry because tears do no good and may do you much harm… Take care not to receive visitors or to make visits and to have someone always with you either Mrs. Anderson, the doctor, or William… I embrace you as I love you, and you know that I love you very much…” A few days later, Jerome ran into some old friends on the road–the Duchesse d’Abrantes and her husband, who had just been appointed Napoleon’s ambassador to Portugal. Jerome eagerly showed the couple a portrait of Betsy, according to the Duchesse, and then said, “Judge, then, whether I can abandon a being like her; especially when I assure you that to a person so exquisitely beautiful are united every quality that can render a woman amiable.” The Duchesse, who had known Jerome in his black sheep youth, “could not help remarking a wonderful alteration in his manners. He was sedate–nay, almost serious.”

On May 3–almost a month after he’d left Betsy in Lisbon, and only a few days before Betsy tried unsuccessfully to land in Amsterdam–Jerome wrote to her from Italy, where Napoleon was then ensconced. He was clearly optimistic, telling Betsy that he would be meeting with the Emperor the next day and that he and Betsy would be reunited (he doesn’t specify where) during the first half of June. But a few days later Napoleon sent word to Jerome that he would meet with him only if he renounced Betsy and ordered her to go home.

Jerome had previously assured Betsy that if he failed in his mission he would simply withdraw “with my little family in no matter what corner of the world.” But when push came to shove, he gave in to Napoleon’s demand–perhaps by a return letter of the very same day. Why? He later told Betsy that his plan was to prove himself valiant in battle and then ask for Betsy as his reward. It’s also possible that Napoleon wasn’t about to let him leave quietly–he’d already threatened Jerome with arrest if he deviated from the route prescribed for him from Lisbon to Italy. And it’s possible that Jerome suspected that his charming but ambitious little wife wouldn’t have lived too happily ever after in obscurity in “no matter what corner of the world.”

Here’s one thing that puzzles me, though: Napoleon apparently sent word to Jerome in Lisbon, before he left, that Betsy would be prevented from landing in Amsterdam. So why didn’t Jerome warn her, and tell her to go somewhere else? It’s possible that Jerome never got, or didn’t understand, that part of Napoleon’s orders. When he wrote to Betsy in April, shortly after they parted, he addressed his letter to her in Amsterdam (under the pseudonym they’d adopted in Lisbon, d’Albert). So he must have thought she’d be able to land there.

In any event, Betsy and Eliza and the rest of the party knew nothing of what was transpiring in Italy, and they were clearly unprepared for the hostile reception they had gotten in Holland–which, though technically not part of Napoleon’s empire, was ruled by a puppet government. And things were about to get even more hostile…

Betsy and Eliza vs. Napoleon

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So: On April 9, 1805, Jerome Bonaparte went off to see his brother Napoleon, who was then in Northern Italy, leaving his wife Betsy and her companion Eliza Anderson behind in Lisbon. “Mon mari est parti,” Betsy wrote in her notebook, adopting the language of what she hoped would soon become her adoptive country.

At this point Betsy was 5 or 6 months pregnant. Originally the young couple may have set off for Europe in hopes that their baby would be born on French soil, thus perhaps strengthening the validity of their marriage in Napoleon’s eyes. Napoleon himself had no heir yet, and presumably another Bonaparte — a little boy Bonaparte, that is — would have been a welcome addition to the family.

But by the time Jerome and Betsy left Baltimore, the plan had apparently been amended: after Jerome was let off the boat in Lisbon, the rest of the party would proceed to Amsterdam, where they assumed Betsy would be allowed to land and have her baby. A letter to Betsy from her father, addressing her as “My Dear Daughter” and dated the day before her departure from Baltimore, instructs her to proceed to Amsterdam and await word from Jerome that he’d arranged for her to be received by the Bonaparte family. Her brother Robert was in Holland attending to business and would be able to provide for her needs until word arrived. If Jerome proved unsuccessful, Betsy was to return home as soon as possible. (A later note written on the document in Betsy’s hand — she apparently loved to annotate her correspondence in her declining years — says, “He never addressed me as his dear daughter after the day of my destiny was over & the Star of my fate had declined.” Indeed, the relationship between father and daughter was soon to deteriorate dramatically.)

And so the ship Erin set off from Lisbon for Amsterdam–its passengers apparently unaware that Napoleon had decreed that Betsy would not be allowed to land there. The journey was much rougher than the trip across the Atlantic had been — “a very tedious and uncomfortable passage,” according to the captain, that took 26 days, longer than the transatlantic voyage.

When they got near the Amsterdam harbor, they waited two or three days for a pilot to guide them in. When none appeared, the captain determined, “with no little Risk and Anxiety,” to bring the ship into harbor without one. As they neared the harbor an elderly pilot appeared and began to guide the ship in. But within a few minutes a shot was fired as a signal for them to halt. “I asked the pilot if this was customary,” the captain recorded. “He told me it was not. Yet no one suspected anything uncommon from it.”

A few minutes later, another pilot boat came along and asked “if we belonged to Baltimore” and if they had come from Lisbon. When the captain answered in the affirmative, this second pilot told them they couldn’t land, and left. “Our old pilot,” the captain related, “now seemed to awaken as from a dream and was excessively frightened.” He had suddenly recalled that pilots had been forbidden from bringing in this very ship, and “concluded by assuring us that if his age did not protect him he would be hung and would no doubt as it was get a severe flogging and imprisonment.”

The pilot was in fact imprisoned. But the little party out of Lisbon hadn’t yet felt the full strength of Napoleon’s wrath.

Eliza and the Bonapartes Land in Lisbon

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I was regaling friends at a dinner party last night with tales of Betsy and Eliza — and it reminded me that I’ve left my readers (whoever you may be) hanging. So, what kinds of adventures did Eliza encounter when she sailed across the Atlantic with Jerome and Betsy Bonaparte?

They left Baltimore in a merchant ship called the Erin, apparently chartered by Betsy’s wealthy father. As I’ve mentioned, keeping their departure a secret was of the utmost importance, given that the British were at war with France and would have liked nothing better than to capture Napoleon’s youngest brother. The captain of the Erin acknowledged in his journal that “The Embarkation of these persons on board the Erin was intended to be kept a secret, yet nothing was less so, each of the ladies protested their Innocence of divulging the Voyage, and one of them it is very possible may not have spoken of it. But certain it is the great secret was known in my family indirectly from the other one.”

Despite the lack of discretion, the ship somehow didn’t come under fire from the British, and the little party–which consisted of Betsy, Jerome, Eliza, Betsy’s brother William, and several other servants and hangers-on–made their way safely across the Atlantic in a mere three weeks. The only difficulty they encountered was seasickness. (Jerome, in his charmingly fractured English, wrote to Betsy’s father that Betsy had been “been very sick, but you know as well as anybody that seasick never has killed no body.” Jerome may have sounded like the old salt he affected to be, but, according to the captain, Jerome himself had been plenty seasick as well.) The captain reported that the ladies amused themselves by gossiping about people back in Baltimore: “The subjects of it could not had they known all that passed been the least offended, for … no one was spared.”

Their destination was Lisbon, presumably since it was technically not under Napoleon’s control. They had every reason to believe that Napoleon wouldn’t be exactly welcoming to Betsy, since he’d expressly forbidden Jerome from bringing her back to Europe with him. Still, even at Lisbon the Bonapartes used an assumed name. It apparently fooled no one (aside from the benighted Portuguese, who, according to the ship’s captain, were kept in “such a state of Ignorance that Napoleon himself might have been with us, without their knowing or caring about it, providing he had no troops with him”). Various “distinguished personages” came to call on the Bonapartes at their hotel, including the Spanish ambassador and the Papal Nuncio–who was described by the ship’s captain, apparently no lover of Catholics, as “a canting, whining priest.”

As planned, Jerome bade his wife farewell after a few days and set out overland to find his brother the Emperor and plead with him to recognize the marriage. The ship’s captain thought Jerome was headed to Paris, and it’s possible Betsy and the others thought so as well. But in fact, Jerome had found orders from Napoleon awaiting him in Lisbon: he was to go meet Napoleon in northern Italy, according to a specified route. If he deviated from it he would be arrested. The orders also said that Betsy would not be allowed to land in France or Holland, and that she should return to America immediately. It’s not clear that Jerome passed this information along either — in fact, given what happened next, it seems that he didn’t.

Eliza, Betsy, and Napoleon–Part 2

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So, as I was saying, Betsy and her husband Jerome Bonaparte decided to try once more to sail from Baltimore to Europe to try to convince Jerome’s brother–the Emperor Napoleon–to recognize the validity of their marriage.

On at least one of the previous abortive attempts at crossing the Atlantic–the one that ended in a shipwreck–Betsy had brought along an unmarried female relative of hers, Nancy Spear, as a companion. There’s no explanation of exactly why she brought Miss Spear along, but the couple may have anticipated some difficulty that would require them to be separated.

But when Jerome and Betsy decided, in March 1805, to attempt the voyage yet again, Betsy brought along not Miss Spear (who may have been reluctant to go to sea again after that shipwreck) but her brother William and her friend Eliza Anderson. At this point Betsy was several months pregnant, so a female companion who could hold her hand during a possible delivery may have seemed like a good idea.

The mention of a “Mrs. Anderson” on this voyage has led some of the many historical novelists who have taken a crack at Betsy’s story to conclude that she was an older “family friend”–“sour and efficient” as one author characterized her–with experience as a sort of midwife.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Eliza Anderson was 25 at the time, only five years older than Betsy, and the two had been friends from their youth. Although no letters between them survive from this time, later letters suggest that Eliza felt a partly maternal, partly sisterly interest in Betsy–sometimes urging her to read the “metaphysical writers” that Eliza herself found consoling in times of despair (she mentions works such as William Paley’s Moral Philosophy and Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments), sometimes chiding her to curb her notoriously acid tongue.

We don’t know exactly why Betsy chose Eliza to accompany on her voyage, but at this point both of them held a somewhat marginal position in Baltimore’s elite society, which may have strengthened their bond. Betsy was the daughter of one of the state’s wealthiest men, William Patterson (second in wealth only to Charles Carroll of Carrollton, according to Thomas Jefferson). But her reputation had suffered as a result of her controversial marriage, her air of superiority, and her scandalous manner of dress (she favored the new French neoclassical style–no corset, thin material–leading Americans to complain that she was appearing in public nearly naked). Basically, a lot of people in Baltimore couldn’t stand her–just as she couldn’t stand them.

As for Eliza, her father was a respected, but far from wealthy, doctor. Probably as a result of family connections and her father’s eminence, Eliza was friendly with the daughters of Baltimore’s leading families, including not only Betsy but the three Caton sisters, granddaughters of Charles Carroll. But her position in society was even more precarious than Betsy’s. At the age of 19 she had made an ill-advised marriage of her own, to a Henry Anderson. After about a year, during which he fathered a daughter, Henry abandoned his family, apparently after going bankrupt.

So in 1805, when Betsy asked Eliza to accompany her to Europe, Eliza was essentially a single mother, living a life of genteel poverty in the shadow of far wealthier friends and relatives. We can safely assume that her life lacked glamor and adventure. How could she resist Betsy’s invitation to sail to Europe and possibly be received at the court of the Emperor Napoleon, even if it meant leaving behind her four-year-old daughter and risking her life on the high seas, where there lurked not only natural disasters but also the British navy, on high alert for Jerome’s rumored crossing?

Well, actually, I probably would have said no myself. But Eliza was apparently made of stronger, and more adventurous, stuff.

And as we shall see, she got plenty of adventure.

Eliza, Betsy, and Napoleon

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And so, to pick up where I left off — alas, some weeks ago now — I decided to try to find out more about this woman Eliza Anderson, the author of these three delightful and intriguing letters to Betsy Bonaparte in 1808. Nothing much had been written about her in recent times, but the magazine of the Maryland Historical Society had published three articles about her: one in 1934, one in 1941, and one in 1957. Of these, only one focused exclusively on Eliza. The others were about her and her second husband, the French architect Maximilian Godefroy.

The more I read about her — and the more of her letters I came across — the more intrigued I became. I already knew from the three letters I had read that she was witty, intrepid, defiant of social conventions — and an excellent writer. Here are some other things I discovered:

In 1805, when she was about 25, Eliza accompanied her friend Betsy Patterson Bonaparte on a risky voyage across the Atlantic. Why so risky? Aside from the fact that all ocean travel was risky in that era, there was a war going on between the British and the French. And if the British figured out exactly who was in THIS ship, they would have found it a most attractive target.

Betsy’s last name is a clue to what the problem was: a little over a year before, at the age of 18, Betsy had impulsively married Napoleon Bonaparte’s 19-year-old brother. Betsy’s wealthy father had given his consent to the marriage with great reluctance — after doing everything he could to break up the romance — because he feared that Napoleon would object. And indeed, Napoleon, who became Emperor shortly after the marriage took place, was livid when he found out what Jerome had done. He had other plans for his siblings, namely using them to form alliances with the royal houses of Europe. And Jerome’s marriage had occurred during an unauthorized leave from his military duties in the West Indies. Napoleon ordered him back to France at one — without the “young person” he claimed to have married.

After some dithering, Jerome and Betsy resolved to head back to France together and plead their case before the Emperor. But because the British would have liked nothing better than to capture their enemy Napoleon’s brother, the young couple had to guard their plans with as much secrecy as they could. As it turned out, they weren’t capable of a whole lot of secrecy, and rumors of their attempted departures (some true, some false) kept showing up in the newspapers. Finally, they managed to embark, only to be shipwrecked rather spectacularly only a few hours later. Everyone was saved, but according to reports, when rescued the passengers were “nearly naked.”

This attempt was followed a few weeks later by another one that proved equally abortive: soon after sailing, the ship encountered an armed British frigate and turned back. Then it was winter, when an Atlantic crossing was too perilous to undertake. But finally, in March of 1805, Jerome and Betsy decided to try once more.

And this is where Eliza comes into the story…

Divorce, 19th-Century Style

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Okay, I think it’s time to say a few more words about Eliza Anderson Godefroy, the woman I mentioned a few blog posts back.

I stumbled across her while researching what I thought was going to be a historical novel about a woman named Betsy Bonaparte, a Baltimore heiress who married Napoleon Bonaparte’s youngest brother, Jerome, in 1803 (she was 18, he was 19). Betsy’s correspondence and papers are housed in the library of the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore, and there are a daunting number of them. As I was going through the first of 20 boxes, I came across three letters written to Betsy in 1808 that stopped me in my tracks.

They were far better written and far more interesting than anything Betsy herself had produced (at least, from what I’ve read of her correspondence — and I’ve now read a lot). And they were all written by a woman named Eliza Anderson, who had gone off in pursuit of her ne’er-do-well husband. He had married Eliza some nine years before when she was 19, fathered a child with her, and then quickly abandoned the family.

Why was Eliza pursuing him now? Because she had fallen in love with another man, a French architect named Maximilian Godefroy, and she wanted a divorce. Divorce wasn’t easy in those days: you had to petition the legislature for a private law granting you a divorce, and you had to prove adultery. For some reason, Eliza had gone from Baltimore to Trenton, New Jersey, to get her divorce. After some time there, she decided that her lawyers weren’t doing enough to track down her errant husband and obtain proof of adultery (not an affair, as she remarked, “to which men usually call witnesses”). So she decided to go to Albany, where she thought he was, and track him down herself.

One of her letters describes the steamship journey up what must have been the Hudson — the crowd of passengers jammed tightly on board, the relentless sun, the “smoke & glowing delights which Lucifer prepares for his faithful followers.” She waxed lyrical about the mountains and the rising sun that shone on the clouds, so that they “looked like other & more distant hills bordered with silver.” And, moving on to her arrival in Albany, she expressed her disgust with her cad of a husband, who — in addition to his other faults — had now descended to working as a fisherman and “associating cheerfully with servants.” But she got what she came for: he not only confessed to adultery, but also ultimately provided the name of a witness of sorts, a Baltimore physician (perhaps the provider of an abortion?).

Who was this spirited woman whose writing was so engaging, I wondered? I had to know. And so I found myself getting sidetracked from my research into Betsy — who was, in addition to being a mediocre letter-writer, a pretty unpleasant person — and getting more and more intrigued by Eliza.

I’ll share some more of my discoveries about her in my next post.

Well, Hello Fanny!

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Sometimes ignorance is, if not bliss, at least a state that makes it more likely you’ll engage in that willing suspension of disbelief that is so crucial to immersion in someone else’s imagination.

Last night I saw the movie Bright Star, which is set in the 1820s and based on the romance between John Keats and, literally, the girl next door, a young woman named Fanny Brawne. (I realize my previous blog post was also about a movie — it’s actually very unusual for me to see two movies in the space of a few days!) It’s an engaging, terrifically romantic movie (fittingly, since it’s about a Romantic poet). And what’s more, the period details seem spot on and not prettied up. There’s laundry hanging out to dry, lots of mud (I kept worrying about the hems of those lovely empire-style dresses), and the actors — even the female ones — seem to be wearing little or no make-up, which gives them an authentically scrubbed and slightly raw look. And, according to Caleb Crain in a recent issue of The New York Times Magazine, the screenwriter, Jane Campion, incorporated phrases and ideas from Keats’s letters into the dialogue.

But right at the beginning, there’s a detail that I, for one, found jarring. As Fanny Brawne and her family arrive at the house of some friends, there’s a chorus of greetings: Hello, Hello, Hello. Over and over. What’s the problem? The word “hello” didn’t actually come into common usage as a greeting until much later in the 19th century — not until Thomas Edison decided that “hello” would make a good word to use when picking up the phone (Alexander Graham Bell favored “ahoy”). Before that, it appears to have been something people said primarily to express surprise or to get someone’s attention. If you wanted to greet someone in the early 19th century, you would probably have said “good morning” or some variation appropriate to the time of day.

It’s true that Wikipedia suggests that “hullo” may have been used as a greeting in England, as opposed to the U.S., as early as 1803. But the point is that, for me, even thinking about whether these people would actually have said “hello” broke the spell that the movie was trying to cast. For a few moments at least, I was no longer in the front hall of a house in Hampstead in 1828; I was in a movie theater around the corner from my house, in November 2009.

And therein lies one of the dangers of historical movie-making — or historical fiction. You always have to sweat the details, on the off chance that some viewer or reader will know more than you do. (And it’s clear that Caleb Crain was distracted by a slightly different but related question, i.e., whether Keats really would have spoken the way he did in the movie.) That’s one reason it was such a relief to work on a contemporary novel over the past few months: I could be quite confident that my period details were indisputably authentic.

But ultimately, last night, I forgot about all those “hellos,” forgot the fact that I was in a movie theater, and gave myself over to the movie itself. And, knowing how difficult it is to get every nuance “right,” I can’t really bring myself to chastise Jane Campion for what appears to be an anachronism.

Actually, I just kind of wish I’d never heard that “hello” was a late 19th-century invention.

The Author

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Watching the movie The Soloist this weekend put me in mind of an encounter I had recently, one that continues to haunt me.

The Soloist — which I highly recommend, by the way — is a true story about the relationship between a journalist, Steve Lopez, and a homeless man, Nathaniel Ayers. When Ayers, who is playing a two-stringed violin on the street and is pretty obviously schizophrenic, mentions something about having gone to Juilliard, Lopez does some research and finds out it’s true: the guy was once a promising cellist. Lopez writes about Ayers and helps him get a cello, reunite with his family, and move off the street.

Here’s my own experience: a couple of weeks ago I was leaving the Library of Congress after an intense day researching the woman I’m currently writing about, Eliza Anderson Godefroy. Outside on the deserted pedestrian walk, I saw something that turned out to be a couple of crumpled dollar bills. I picked them up but I felt funny about taking them: I didn’t need this money. I resolved that I would give them to the first homeless person I saw on my way to the Union Station Metro stop.

There’s generally no shortage of homeless people hanging out in front of Union Station. When I got to the first of the pedestrian islands you cross in order to get to the station itself, I found no fewer than four homeless people clustered there, begging cups at the ready. What to do? How could I choose between them? If there had been only two, I could have given them each a dollar bill. But there were four.

I hurried on, intent on making my train. But at the next pedestrian island — at the side of the ornate fountain depicting Columbus staring forth boldly from the prow of his ship — there was a lone scruffy-looking middle-aged African-American man seated on the ground, a knit cap pulled low over his brow. Quickly, I stuffed my dollar bills into his cup and began to move on.

But he thanked me and called me back — and, surprised by his clearly articulated, unaccented English, I turned around.

“I want to tell you something,” he said crisply as I drew closer. “I want you to go to the Library of Congress.”

“That’s where I just came from!” I said.

“Well, I want you to go there and look me up in the card catalogue,” he continued. “Rod Amis. A-M-I-S. There are three of us: Kingsley, Martin, and me. They’re British — and I’m half-British myself. Anyway, go to the Library of Congress. You’ll see I’ve written 11 books. You’ll find them there.”

I was amazed. The specificity of his description (not 10 books, but 11) and his obvious acquaintance with literature (he was familiar with Kingsley and Martin Amis, neither of them shlock writers) were convincing. Eleven books?? I wanted to ask what had happened to him, how he had ended up propped up against a marble fountain, begging for spare change.

But I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. Instead I told him that I too was an author — that I had a book (only one) in the Library of Congress myself. I told him that I would be sure to look him up and that I had enjoyed meeting him. He gave me a warm, slightly surprised smile and nodded graciously.

I couldn’t get Mr. Amis out of my mind during my ride on the Metro. And as soon as I got home I looked him up in the online catalog for the Library of Congress. To my dismay, I was told that my search had found no results. I tried again, then again. I tried a Google search and found a Rod Amis who had self-published a couple of books, but who was clearly not the same Rod Amis I’d met.

Finally I had to face the fact that I’d been duped. And yet, I couldn’t feel annoyed at Mr. Amis for taking me in. Maybe he hasn’t written 11 books — maybe he hasn’t written any books — but he’s clearly got a story of some sort to tell. I’ll probably never know what it is. And I’m certainly not going to get a book out of the encounter, the way Steve Lopez did.

But what I did get out of it was a moment of connection with someone I had dismissed as just another homeless person. Whether or not Mr. Amis is a fellow author, we at least have — or perhaps in his case, had — similar aspirations. And my gut feeling is that Mr. Amis actually believed what he was telling me — it was not so much a matter of lying as of confused realities. What’s more, the look on his face when I told him I was glad to have met him — words he probably doesn’t hear too much — is something I hope I’ll never forget.

And those words were true.

ADDENDUM: After I published the foregoing blog post, I heard from an old friend of Rod Amis’s. It turns out that the “Rod Amis” I found through Google IS the same Rod Amis I met. I had dismissed the possibility because the Rod Amis I found had written a book about New Orleans, and I just assumed he’d still be in N.O. But apparently Mr. Amis has now migrated to D.C. Lest there be any doubt, there are pictures of him in front of Union Station — displaying a sign that says “Rod Amis … Author, Raconteur, Bon Vivant” — accompanying a posting about him at npr.org by Debbie Elliott.

So I stand corrected: Mr. Amis has in fact written at least two books (I could only find mention of two) and was a pioneer in (ironically, since I’m writing a blog post) the blogging world. The comments I came across online about his writing were almost uniformly enthusiastic — and from what little I read, the enthusiasm is justified.

According to the NPR post, Mr. Amis has “slowly lost the use of his brain because of a vitamin deficiency often brought on by alcoholism” — possibly an occupational hazard of his former profession as a bartender. I would amend that: he clearly hasn’t entirely lost the use of his brain, although it’s likely his writing days are over.

I was also wrong about another thing: as Mr. Amis’s friend observed in his e-mail, a book could certainly be written about this man. Alas, I don’t think I’m the person to write it.

What I’d really like to be able to do is figure out some way to get Mr. Amis off the street and into some kind of safe shelter — especially on a day like today, so cold and wet that I myself am reluctant to venture outside even for a moment. It pains me to think that Mr. Amis — or anyone else for that matter — is spending an entire day unprotected from weather like this, weather that’s only going to get worse in the coming weeks and months.