Tag Archives: Eliza Anderson

A Life of Wicked Idleness

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Before we turn to Eliza’s next adventure, let’s pause to examine the rest of her family–which will allow me to unburden myself of some information I’ve come across only in the last week or so.

As I mentioned, Eliza–after a disastrous early marriage that effectively left her the single parent of an infant daughter–lived with her father, Dr. John Crawford, in Baltimore. What I’ve only just discovered is that she also had a brother, named Thomas.

The small family–father, son, and daughter–had arrived in Baltimore in 1796 at the invitation of Crawford’s brother-in-law, a prominent Baltimore merchant named John O’Donnell. (Crawford’s wife–that is, Eliza’s mother–had died on a voyage from Barbados to England in 1782, when Eliza was only about two years old.) Before that, Crawford had left his native Ireland to study medicine in Holland and then practiced medicine in both the East and West Indies, where he’d had the opportunity to study tropical diseases–and, unfortunately, to contract them. In both 1782 and then again in 1794, ill health forced him to return from the West Indies to Britain to recuperate. After the second trip home he’d been planning to head back to Demerara–once a Dutch colony, now a British colony–when the invitation came from O’Donnell in Baltimore. Crawford accepted the invitation in hopes that “it might prove advantageous to his children.” Not to mention that, despite annual yellow fever outbreaks, Baltimore’s climate was pretty healthy compared to the West Indies.

Crawford was apparently in straitened financial circumstances when he arrived in Baltimore–O’Donnell put the family up in “an excellent well furnished house,” Crawford wrote to a friend, “and supplied me with money as long as I would receive it.” Which, he said, was only “until my earnings were in the barest manner sufficient to afford subsistence and cloathing for my Son and daughter and myself.” Lack of money appears to have been a chronic condition for Crawford. “Oh! how grievous it is to reflect upon the deranged state in which my affairs have been in almost my whole life,” he laments to his friend. But he had hopes that his luck was about to change. Alas for him, he wasn’t entirely right about that.

Crawford appears to have pinned his hopes partly on his son, Thomas. In 1799 he spent a portion of his still scarce money to send Thomas off to study medicine in London. There are hints, however, that Crawford has some doubts about Thomas’s potential. On the one hand, he tells his friend, the young man “has not discovered as yet an inclination to make sacrifices at the shrine of either Bacchus or Venus.” But on the other, “his genius is not very bright.” Still, he’s a hard worker and determined to excel. (In this same letter, Crawford tells his friend of Eliza’s marriage to Henry Anderson, who would abandon her less than two years later: he calls it a “union which has been highly to the satisfaction of every party, and promises much happyness.”)

Crawford keeps scrounging to send Thomas money for his education, but as the years go by danger signs begin to appear. In February 1802 Crawford writes to his friend that he hasn’t heard from Thomas in quite a while. The young man has his good points, Crawford says, “but I fear he wants those which I am most desirous to recognise, industry, and a most zealous inclination to acquire information in the way I propose…” Maybe the problem was an excess of money at his disposal: “I now perceive the allowance he has had has been too much__ It has furnished him with the means of indulgence in a way I never contemplated, and he has sought for opportunities to pass the time agreeably, when I intended to provide alone for his … application to the business in which he was engaged.” Apparently Thomas had by now discovered the allure of both Bacchus and Venus.

Ten months later Crawford still hasn’t heard from Thomas, and he seems to despair of him. “I fear his sun is nearly set,” he tells his friend, “but we must be resigned to the unsearchable ways of Heaven.” And that’s the last we hear of Thomas. As far as I can tell, neither Crawford nor Eliza every mentions him again.

In this same letter–of December 1802–Crawford says that Eliza “is doing very well. She is earnestly engaged in teaching the young idea how to shoot, and promises to excel in that line.” “Teaching the young idea how to shoot” is apparently an allusion to some now-forgotten poem, but what it means is she’s teaching school. Then, perhaps in a dig at the ne’er-do-well Thomas, Crawford exclaims, “How preferable is this to a life of unmeaning, rather let me say, of wicked idleness.”

This is a story that has no doubt been repeated throughout history: a son who has no particular interest in higher education has it forced on him, while a daughter who craves it is denied it. (Lest anyone think this kind of thing is a relic of the distant past, it happened in my own mother’s family, just a generation ago.) But while Eliza–who appears to have had a mind like a sponge–was denied formal education, it’s clear from her writing and correspondence that she learned plenty at home, presumably from her father.

What’s odd is that Thomas apparently just disappears. “Wicked” and idle as he may have been, he was still a member of the family. Of course, Eliza and her father may well have sat by the fire many a night and lamented Thomas’s absence; their thoughts just don’t happen to have been recorded in any of the letters or other writings that have come down to us.

But there is one more letter in the series I’ve been quoting from–all of them written to a Hugh McCalmont, first in Demerara, then in London. This last letter is from 1805, and it was written just after Eliza had returned from her sojourn in London with Betsy Bonaparte. Apparently she’d seen McCalmont there, and he’d been kind to her. You’d think, if her brother were still in London–or anywhere in the British Isles–she would have seen him there, or tried to. But there’s no mention of any such reunion, or attempt at one, in the 1805 letter to McCalmont. Apparently Thomas was now dead to the family–or perhaps, given the precariousness of life in the early 19th century, he was dead in a literal sense.

As we’ll soon find out, this was only one of poor Dr. Crawford’s many misfortunes.

Betsy Grows Bitter

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Eliza, at least, was undoubtedly delighted to arrive back home safely after her adventures with Betsy in Europe, and to be reunited with her father and her little girl.

Betsy was presumably bitterly disappointed that her mission had failed: she now had an infant son–a putative heir to the Bonaparte throne–but her husband was missing in action. She didn’t know yet whether Napoleon would be convinced to recognize her marriage, but in this instance no news must have looked like bad news. Still, she was determined to keep up appearances. As she wrote to her father from London about Jerome, “we must certainly act as if we supposed him possessed of some principle and honour.”

As it would turn out, he wasn’t. Or perhaps that’s being too harsh: Napoleon wasn’t an easy guy to stand up to. In any event, after a few ardent letters and lavish presents he sent to Betsy in 1805 and 1806, Jerome grew silent. And then in 1807 word came that he had acceded to his brother’s wishes and married royalty–Princess Frederica Catherina of Wurtemberg. It may not have been a love match, but the union enabled Jerome to become King of Westphalia–at least until Napoleon met his literal Waterloo.

Betsy essentially spent the rest of her life (and she lived to be 94) fighting to establish herself and her son as genuine Bonapartes. She never got the title she yearned for, and her son disappointed her by marrying a perfectly nice Baltimore girl instead of the royalty she would have preferred–an act that drove her, she said, to the brink of madness. (Apparently she didn’t get the irony here: her OWN marriage was annulled by Napoleon largely because SHE wasn’t royalty.) And eventually she got a court decision recognizing her son, Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte (nicknamed “Bo”), as a Bonaparte. But he wasn’t allowed to take his place in the line of succession for the French throne–which, of course, did end up in Bonaparte hands again for a while. (Her grandson, Charles Bonaparte, did become an Attorney General of the United States–but it’s unclear whether Betsy would have been impressed by that.)

And so we will basically leave the story of Betsy, which gets pretty boring and depressing. In the next installment we’ll switch our attention to Eliza. During her lifetime, Eliza may have felt herself to be in the shadow of her far more celebrated friend (or perhaps I should say “friend”). And lots more ink has been spilled over Betsy than Eliza–who hasn’t been written about by a historian in over 50 years. But as we’ll soon discover, what Eliza herself was about to accomplish was pretty impressive–and, I would argue, a lot more historically significant than anything Betsy ever did.

Back to Baltimore

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Sorry if I’ve left anyone hanging, but my Internet was out for a few days (not the whole explanation, but I’m not above resorting to it as an excuse).

In any event, after Betsy announced that “Mrs. Anderson” would be departing from England while the rest of the party wintered in London, there was an abrupt reversal. Betsy wrote to her father the next day, rather tersely, “Our plans are changed with respect to Mrs. Anderson–that is to say, Mrs. Anderson does not mean to go until next spring; therefore I do not send some things to Mama that I mentioned in my letter to her; but by the first good opportunity they shall be sent.”

Again, this seems a rather odd way to talk about a dear friend who has risked her life crossing the Atlantic to keep you company in your hour of need. Betsy writes as though Mrs. Anderson were some pawn in a chess game, with plans being made for her–when just the day before it had been Mrs. Anderson, anxious to return home, who was clearly doing the planning. What happened to her anxiety? Not to mention that the only reaction Betsy betrays to this turn of events is disappointment that she can’t send some things home to Mama.

The following day, August 16th, we get a bit more of an explanation–though not from Betsy. Betsy’s brother Robert, also in London, writes to his father that they have “prevailed on Mrs. Anderson to remain here, as it is possible I may find it necessary or beneficial to go to France; in which case it would be more proper that my sister should not be left alone.” This sounds like Robert’s decision more than Betsy’s. (By “left alone,” Robert apparently means without a female companion; another Patterson brother, William, was in London as well.)

It’s hard not to wonder if there hadn’t been some rift between the two women. After all, on the voyage over to Europe the captain describes the two of them happily passing the hours by gossiping about everyone and everything in Baltimore. Now Betsy’s tone about Eliza Anderson is almost as dismissive as the one she uses to describe the departure of a servant (perhaps a slave) in early September: “Prudence, who was of no earthly use, sailed in the Baltimore.”

Or maybe there hadn’t been a rift, and Betsy was just revealing her imperious, self-centered temperament, which was to come to the fore in the correspondence of her later years. Maybe her feelings of friendship for Eliza didn’t run very deep–although Eliza’s later letters to her (we don’t, alas, have any letters from Betsy to Eliza) seem to reflect a close relationship. Betsy certainly knew how to charm–as she’d thoroughly charmed her husband, Jerome Bonaparte. Maybe she simply deceived Eliza into thinking they were good friends.

In any event, plans soon changed once again. On September 27, 1805, everyone except Robert–which is to say, Betsy, her infant son, her brother William, and Eliza Anderson–embarked for America on the brig Mars. Crossing the Atlantic in late fall and winter was treacherous, and a departure at this late a date was risky. It’s not clear what prompted the decision to leave rather than wait until the spring, but it may have had something to do with a letter from Dr. Garnier, a French physician who had attached himself to Jerome Bonaparte, telling Betsy that Jerome wanted her to return to Baltimore. Betsy scoffed that the letter had “all the marks of a deception.” But still, things didn’t look promising.

The brig Mars safely delivered its passengers to Baltimore in mid-November. The most interesting part of Betsy’s life was now over–and she was only 20 years old. But the most interesting part of Eliza Anderson’s life was about to begin.

Betsy Has Her Baby

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So Betsy and Eliza settled in–first at a London hotel and then in some sort of rented quarters in the London suburb of Camberwell–to await (a) word from the errant Jerome, and (b) the birth of Betsy’s baby.

The second of these came sooner than the first. On July 7, 1805, Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte arrived in the world, with his birth certificate attested by a number of dignitaries, including the Austrian and Prussian ambassadors. Betsy must have been delighted that it was a boy–and therefore a potential heir to Napoleon’s throne–and she was taking no chances.

Meanwhile, Napoleon was launching an ultimately unsuccessful effort to get the Pope to declare Betsy and Jerome’s marriage invalid. In a wildly inaccurate letter, Napoleon claimed that his black sheep brother had married Betsy after having been in Baltimore only a month (in fact it was more like six), and that the marriage had been performed by a “Spanish priest” who had “sufficiently forgot his duties to pronounce the benediction” (in fact the officiating cleric was Archbishop John Carroll of Baltimore). His main argument, though, seems to be Betsy’s religion: it was important for France, he argued, that “there should not be a Protestant woman so close to me.” Just for good measure, Napoleon sent along a little present: a tiara of gold and jewels.

To the Pope’s credit, he refused to issue an annulment. Apologizing profusely, he said he simply couldn’t find anything that would authorize him to do so.

Jerome finally wrote to Betsy at the end of July from Genoa, where he was about to launch an expedition to North Africa to retrieve enslaved Christians. While he expresses his undying love for her and their child (who he assumes, correctly, has been born by now), he chides her for having chosen to give birth in the land of Napoleon’s sworn enemies: “what has undone us is your arrival in England.” Still, he urges patience and no badmouthing of the Emperor (“one should never irritate a sovereign,” he advises, perhaps from experience). If she hasn’t heard from Napoleon within two months, she’s to go to America–but not to lose hope: “Have confidence in your husband; be convinced that he breathes, dreams, works, only for you, yes, for you alone and for our child.”

The mails being what they were, this letter didn’t arrive in England for quite some time–not, in fact, until after Betsy had left. But during the late summer and early fall, there was apparently much dithering among Betsy’s party about what to do.

Betsy was apparently having a fine time, being fawned over by London’s elite–and its masses–as a noble victim of that scoundrel Napoleon. The papers treated it as news when she took a walk in the park or made a trip to the bank–and on the latter occasion reported that “some hundreds of persons assembled to see her return to her carriage, which waited at the front of the building.”

But Eliza, perhaps, was getting antsy. On August 14, Betsy wrote to her father that she intended to spend the winter in England, but that “Mrs. Anderson is extremely anxious to return to America, and, as she will be no material loss, she takes her departure in the `Robert.'” The tone of this letter may be what has given rise, in the popular literature about Betsy, to the idea that “Mrs. Anderson” was some elderly and unpleasant family friend or midwife: now that she’d assisted at the birth, good riddance. It was certainly a rather callous way to speak of someone who had left behind her father and small daughter and risked her life to accompany her friend to Europe. One historian has suggested that Eliza’s anxiousness to return to Baltimore had something to do with an inheritance she’d just come into. But what mother wouldn’t be anxious to return to a five-year-old she hadn’t seen for five months?

But soon enough, plans changed …

Betsy Boffo in Britain

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On May 18, 1805, the ship Erin–with Betsy Bonaparte and the rest of her party aboard–dropped anchor off the coast of Dover and apparently sent someone ashore to procure passports. In a sign of how slowly news traveled in the early 19th century, that same day the London Morning Courier reported–in an item dated “Madrid, April 10”–that Betsy had just embarked from Lisbon on her way to Holland.

Betsy’s reception in England was considerably warmer than what she had met with in Amsterdam. Her fame, already widespread in the United States, had preceded her, and her rough treatment at Napoleon’s hands apparently trumped her familial connection to the Bonapartes and stirred British sympathies. Not that they would have needed much stirring, given that Britain was at war with France and Napoleon was roundly despised.

On May 20, the Morning Courier–now fully apprised of Betsy’s whereabouts–heaped scorn on “the French, who boast so much of their gallantry to females” but had prevented the pregnant Betsy from landing. Here in England, the Courier added, Betsy “knew she would be hospitably entertained.” A few days later the paper again took up the theme: “In [her] distress she turned her thoughts towards England, a country where neither enmity, politics, or warfare, ever yet extinguished the feelings of humanity and the spirit of gallantry. In England she found an asylum.”

According to newspaper reports, when Betsy landed at Dover, she was greeted by an enthusiastic crowd whose numbers the Courier described as “almost past calculation.” Another report said that the man escorting Betsy from the ship was able to get her to her waiting carriage only “with the greatest exertions” because of the pressure of the crowd. The reports noted that Betsy seemed pleased by the attention.

No doubt she was also gratified to read the many encomiums to her beauty. “The personal attraction[s] of Madame Jerome Bonaparte have been reported through every part in Europe,” remarked the Courier (which was on this story like a glove). “Nor has her elegance been too much celebrated. Her figure is about the middle size; her countenance sweet and expressive; and her general deportment such as must interest and engage the heart of every beholder.”

Poor Eliza. Initial reports described her as simply “a female,” although a later one reported her name and called her one of Betsy’s “beautiful countrywomen.” Still, I can’t help wondering if the imbalance in attention might not have caused some friction between the two women–as a comment by Betsy a few months later suggests.

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.