Part 3

Of all the misfortunes of his life, the heaviest were to fall upon him that year. A month after her father's arrival in New York, and while her heart was yet rejoicing that he had been kindly received, the young life of Theodosia's son, full of beauty and promise, closed. "I will not conceal from you," wrote Alston to his father-in-law, "that life is a burden, which, heavy as it is, we shall support, if not with dignity, at least with decency and firmness. Theodosia has endured all that a human being could endure, but her admirable mind will triumph. She supports herself in a manner worthy of your daughter."

Theodosia longed to see her father. We were at war with England at the time, and her husband, governor of his State and general of militia, could not leave his post of duty to accompany her to New York. Her health was so feeble that she could not safely attempt the journey alone. Her father's old friend Timothy Green offered his services, going from New York to bring her north. Under his care, and accompanied by her maid, Theodosia sailed from Charleston on the "Pilot" on the 30th of December, 1812. Save by her fellow passengers on the ill-fated vessel, she was never seen or heard of again. A violent storm swept the coast on the following day, and it has been supposed that the "Pilot," with all on board, went down off Cape Hatteras. After weeks and months of despairing silence, father and husband gave her up. Burr during this period of torturing suspense acquired a habit which clung to him to the end of his life,--of wistfully scanning the horizon for ships as he walked on the battery, then the popular resort of all New Yorkers.

Two or three years after she had gone from their lives, her husband sent a chest of her belongings, which he had not had the courage to open, to her father. "What a fate, poor thing!" sighed Burr, as he recognized the familiar articles. Among the contents was a letter addressed, "To my husband. To be delivered after my death and before my burial." It was dated August 6, 1805, and had been written during an absence of her husband from home, at a time when, being depressed in health and spirits, she feared that death was approaching. After leaving some remembrance to the various members of her husband's family, and begging her husband to provide for Peggy, an old servant, she says,--

"Death is not welcome. I confess it is ever dreaded. You have made me too fond of life. Adieu then, thou kind, thou tender husband. Adieu, friend of my heart. May Heaven prosper you, and may we meet hereafter. Adieu; perhaps we may never see each other again in this world. You are away, I wished to hold you fast, and prevent you from going this morning. But He who is wisdom itself ordains events; we must submit to them. Least of all should I murmur, I, on whom so many blessings have been showered, whose days have been numbered by bounties, who have had such a husband, such a child, such a father. Oh, pardon me, my God, if I regret leaving these. I resign myself. Adieu once more, and for the last time, my beloved. Speak of me often to our son. Let him love the memory of his mother, and let him know how he was loved by her.

"Your wife, your fond wife, "THEO.

"Let my father see my son sometimes. Do not be unkind towards him whom I have loved so much, I beseech you. Burn all my papers except my father's letters, which I beg you to return to him. Adieu, my sweet boy. Love your father, be grateful and affectionate to him while he lives, be the pride of his meridian, the support of his departing days. Be all that he wishes, for he made your mother happy."

After expressing a wish that she may not be stripped and washed according to the usual custom, being pure enough to return to dust, she concludes: "If it does not appear contradictory or silly, I beg to be kept as long as possible before I am consigned to the earth."

Alston, who survived her but four years, wrote heart-brokenly to her father: "My boy, my wife, gone both! This, then, is the end of all the hopes we had formed. You may well observe that you feel severed from the human race. She was the last tie that bound us to the species. What have we left? Yet, after all, he is a poor actor who cannot sustain his hour upon the stage, be his part what it may. But the man who has been deemed worthy of the heart of Theodosia Burr, and who has felt what it was to be blessed with such a woman's love, will never forget his elevation."

ELIZABETH PATTERSON

(MADAME JEROME BONAPARTE)

The city into which Baltimore Town was legislated on the last day of the year 1796 already fostered within its limits the germ of the dual life, social and commercial, to which it has owed its subsequent eminence. Not infrequently, in the days of its inception, the same roof sheltered drawing-room and warehouse, the earlier merchants deeming it necessary to keep their growing interests constantly beneath their personal vigilance. Later, the commercial life crowded out the domestic life, and merchants built their dwellings--stately bricks or frames, painted blue, yellow, or white, facing on avenues of locust-trees--in another part of the town, all bearing quaint evidence of the far-away ports with which their vessels traded, while the whole town was permeated with the odor peculiar to shipping districts.

The first theatre troupe that took the town by storm played in one of the old warehouses, whose walls re-echoed the approbation of the pleasure-hungry audience, among whom were no fastidious critics to pick flaws in "King Richard III.," and still less in "A Miss in her Teens," which followed.

Baltimore never had the qualms of conscience which afflicted some of her puritanical sister towns concerning the pleasures in which she might rightly indulge. She looked out upon life, rather, with a liberality of mental vision which partook of the breadth of the seas her merchantmen traversed.

The brick theatre built in 1781 became one of the most revered spots in the town, and when the actors came her way, Baltimore turned out _en masse_ to give them royal welcome.

At the close of the Revolutionary War a number of the French officers of the army and navy who had remained in this country settled in Baltimore, thereby adding a foreign flavor to the social side of its existence, which, like that of all the cities and towns of the young Republic, was characterized more or less by a wholesome simplicity.

In the town, a dozen years before it blossomed into the city, before its streets were paved, when its only communication with inland towns was by means of the stage-coach, and three years before Maryland had ratified the Constitution of the new union of States, there was born to one of her merchants, William Patterson, a daughter, the repute of whose beauty was destined to fill two continents, the spicy aroma of whose wit to penetrate the sacred precincts of imperial throne-rooms, and the story of whose life to touch the hearts of many generations.

The daughter of one of the self-made men whose sterling qualities have lent such stability to the industries and development of the country, who, born of Irish parentage and coming to this country in his fourteenth year, had carved his own way shrewdly and judiciously to the position of distinction he held among his fellow-townsmen and the people of his adopted country, Elizabeth inherited many of his dominant characteristics. He was estimated to be the wealthiest merchant, and, with the possible exception of Charles Carroll, the wealthiest man, in the United States. Her mother, Dorcas Spear, came of good Maryland lineage, and was a woman of gentle character and cultivated mind. She superintended for the most part Elizabeth's education, which, if somewhat erratic, was, nevertheless, superior to that enjoyed by the average woman of that period. It is said that she acquired an early familiarity with Rochefoucauld's "Maxims" and committed to memory Young's "Night Thoughts." Lady Morgan, whose friendship she formed later in life, realizing the brilliancy of her mind, regretted that its earlier direction had not been more systematic.

Her father, from his own statement, seems to have looked after the conduct of his family with the same minute vigilance which he bestowed upon his financial concerns.

"I always consider it a duty to my family," he said, "to keep them as much as possible under my own eye, so that I have seldom in my life left Baltimore either on pleasure or business. Ever since I had a house it has been my invariable rule to be the last up at night, and to see that the fires and light were secured before I retired myself, by which I found little risk from fires and managed to have my family keep regular hours. What I possess is solely the product of my own labor. I inherited nothing of my forefathers, nor have I benefited anything from public favors or appointments."

Strangely similar is the concluding sentiment to that expressed by the founder of another family on another continent,--Napoleon Bonaparte. "Sole fabricator of my destiny, I owe nothing to my brothers," said he, whose fortunes, though he had reared them upon a loftier pinnacle, were, nevertheless, to be crossed by those of the Patterson family.

The eldest daughter in a family of thirteen children, Elizabeth Patterson grew up at a period when the beaux of society read Chesterfield, when no man begrudged the time expended on the profound and sweeping bow then dictated by gallantry, and when fencing and dancing formed a part of every gentleman's education.

"She possessed the pure Grecian contour; her head was exquisitely formed, her forehead fair and shapely, her eyes large and dark, with an expression of tenderness that did not belong to her character; and the delicate loveliness of her mouth and chin, the soft bloom of her complexion, together with her beautifully rounded shoulders and tapering arms, combined to form one of the loveliest of women." She had had numerous offers of marriage before she reached her eighteenth year, her father's wealth and prominence, independent of her own attractive personality, having insured her social prestige, but as yet she walked heart whole and fancy free.

In the summer of 1803 Jerome, the youngest brother of Napoleon Bonaparte, and then less than nineteen years of age, detaching himself from naval duty in the West Indies and following the bent of his own inclination, eventually put into the port of New York. Whatever breach of military discipline this implies will in no way astound those familiar with Jerome's character.

Too young to have taken part in the struggles that had elevated his family to such dizzy heights, he yet, at an age most susceptible to the altered conditions of his life, came into the full enjoyment of all the advantages they offered. Napoleon was wont to take a humorous rather than a serious view of this "_mauvais sujet_," as he frequently called Jerome. Madame Junot relates a characteristic anecdote in her memoirs which, she says, she had from the Emperor himself. Returning to Paris after the battle of Marengo, Napoleon was presented with various bills contracted by Jerome during his absence. One of these, to the amount of twenty thousand francs, was for a superb shaving set in gold, mother of pearl, silver, ivory, and costly enamels. It was a work of art, but of no possible use to Jerome, who, being but fifteen years old, was without the suggestion of a beard.

To his mother he was an idol, and to the end of her life he was able to extract from her in generous measure much of that substance which she expended grudgingly even upon herself.

Enveloped in the glory of a great name, Jerome's advent into the social current of New York was noised abroad in the few and ordinarily but little-read newspapers of the day.

By stage the news was brought to Baltimore. The returning coach took an urgent invitation to Jerome and his suite to visit that city from Commodore Barney, who had been his recent comrade-in-arms in the West Indies. They accepted the invitation, and early in September found themselves the objects of a lavish hospitality.

Shortly after their arrival one of Jerome's suite, General Rewbell, lost his heart to Miss Henrietta Pascault, one of the belles of the town, to whom he was, after a brief courtship, married.

At the fall races, which were in progress when he arrived in Baltimore, Jerome for the first time saw the woman in whose life he was thereafter destined to play so conspicuous a part. We may well believe that she was radiantly beautiful in a gown of buff silk with a lace fichu and a leghorn hat with tulle trimmings and black plumes.

He had already heard of the beautiful Miss Patterson, and had declared with youthful impetuosity that he would marry her. The fact that she was aware of his preconceived sentiments gave a piquancy to their first meeting, which was enhanced by the boyish enthusiasm with which he referred to her as his "_belle femme_." The coquetry with which she resisted his too evident admiration had the invariable effect of further ensnaring his princely affections.

They met frequently in those centres of hospitality, the home of Samuel Chase, who twenty-odd years before had put his name to the Declaration of Independence; at "Belvedere," the home of Colonel John Eager Howard, the hero of Cowpens; at "Greenmount," "Druid Hill," and "Brooklandwood," where three other afterwards celebrated beauties were in course of development.

When the festivities in honor of Jerome were at their height, Elizabeth was borne away to the seclusion of a Virginia estate, under the wing of a vigilant mother, who rightly interpreted the course of events and foresaw the obstacles that loomed in the pathway of their happy termination. There only an occasional echo of the gayety that was rife at Baltimore reached her, making unbearable that rural quiet, which means happiness only to a contented mind, and is a veritable torture to such a restless spirit as ever possessed Elizabeth Patterson. Her entreaties at length prevailed, and she was brought back to the city, where, on the 29th of October, to prove how futile the separation had been, scarcely eight weeks after their first meeting, Jerome procured a license of marriage.

He was probably remonstrated with by the members of his suite, whose age and the length of whose friendship made possible that liberty. Rewbell, in the first flush of his own happy union doubtless gave Jerome a reckless support that not even the crafty Le Camus could counterbalance. To such opposition as Elizabeth's family offered, she replied that she "would rather be the wife of Jerome for one hour than of any other man for a lifetime."

On Christmas Eve, 1803, Jerome Bonaparte, brother of the man who five months later declared himself Emperor of France, and Elizabeth Patterson, daughter of an American merchant, entered into that union whose subsequent rending was to echo throughout Christendom. The ceremony was performed in the home of Elizabeth's father, according to the rites of the Catholic Church, by the Right Reverend John Carroll, first archbishop of America. It was witnessed by the French Consul at Baltimore, M. Sotin, Alexander le Camus, who was Jerome's secretary, and the mayor of Baltimore.

The marriage contract, which was drawn up by Alexander J. Dallas, afterwards Secretary of the Treasury, bears evidence of the apprehension felt by Elizabeth's family as to the outcome of this international union with so youthful a bridegroom.

The dress worn by Elizabeth on her bridal night was of exquisitely fine white muslin, elaborately embroidered. She said of the gown in after years that it was one she had frequently worn, as she particularly desired to avoid anything like vulgar display. "And to tell the truth," she added, "there was as little as possible of any gown at all, dress in that day being chiefly an aid in setting off beauty to advantage," which concurs with the statement made by a man who was present at the wedding, to the effect that he could have put all the clothes worn by the bride into his pocket.

The honeymoon days of Jerome and Elizabeth were passed at her father's estate outside of Baltimore, "Homestead." Late in January they were mingling with the merrymakers one afternoon in Market Street. There was good sleighing, and the crisp air rang with the joyousness of an old-time winter. A snowball, sent with the unerring aim and democratic disregard of a small boy of the town, struck Elizabeth. Jerome was outraged at the indignity, and offered a reward of five hundred dollars for the discovery of the youthful miscreant. How trivial seems this "missile light as air" by comparison with those shafts sped later by a not less unerring hand, and striking into the very soul of her womanhood, Jerome making no effort to avert them.

In February this bride and groom of the early century went to Washington, whither since have wended their way so many happy bridal couples. Of the journey there, made in a stage-coach, General Samuel Smith, member of Congress from Maryland, wrote to Mr. William Patterson describing the runaway of the horses as they entered the city and Betsy's presence of mind. The driver having been thrown from his seat, Jerome sprang from the coach with the hope of catching the horses. But as they still sped on, and her danger increased as they penetrated towards the centre of the straggling little capital, Elizabeth opened the door and jumped out into the snow without injury.

While in Washington they were the guests of the French Minister, General Tureau. Aaron Burr, then Vice-President of the United States, meeting Elizabeth at this time, wrote to his daughter Theodosia, whom he thought Elizabeth much resembled, and referred to her as "a charming little woman with sense, spirit, and sprightliness."

Jerome's thoughts were already turning towards France, where every effort was being made to bring about his return--alone. While in New York during the following summer he was made acquainted with the annulment of his marriage, as follows: "By an Act of the 11 Ventose, all the civil officers of the Empire are prohibited from receiving on their registers the transcription of the act of celebration of a pretended marriage that Jerome Bonaparte has contracted in a foreign country during the age of minority, without the consent of his mother and without the publication in the place of his nativity."

In February following the marriage Mr. William Patterson had written to our Minister at Paris, Robert Livingston, enclosing him letters from the President and Secretary of State, to be presented to Napoleon with the hope of obtaining his approval, or at least mitigating any displeasure the marriage might have caused. "I can assure you," he wrote to Livingston, "that I never directly or indirectly countenanced or gave Mr. Bonaparte the smallest encouragement to address my daughter, but, on the contrary, resisted his pretensions by every means in my power consistent with discretion. Finding, however, that the mutual attachment they had formed for each other was such that nothing short of force or violence could prevent their union, I with much reluctance consented to their wishes."

He had, moreover, despatched his eldest son, Robert Patterson, to Paris, to discover which way the wind of the imperial temper blew. As the matter lay rather outside the pale of usual diplomatic issues, it required most delicate manipulation, and while young Patterson received kindly yet cautious expressions of interest and good-will from Napoleon's brothers, an ominous and forbidding silence enveloped the First Consul. His indignation increased with Jerome's continued absence, and when at length he spoke through his Minister of Marine, it was to bid Jerome, as lieutenant of the fleet, to return to France, at the same time forbidding all captains of French vessels to receive on board "the young person to whom Jerome had attached himself." Through the same channel Napoleon offered his forgiveness to Jerome on condition that he abandon Elizabeth and return to France, there to associate himself with his fortunes. Should he persist in bringing her, she would not be allowed to put foot on French territory. Jerome's mother wrote to him at the same time, suggesting that he return to France alone and send his wife to Holland. Robert Patterson, however, who succeeded admirably in keeping himself posted on the variations in the attitude of Jerome's family, advised that Jerome should not return to France without his wife.

Though he made several efforts during the year that followed to return thither, there is only one on record when it was his purpose to sail alone.

In September, 1804, General Armstrong sailed from New York to replace Livingston at Paris. He had agreed with Jerome to take Madame Bonaparte with him, Jerome himself intending to go on one of the French frigates then in New York harbor. She could thus, at least, have landed in France as a member of the family of the American minister, who might have succeeded in presenting her to Napoleon, with whom she could, no doubt, have pleaded her cause with more effect than could have been produced by any amount of diplomatic correspondence or family intervention. She had the gifts which he most admired in women, great personal beauty and wit, and though the latter might have been too keen for his entire appreciation, she no doubt would have been shrewd enough to temper it to his taste.

She wrote her father from New York, September 5, 1804, of her disappointment at Armstrong's having sailed without her. The reason given was that Jerome and Elizabeth had arrived by stage a few hours after the ship had sailed.

An effort to sail during the following month ended in shipwreck off Pilot Town, where they were finally landed and temporarily housed by one of the inhabitants, on whose clothes-line Madame Bonaparte dried her wardrobe, and from whose hospitable board she enjoyed a dinner of roast goose with apple-sauce, being in exuberant spirits over her rescue.

On March 11, 1805, they finally made their departure from Baltimore in the "Erin," a ship belonging to Mr. Patterson. Though they sailed at an early hour in the morning, and the arrangements for their departure had been conducted with much secrecy, General Tureau wrote from Washington two days later to Mr. Patterson to ask what disposition had been made of Jerome's four carriage-horses, and to suggest, if they were to be sold, that he should like to be considered as a purchaser.

The "Erin" reached Lisbon on April 2, whence Jerome wrote in English to his father-in-law of their safe arrival, and took the opportunity to express his affection for and gratitude towards his second family. He spoke of Elizabeth having been very sea-sick, and added,--

"But you know as well as any body that sea-sick never has killed nobody."

Napoleon's ambassador met the ship upon its arrival, and called upon Elizabeth to ask what he could do for her, addressing her as Miss Patterson.

"Tell your master," she replied, "that Madame Bonaparte is ambitious, and demands her rights as a member of the Imperial family."

She was forbidden to land, and Jerome, taking that farewell of her which fate had destined should be his last, went overland to Paris, while the "Erin" sailed for Amsterdam.

On his way to Paris Jerome met General and Madame Junot _en route_ for their new post in Spain. He breakfasted with them and opened his anxious young heart to them, showing them a miniature of Elizabeth, from whom, he declared, nothing should ever separate him.