Читать книгу Napoleon - Vincent Cronin - Страница 11

IN an age which tended to see in the other sex merely an occasion of physical pleasure or financial gain, the Buonapartes believed in love and were all, to a greater or less, degree, passionate lovers. Carlo and Letizia had married for love and, after Carlo’s death, Letizia had remained true to his memory. The example of that happy marriage, and the temperament that fired it, passed to the children. Lucien married his inn-keeper’s daughter for love, and when she died was to marry a second time for love – at the cost of his political career. Louis spent much of his youth penning reams of introspective love poetry, and it was for love that the youngest son, Jerome, would eventually marry Elizabeth Patterson of Baltimore. As for Pauline, the one nearest Napoleon in temperament, at sixteen she was in love with Stanislas Fréron, and writing him letters like this: ‘Ti amo sempre passionatissimamente, per sempre ti amo, ti amo, stell’ idol mio, set cuore mio, tenero amico, ti amo, ti amo, amo, si amatissimo amante.’ Napoleon also was to love passionatissimamente, but not yet.

The first thing Napoleon noticed in a woman was her hands and feet. If her hands and feet were small, he was prepared to find her attractive, but not otherwise. The second quality he sought was femininity. He liked a woman with a giving, tender nature and a soft voice: someone he could protect. Finally, he looked for sincerity and depth of feeling.

Napoleon, brought up in the man’s world of Corsica, did not believe in equality of the sexes. In taking notes on English history, when Barrow says, ‘the Druidesses shared equally in the priesthood,’ Napoleon, in one of his rare emendations, wrote, ‘they assisted the Druids in their functions.’ He considered a woman’s role in life was to love her husband and bring up her children. ‘Women are at the bottom of all intrigues and should be kept at home, away from politics. They should be forbidden to appear in public except in a black skirt and veil, or with the mezzaro, as in Genoa and Venice.’

Second Lieutenant Buonaparte joined in the garrison dances and soon after arriving in Valence became attracted to the daughter of one of the local gentry. Her name probably was Caroline du Colombier, but Napoleon, who liked to make up his own names for girl-friends, called her Emma. Impoverished and aged sixteen, Napoleon was not very eligible and Emma seems to have treated him with disdain. Napoleon wrote, trying to soften her. ‘My feelings,’ he said. ‘are worthy of you. Tell me that you do them justice.’ This and similar phrases suggest that Napoleon was more interested in his own fine feelings for Emma than in Emma herself, and that, like many adolescents, he was just in love with love. It comes as no surprise to find Emma ‘cold and indifferent’. After trying unsuccessfully to make her take an interest in him, Napoleon asked Emma to return the four short letters he had written her, and his motive is characteristic – he does not want to be made to look a fool: ‘You took pleasure in humiliating me but you are too good to hold up to ridicule my ill-fated feelings.’ As it turned out, Emma kept his letters.

After this Napoleon for a while seems to have shied away from girls. He knew he was too poor to marry, so the money his fellow officers spent on courting Napoleon spent on books, or on his brother Louis. During his time as a subaltern Alexandre des Mazis noted as one of Napoleon’s characteristics that he was exceptionally clean-living. Indeed the two had an argument about this, which Napoleon wrote up in his notebook. Girl-friends, Napoleon somewhat priggishly declared, made Alexandre neglect his parents and friends, and he concluded that ‘it would be a good action on the part of a protective godhead to rid us and the world generally of love.’

When he was eighteen Napoleon went to Paris on family business. He found himself poor and suffered from loneliness. One evening – Thursday, 22 November 1787, for he recorded the incident in his notebook – Napoleon, to cheer himself up, went for a walk in the Palais Royal. Here were bright lights, cafés offering English beer, bavaroises and ratafia, and even a Café Mécanique, where the mocca was pumped to cups through the hollow central leg of each round café table. He walked about, he says, ‘taking long strides’.

‘I am vigorous by temperament and didn’t mind the cold; but after a time my mind became numb and then I did notice how cold it was. I turned into the arcades. I was on the point of entering a cafe when I noticed a woman. It was late, she had a good figure and was very young; she was clearly a prostitute. I looked at her, and she stopped. Instead of the disdainful manner such women usually affect, she seemed quite natural. I was struck by that. Her shyness gave me the courage to speak to her. Yes, I spoke to her, though more than most people I hate prostitution and have always felt sullied just by a look from women like that … But her pale cheeks, the impression she gave of weakness and her soft voice at once overcame my doubts. Either she will give me interesting information, I said to myself, or she’s just a blockhead.

‘“You’re going to catch cold,” I said. “How can you bear to walk in the arcades ?”

‘“Ah, sir, I keep on hoping. I have to finish my evening’s work.”

‘She spoke with a calm indifference which appealed to me and I began to walk beside her.

‘“You don’t look very strong. I’m surprised you’re not exhausted by a life like this.”

‘“Heavens, sir, a woman has to do something.”

‘“Maybe. But isn’t there some other job better suited to your health?”

‘“No, sir, I’ve got to live.”

‘I was enchanted. At least she answered my questions, something other women had declined to do.

‘“You must be from the north, to brave cold like this.”

‘“I’m from Nantes in Brittany.”

‘“That’s a part I know … Mademoiselle, please tell me how you lost your maidenhood.”

‘“It was an army officer.”

‘“Are you angry?”

‘“Oh, yes, take my word for it.” Her voice took on a pungency I hadn’t noticed before. “Take my word for that. My sister is well set up. Why aren’t I?”

‘“How did you come to Paris ?”

‘“The officer who did me wrong walked out. I loathe him. My mother was furious with me and I had to get away. A second officer came along and took me to Paris. He deserted me too. Now there’s a third; I’ve been living three years with him. He’s French, but has business in London, and he’s there now. Let’s go to your place.”

‘“What will we do there?”

‘“Come on, we’ll get warm and you’ll have your fill of pleasure.”

‘I was far from feeling scruples. Indeed, I didn’t want her to be frightened off by my questions, or to say she didn’t sleep with strangers, when that was the whole point of my accosting her.’

This was probably the first time Napoleon slept with a woman. Probably she had the white skin and black hair typical of Bretons, perhaps too that dreamy quality that sets them off from the more matter-of-fact Parisian. What is certain is that she was slight and feminine, the type that appeals to manly men, that Napoleon liked her soft voice, and that it was something more than a mere physical encounter: Napoleon tried to get to know her as a person, and felt sympathetic towards her plight.

From eighteen to twenty-five Napoleon was leading so crowded a life that he had little if any time for girls. He went rarely to Paris and it was doubtful whether he paid a second visit to the Palais Royal. As his fellow officers noted, he had great self-control and probably continued, as Alexandre des Mazis put it, ‘clean-living’. Only after Toulon, when he was a brigadier, did he have time to see girls.

In Marseille there lived a textile millionaire named François Clary. Politically he was a royalist. When Government troops put down the Marseille rebellion in August 1793, and Stanislas Fréron began purging and terrorizing, François’s eldest son, Etienne, was thrown into prison, and another son, to escape being shot, committed suicide. Four months later François died of worry and grief. His widow, while soliciting for Etienne’s release, came to know Joseph Bonaparte, and it was Joseph, probably through Saliceti, who got Etienne out of prison. Joseph became a habitué of the big luxurious Clary house, and when Napoleon came to Marseille he went there also.

There were two daughters living at home, Julie aged twenty-two, and the youngest Clary child, Bernardine Eugénie Désirée, aged sixteen. Both were brunettes, with large, dark-brown eyes. Napoleon got to know them both well, and in a short story he was to write the following year described the differences between them. Julie he calls Amélie.

Améie’s glance seemed to say, ‘You’re in love with me, but you aren’t the only one, and I’ve plenty of other admirers; realize that the only way to please me is to give me flattery and compliments; I like an affected style.’ Eugénie … without being plain, was not a beauty, but she was good, sweet, lively and tender … she never looked boldly at a man. She smiled sweetly, revealing the most beautiful teeth imaginable. If you gave her your hand, she gave hers shyly, and only for a moment, almost teasingly showing the prettiest hand in the world, where the whiteness of the skin contrasted with blue veins. Amélie was like a piece of French music, the chords and harmony of which everyone enjoys. Eugénie was like the nightingale’s song, or a piece by Paesiello, which only sensitive people enjoy; it appears mediocre to the average listener, but its melody transports and excites to passion those who possess intense feelings.

The musical simile is revealing. Napoleon at twenty-five liked music very much, particularly Paesiello, his favourite composer; he enjoyed listening to girls singing; and the younger Clary, besides her pretty white hands, seems to have had a good voice. Napoleon began to become very fond of the millionaire’s shy musical daughter. At home she was called Désirée, but Napoleon did not care for that name, with its suggestion of physical desire, and when they were alone called her, as in his short story, by her middle name, Eugénie. This private name, with their fondness for music, became a link between them.

Napoleon knew that Joseph was fond of both Clary girls, but preferred the younger, and would like to marry her. Napoleon took Joseph aside. ‘In a happy marriage,’ he explained, ‘one person has to yield to the other. Now you’re not strong-minded, nor is Désirée, whereas Julie and I know what we want. You’d better marry Julie, and Désirée will be my wife.’

Joseph had no objections. If his brother the Brigadier preferred Désirée, he in his easy-going way was prepared to stand down. He began to court the flirtatious Julie. Like her sister, Julie had a huge dowry of 100,000 livres, and Joseph had nothing; on the other hand Joseph had saved Etienne’s life. Madame Clary and Letizia gave their consent, and in August Julie Clary became Joseph’s wife. For both it was to prove a happy marriage.

Before Napoleon could get to know Eugénie better or begin to court her, he was posted, in September, to the Alps where as senior gunner he fought the Austrians. In camp, where the only music was fife and drum, Napoleon evidently became aware of the many differences between himself and Eugénie, including the nine years’ difference in age, for his first letter was somewhat cool. ‘Your unfailing sweetness and the gay openness which is yours alone inspire me with affection, dear Eugénie, but I am so occupied by work I don’t think this affection ought to cut into my soul and leave a deeper scar.’ This was certainly blunt. But it reveals also a conflict between feeling and duty, heart and head, which was to be one of the characteristics of Napoleon’s relations with women. In the same letter he told Eugénie she was gifted for music and urged her ‘to buy a piano and engage a good teacher. Music is the soul of love.’

Five months passed before Napoleon wrote again, this time from Toulon. The tone was now less personal, almost that of an elder brother or a teacher wishing to bring on a pupil. Napoleon enclosed a list of books Eugénie should read and promised to take out a subscription for her to a piano magazine printed in Paris, ‘so that every décade you will receive the latest tunes.’ He saw Eugénie now as a singer and, in order to help her, he who could hardly sing a note in tune devised a new way of singing the octave. He explained it to Eugénie like this:

If you sing DEFGABCD, you know what usually happens? You pronounce D clearly but give it the same value as C; that is, you put an interval of one semitone between D and E. What you should do is put a full tone between them. Similarly, you should put a full tone between E and F … After that, you go on to sing EFGABCDE, passing from the first voice sound to the second by way of a semitone interval. You conclude by singing BCDEF GAB, which was the scale used in ancient times.

It is quite clear from this that Napoleon knew nothing whatsoever about musical theory – he even gets all the intervals wrong – and was just showing off for Eugénie’s benefit. Since Eugénie had complained that his letters were cold, having given this music lesson Napoleon felt he could afford a warm ending: ‘Adieu, my good, beautiful and tender friend. Be gay and look after yourself.’

On 21 April 1795 Napoleon went to Marseille and, after nine months’ separation, saw Eugénie again. She had evidently blossomed out; perhaps as a result of Napoleon’s encouragement she sang better; at any rate this time Napoleon fell in love with her, and a fortnight later, when he again stopped at the Clary house on his way to Paris, the question of marriage was raised. Eugénie was still only seventeen, and with her dowry of 100,000 livres a much better match than Napoleon, who had only his army pay. Far too good a match, thought Madame Clary, who had already given one daughter to penniless Joseph, and now let it be known: ‘I’ve quite enough with one Buonaparte in the family.’

Madame Clary’s hostility did not shake Napoleon’s new affection, and from Avignon, his first stop after Marseille, he ended his letter: ‘Remembrances and love from one who is yours for life.’

At the beginning of his stay in Paris Napoleon wrote every two or three days to his ‘adorable friend’ and asked Eugénie to write every day. He was now the one to worry when a letter did not arrive. He continued to foster her musical talent, sending her extracts from Martini’s recent success, Sappho, and some ‘romances that are pretty and sad. You’ll enjoy singing them if you feel as I do.’

Napoleon was now going through his worst period of depression: it was the moment when his army career seemed hopelessly checked. In his sordid Left Bank hotel he thought of the Clary house, and the more things went wrong, the more he sought compensation in his feelings for Eugénie. He began to feel that he would be a failure as a soldier, and that love alone mattered. He was alone, and in his loneliness he poured out his feelings into a short story, the most personal of all his writings, in which he described his affection for Eugénie and sketched the kind of life he hoped to have with her. He kept her name for the heroine of the story, but his hero he called Clisson. It is a revealing name, the original Olivier de Clisson having been Constable of France, that is, supreme commander of the royal armies. He had served Charles V and Charles VII outstandingly well against the English and Flemings, and his name had become synonymous with loyal service.

The story begins: ‘Clisson was born for war … Although a mere youth, he had reached the highest rank in the army. Good luck constantly aided his talents … And yet his soul was not satisfied.’ Clisson’s dissatisfaction arose from the fact that people were envious of his rank and spread false reports about him. To recover his spirits he went for a month to a spa in wooded country near Lyon.

Here he met two sisters, Amélie and Eugénie. Despite his gloom, Amélie liked Clisson and flirted with him, whereas shy Eugénie at first felt a strong aversion to him, which she could neither explain nor justify to herself. ‘She fixed her eyes on the stranger’s, and never tired of gazing at him. What is his background? How sombre and thoughtful he seems! His glance reveals the maturity of old age, his physiognomy the languor of adolescence.’ During a walk in the woods Eugénie and Clisson again met, came to know each other better and fell in love.

Clisson now ‘despised his former life, when he had lived without Eugénie, without drawing every breath for her. He gave himself up to love and renounced all thought of fame. The months and years rolled by as quickly as the hours. They had children and continued to be in love. Eugénie loved with as much steadfastness as she herself was loved. Not a sadness, not a pleasure, not a worry that they did not share …

‘Every night Eugénie slept with her head on her lover’s shoulder, or in his arms, every day they spent together, raising their children, cultivating their garden, keeping their house in order.

‘In his new life with Eugénie Clisson had certainly avenged men’s injustice, which had vanished from his mind like a dream.

‘The company of a man as talented as Clisson had made Eugénie accomplished. Her mind now was cultivated and her feelings, formerly very tender and weak, had taken on the strength and energy appropriate to the mother of Clisson’s children.’ Then follows a sentence remarkably prophetic of Napoleon’s own married life. ‘As for Clisson, he was no longer gloomy and sad, his character had taken on the sweetness and graciousness of hers. Fame in the army had made him proud and sometimes hard, but the love of Eugénie made him more indulgent and flexible.

The world and mankind had quickly forgotten Clisson’s achievements. Most people, living far from the sea and from nature … considered him and Eugénie either mad or misanthropic. Only poor folk appreciated and blessed them. That made up for the scorn of fools.’

Everything seems set for a happy ending, but no. Napoleon’s favourite literary form was tragedy. Moreover, he had a strong sense of the injustice in human affairs: he had already expressed this in his story about the Earl of Essex, and the Terror had surely strengthened it. But perhaps his dominant motive here was that, even while he idealized Eugénie, he sensed either that she was too young for him or that she was flawed by some weakness of character: there is a hint of this in his sentence about Clisson giving Eugénie the ‘strength and energy’ she lacks. Napoleon at any rate chose to end his story tragically.

Clisson is recalled to the army. He is absent several years but each day receives a letter from Eugénie. Then he is wounded. He sends one of his officers, Berville, to comfort Eugénie and keep her company. Eugénie’s letters grow rarer and finally stop. Clisson is grief-stricken but cannot leave his post. A battle is about to begin, and at two in the morning he writes to Eugénie:

How many luckless men regret being alive yet long to continue living! Only I wish to have done with life. It is Eugénie who gave me it … Farewell, you whom I chose to be arbiter of my life, farewell, companion of my finest days! In your arms, with you, I have tasted supreme happiness. I have drained life and the good things of life. What remains but satiety and boredom? At twenty-six I have exhausted the passing pleasures that go with a reputation, but in your love I have known how sweet it is to be alive. That memory breaks my heart. May you live happily, forgetting unhappy Clisson! Kiss my sons; may they grow up without their father’s warm nature, for that would make them victims, like him, of other men, of glory and of love.

This letter Clisson folded and entrusted to an aide, with orders to take it to Eugénie. Placing himself at the head of a squadron Clisson threw himself into the fray … and died ‘pierced by a thousand blows’.

So ends Napoleon’s story of Clisson and Eugénie. It is curious that he should make his tragic ending turn on the woman betraying the man: on one occasion Eugénie did not write to him for a fortnight, but that was hardly sufficient justification. The sense that he had been, or would be, betrayed by a woman plainly arises from some unconscious hidden depths of Napoleon’s character: perhaps the powerful mother-image or earlier fear of castration. On the other hand, Clisson’s reaction is just what we would expect from Napoleon: he chooses a clean death rather than a shoddy life.

Meanwhile, Napoleon was living in Paris on sick leave with more time on his hands than ever before. He wrote to Eugénie of ‘the luxury and pleasures of Paris’, adding that he would not taste them without her. But he did taste them. Though poor, he had well-to-do acquaintances and through them came to meet a number of amiable young women.

One was a certain Mademoiselle de Chastenay, a bluestocking who lived with her mother in Châtillon, near Paris. Napoleon spent a day with her in May, and as he often did when he met a young lady, asked her to sing for him. Not only did she accede to his request, but she sang songs in Italian composed by herself. This was something far beyond Eugénie’s talent. She then let it be known that she had translated a poem about a fan. Napoleon was keenly interested, and he who at this period spoke chiefly in gloomy monosyllables, told her at length how fascinated he was by the Parisienne’s use of the fan. Extending Lavater’s principles, Napoleon had worked out in detail a theory according to which every movement of her fan reflected a lady’s feelings. He said he had recently proved this theory correct by watching the famous actress, Mademoiselle Constant, at the Comédie Française.

Mademoiselle de Chastenay was never more than a friend for Napoleon, but she represented a more accomplished and highly educated world, beside which the Marseille of the Clarys would inevitably have appeared to disadvantage.

A more remarkable woman whom Napoleon came to know was Thérésia Tallien. Under the Terror she had been in prison: twenty-one and awaiting the guillotine blade. She wrote a note to her lover, Jean Lambert Tallien – whom she later married – and concealed it in the heart of a cabbage, which she threw to him from her barred window: ‘If you love me as sincerely as you profess to do, use every effort to save France, and myself along with her.’ Thérésia was a beautiful woman with jet black hair, and her note in the cabbage produced the desired effect. Tallien rose to his feet in the Convention and dared to attack the dreaded Robespierre, thus precipitating Robespierre’s downfall, ending the Terror, and freeing his sweetheart.

Thérésia Tallien lived in a ‘witty’ house: outside it looked like a thatched cottage, and inside was luxuriously furnished in the Pompeian style. She gave fashionable parties, at which she wore daring transparent dresses. Sometimes she wore a coiffure à la guillotine – hair cropped short or lifted up off the neck – and a narrow red satin ribbon encircling the throat. At other times she wore red or gold hair-pieces. And whatever she wore she was daring and witty.

Napoleon went sometimes to her parties, in his threadbare uniform. Cloth was scarce but a recent decree had granted officers enough for a new uniform. Napoleon, however, not being on the active list, could not benefit from this. Doubtless he mentioned it to Thérésia Tallien as yet another ‘injustice’. She, instead of merely sympathizing, gave him a letter to a friend of hers, a certain Monsieur Lefèvre, commissary of the 17th division, and that was enough to get Napoleon a new uniform.

Napoleon, then, during the summer of 1795 met a number of accomplished and beautiful women, older than Eugénie. In his story he had posed the dilemma: either his career or love in the wilds; and had chosen love in the wilds. But as he came to know Paris better, he evidently saw that the dilemma did not correspond with the facts. Here were influential women, married to generals or politicians, helping them in their careers. These women might have different values from his, but they lived in the same world, the world of the Revolution. Inevitably, as he interested himself in these women, Napoleon became less attached to Eugénie Clary of Marseille.

In June Eugénie moved to Genoa, where her family had business interests. In writing to tell Napoleon of the move, she said that she would continue to love him always. Napoleon looked into his heart and found that he could no longer share that feeling. He tried to let her down as gently as possible: ‘Tender Eugénie, you are young Your feelings are going to weaken, then falter; later you will find yourself changed. Such is the dominion of time … I do not accept the promise of eternal love you give in your latest letter, but I substitute for it a promise of inviolable frankness. The day you love me no more, swear to tell me. I make the same promise.’ In his next letter but one he made the point again: ‘If you love someone else, you must yield to your feelings.’

The fact is that Napoleon himself had met someone else who to an extreme degree excited his feelings: a close friend of Thérésia Tallien named Rose Beauharnais. Two letters later he was to break off altogether his love-affair with Eugénie. This episode had reached its most satisfying development only when they were apart, in Napoleon’s imagination. Indeed, from the beginning it had been something of a dream romance, for what after all did he and Eugénie have in common but a taste for music and an inability to spell the simplest words? Eugénie cried at first and said she would love Napoleon always, but she was soon to get over her tears and to make a happy marriage with Jean Bernadotte, another rising young army officer with southern blood in his veins.