November 29, 2014

BICONTINENTAL BALTIMORE BONAPARTE

“Nature never intended me for obscurity.” 
Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte to her father, 1815 

Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte,” Firmin Massot, 1823, MdHS, XX.5.69
from the mdhc website

The French helped us win our revolution, we were players in theirs.
Reciprocity. Lafayette, you name it.
The French Connection.
The United States of America has been entwined with France in an ongoing dance of love, romance, mistrust, contempt, diplomacy, romance and love regained, etc.
Sometimes the spirit of this connection jumps out of the hatbox of history like a genie from a dusty past, or a museum exhibit.

The 18th century was rolling over into the 19th century after both revolutions were over, France was a happening place: Napoleon was busy overwhelming populations, killing and conquering but providing a decent legal code and some administrative guides as compensation. He impressed many (a number of Genevans enlisted in his army), and his status did not escape a highly ambitious belle of Baltimore, Miss Elizabeth (aka Betsy) Patterson, daughter of a rich Irish merchant and his Scottish wife.

Napoleon's younger brother Jérome was visiting Baltimore one day, and a fellow Frenchman living there threw a dinner which included young women of good society. Betsy Patterson was smart, good-looking and ambitious, looking beyond the Baltimore boys. It was a no-brainer for her, and in fact young Jérome Bonaparte was rapidly smitten; they were married by the Bishop of Baltimore in 1803.
Jérome returned to France, planning for her to follow.
But big brother Napoleon disapproved (as did her own father). Napoleon threatened to cut off Jérome from titles and money if he stood by Betsy. Napoleon even petitioned the pope to annul the marriage. She was not allowed on French soil to give birth to their son Jérome (aka Bo). With time, papa Jérome accrued more titles, money and marriages.

Then came the endless peregrinations to try to salvage her and her son's status as royalty, obtain compensation in money and possessions. While so doing, she hobnobbed with Madame de Staël and a Polish princess, among others, who lived outside Geneva, in Paris with Madame Récamier, and so forth. Sometimes her son Jérome's education entered into the formula (hello again Geneva).

La Vie du Salon, quoi.

When in the US she was a regular at the White House, friends with first lady Dolley Madison, and  a friend of the feminist writer Lady Sydney Morgan.

Betsy had time, money, status, mobility, freedom.
But it appears she did not have love.
Her biography is an astonishing bicontinental travelogue for Baltimore/London/Geneva/Paris.

And then the line of American Bonapartes: her son married Susan May Williams, whose father was one of the founders and owners of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad; grandson Charles Joseph Bonaparte (1851-1921) was both the US Attorney General and Secretary of the Navy and founder of the original Bureau of Investigation (later the FBI).

Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte finished her days in a boarding house in Baltimore, surrounded by some of her wealth but alienated from many family members.
This unstoppable American and sometime expat cut a fair swath through nineteenth century society, bringing America to France, and then, bien sûr, France to America.

This blog was inspired by the remarkable exhibit at the Maryland Historical Society on West Monument Street, and its accompanying on-line contributions. 
Woman of Two Worlds: Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte and Her Quest for an Imperial Legacy
http://www.mdhs.org/betsy-bonaparte/the-exhibition


November 27, 2014

Viewing Wiseman's Viewing Viewers in "National Gallery"

It was Cinema Sunday on November 16th at the Charles, a movie theater on the eponymously-named street.

At 9:45 bagels and spreads were unveiled and coffee was on tap for the crowd of ripe hipsters, hippies, museum docents and curators, artists and other Baltimore fauna. Loved the scene. At 10:30 after a howling microphone was subdued, "National Gallery" was introduced by a big-wig from the Walters Art Museum and the film kicked off. Frederick Wiseman is in fine fettle as he shows us the paintings, the public, people from the art world saying their piece. People who set policy on how the museum should come across, whether it should be the destination of the popular London Marathon and be draped with banners or whether this would be demeaning to its lofty ideals...Docents passionate about their work, offering up images and metaphors to rapt audiences. Restorers who know tiny details about a master's technique, testing paint,repairing canvases. And of course the general public that meanders through the halls.
Apparently Wiseman clipped hundreds of hours of film, bringing it down to a modest three hours. But few people left during the screening - three mesmerizing yet thoughtful hours.






Sunday at the Charles Theater

PS This blog cried out for Courier font-- the typewriter-era big boy print.