The Land of Desire: French History and Culture
71. Marie Bonaparte, Part I
October 28, 2021
“I liked murderers. I thought them interesting. Had not my grandfather been one when he killed the journalist? And my great-granduncle Napoleon, what a monumental murderer he was!” – Marie Bonaparte
Episode 71: “Marie, The Last Bonaparte”
Transcript
Bienvenue and welcome back to The Land of Desire. I’m your host, Diana, and each month I provide a glimpse into French history and culture. As I’ve settled into my new apartment, it took a little longer than I’d hoped to set up a new recording studio, and I had to order some new equipment. It was a blessing in disguise, as this delay gave me time to really luxuriate in the research of this month’s subject, someone who might be one of my favorite characters ever featured on this show.
Marie Bonaparte is what I like to call a fascinating woman, the kind of woman who spends her life being unconventional, pioneering, wildly interesting and getting away with it all by being very rich. Her life story is outrageous, shocking, and almost too on the nose metaphorically: she’s the descendant of the man who swept away the Ancien Regime, and used her inheritance to drag Europe into the modern age. Marie Bonaparte was blessed and cursed with a larger-than-life family, and this obsession with family brought her into contact with the ultimate expert on the subject: Sigmund Freud. From a line of tyrants, murderers and emperors, Marie’s own enduring legacy is that of an advocate for the refugee, the child, and the visionary. While her ancestors traded on their power, their money and their name to acquire more of the same, Marie Bonaparte used her influence to push for newer worlds, broader minds and safer harbors. She experimented with her sexuality, she launched an illustrious career, and she saved the life of one of the greatest minds of the 20th century. Marie Bonaparte’s life is far too interesting to fit into a single episode. To begin – and with Freud, where else could you begin? – we’ll focus on Marie Bonaparte’s family. Perhaps you’ve heard of them. Along the way, we’ll encounter royal refugees, lions, murderers, Hitler, a seriously weird uncle, Edgar Allen Poe, Queen Elizabeth, Leonardo da Vinci, and more. This month, settle in for the fascinating story of Her Royal Highness, Princess Marie of Greece and Denmark, the last Bonaparte.
“I do not believe that any man in the world is more unfortunate in his family than I am.” So wrote Napoleon Bonaparte in 1810, after facing another disappointment from his sprawling, fractious family. To give a little credit to the family in question, Bonaparte was as tyrannical over the dinner table as he was over the continent. In the first year of his empire, Napoleon wrote to one of his lieutenants that he expected absolute loyalty, subservience and obedience from his family if they wanted to share in his glory and power. “I recognize only those who serve me as relations. My fortune is not attached to the name of Bonaparte, but to that of Napoleon…those who do not rise with me shall no longer form part of my family.” Ruling over an enormous band of jumped-up Corsicans was like herding cats, and even General Bonaparte himself could barely manage the task. The easiest cat in the bag was Napoleon’s older brother, Joseph, with whom he had always been close. Joseph was the perfect family ally: smart, obedience, and less ambitious than Napoleon. Sometimes he was too unambitious. On the rare occasion that the brothers clashed, it was almost always because Napoleon was asking Joseph to do something besides sit around in the backyard watering tomato plants. In 1806, Napoleon ordered Joseph to go be king of Spain, which was absolutely the last thing Joseph wanted to do, and Napoleon fired back with that warning: cross me and I’ll scratch your name off the family tree. While Joseph eventually gave in, Napoleon faced stiffer resistance from his younger brother, Lucien.
Only sixteen during the French Revolution, in many ways Lucien was the “true believer” of the Bonaparte family. From the beginning, Lucien Bonaparte represented the radical branch of the family, an ominous position which would echo over multiple generations. A self-declared Jacobin, the dramatic teenager vowed to “die with a dagger in his hand” and as long as his older brother represented a threat to the Ancien Regime, Lucien would do anything to support his cause. In 1799, Lucien was elected president of the Council of Five Hundred, and his flair for drama played a pivotal role in securing Napoleon’s rise. On the infamous 18th Brumaire, when Napoleon attempted a coup d’etat, Lucien slipped out of the council room and told the guards that the Council of Five Hundred were being harassed by a bunch of terrorists. Then, in a supremely goth 20-something move, Lucien pointed his sword at Napoleon’s heart, and swore to plunge it through his brother’s chest if he ever betrayed the country. At that moment, Lucien ordered the guards to expel anyone who resisted Napoleon’s coup d’etat. The guards marched in, the opposition marched out, Napoleon became the First Consul, and the French Revolution came to an end. Without Lucien, Napoleon might never have come to power – but the moment he did, Lucien began to wonder whether he had not created a tyrant. Napoleon and Lucien clashed over Napoleon’s iron-fisted rule over Europe – but they exploded when Napoleon extended his rule over Lucien’s private life.
Before the French Revolution, the teenaged Lucien disobeyed his parents and married the illiterate daughter of an innkeeper. After bearing him two children, Lucien’s first wife died, and the Bonapartes couldn’t wait to marry their third son off to someone more suitable. Unfortunately for Napoleon and his parents, Lucien already had a new wife in mind: a scandalous young widow named Alexandrine Jouberthon. She was completely unsuitable. Despite the objections of his family, Lucien married Alexandrine, and launched another tradition which would continue down his branch of the Bonaparte family for generations to come: marrying below one’s station. Only Mama Bonaparte recognized her son’s marriage – nobody else was willing to risk Napoleon’s anger. Despite a civil ceremony, Napoleon refused to recognize Lucien’s second marriage, or the child it produced, and in 1803 Napoleon made good on his threat and sent Lucien, his wife, and their children into exile. But the enemy of my enemy is my friend – and Napoleon had a lot of enemies, so it didn’t take long for Lucien to make wealthy, powerful friends, including the Pope.
In 1804, Napoleon rose once more from First Consul to Emperor. Napoleon issued a reminder to any members of the Bourbon family who still had heads on their shoulders: don’t even think about trying to reclaim your throne, and he issued a proclamation outlining the Bonaparte line of succession. Lucien Bonaparte, without whom Napoleon might never have risen to power, disappeared from the official Bonaparte family tree. A few years later, Napoleon offered Lucien another chance: divorce your wife, and I will welcome you back into the line of succession, and recognize your children as my family. You can even keep Madame Jouberthon as your mistress, so long as you bend the knee and apologize for what you did. Lucien rejected the offer, and tried to escape the continent altogether. Sailing for the United States, Lucien and his family were captured by the British, who allowed him to live the life of an English country gentleman. Napoleon was convinced Lucien was conspiring against him, when in truth the former Jacobin spent most of his time geeking out about telescopes and writing terrible poetry about Charlemagne. After Napoleon’s fall from power, Lucien moved back to Italy, where his friend the Pope granted him the title Prince of Canino. With oodles of money and a dozen children to occupy his time, Lucien spent his days scribbling more mediocre writing and excavating his backyard for Roman ruins. To the last, Napoleon couldn’t stop telling his little brother what to do, and even from his exile on the remote island of St Helena, Napoleon wanted Lucien to “cease writing poetry and to busy himself with writing a history of the Revolution and the Emperor’s reign.” Napoleon died before reconciling Lucien to the official family tree, and the Bonaparte line of succession soon became a headache which would rattle Europe for the next century.
Napoleon’s legacy was supposed to be a child of destiny. In 1810, desperate for an heir, he’d married the great-niece of Marie Antoinette, a neat little way to tie up loose ends and bad feelings. The couple could barely stand one another, but they did their duty well enough to produce Napoleon Junior. In 1814, he reigned as Napoleon II for two weeks – and before you scoff, what did you accomplish as a three year old? Not for the last time, the Bonaparte family made a home in Vienna, where Napoleon spent his time twiddling his thumbs, doing nothing of importance and then dying of tuberculosis at the age of 21, without an heir. Napoleon’s older brother Joseph had died without having any sons, so the line of succession should have passed to Lucien, old but still kicking around the Italian countryside. But since Napoleon had erased Lucien and all of his children from the Bonaparte family tree, the line of succession skipped down to the next Bonaparte brother, Louis. Unlike Lucien, Louis was determined to do whatever it took to stay in Napoleon’s good graces. By hook or by crook, he was going to write his family into the Bonaparte line of succession in permanent marker. Louis sucked up to his older brother in the most predictable fashion: his first son was named Napoleon Charles Bonaparte. His second son was named Napoleon-Louis Bonaparte. Then, just for good measure, he figured why not hedge my bets, here’s my third son, Charles-Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. Hedging bets was a good idea, since the first two Napoleon Bonapartes died young. So for those following along at home, Napoleon Bonaparte died on St Helena, his son Napoleon Bonaparte died of tuberculosis at 21, and the claim passed to his 24 year old nephew, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte.
Meanwhile, back in Italy, Lucien’s children were growing up, and one son in particular seemed to have inherited his father’s legacy, for good and bad. Despite being scratched out of his brother’s line of succession, Lucien also enjoyed naming all of his kids after the emperor. His fourth son, Pierre Napoleon Bonaparte, was a real chip off the old block: just like his father, he spent his teens and twenties desperate to “die with a dagger in my hand”. Known as “the wild boar of Corsica” Pierre enjoyed nothing more than a good old-fashioned street fight, to the exasperation and embarrassment of his parents, who on at least one occasion begged the Pope to arrest their son for his own good. They weren’t wrong, and right after Pierre was released he went off and stabbed someone to death. Pierre was sentenced to death, but come on, nobody’s gonna be the one to execute a Bonaparte, so Lucien sent his idiot son off to America until things cooled off. Pierre fell in love with New York City, probably because it offered so many more alluring opportunities for a street fight, and at some point he ran into his cousin, Louis Napoleon, the new heir. Louis was trying to gather supporters for his cause, but Pierre was more interested in gathering mistresses for his bedroom. Then, in 1852, history repeats itself, this time as farce. Louis-Napoleon makes his move, and names himself Napoleon III. That same year, Pierre Napoleon falls in love – with a woman completely below his station. The new Emperor Napoleon tells his cousin to knock it off, but like father, like son, Pierre tells the Emperor to stuff it, and marries Nina, the illiterate daughter of a foundry worker. Then, you guessed it, Emperor Napoleon got mad, and refused to recognize Pierre and Nina’s marriage. Nevertheless, the couple have a bunch of children and putter around the countryside, where Pierre raises a pet lion and manages to keep himself out of street fights – for a while, at least. In 1867, Pierre and Nina got married again, in the hopes that Pierre’s cousin would recognize her and their children, but Napoleon III still refuses. In fact, he tells Pierre to stop using his middle name in public: there can only be ONE Firstname Napoleon Bonaparte, buddy, and I’ve got dibs. Pierre, Nina and their children are social outcasts, and in a surprising turn of events, this did not turn Pierre’s mood around. In 1870, Pierre took time to troll some anti-Bonapartists with an outrageous letter to the editor. The anti-Bonapartists took offense and a pair of gentlemen marched over to Pierre’s house the next day. After ringing the doorbell, they challenged Pierre to a duel. We can never be sure what happened next, but the next five minutes changed the family’s fate forever: Pierre Napoleon Bonaparte, cousin of the emperor, shot an unarmed man to death in his front parlor. Pierre Bonaparte’s case was the trial of a generation. 100,000 Parisians attended the victim’s funeral, and European intellectuals saw the trial as the end of an era. In a letter to Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels observed, “This Pierre Bonaparte scandal…is a splendid initiation to the new era in Paris. Louis is decidedly done for. For the bourgeois a most unpleasant awakening from their illusions, as if the whole foundation of corruption and vileness, built up so slowly and carefully for eighteen years, were about to collapse.” Once again, however, the Wild Boar of Corsica escaped the gallows. His triumph didn’t last long, however – within a few months, the Communards looted Paris, and they took extra pains to loot the despised Pierre Bonaparte’s home before they burned it to the ground, erasing the last of the family’s fortunes in a single blow. Pierre and his cousin both hit the road for Belgium. No longer under his cousin’s tyranny, Pierre and Nina had one last wedding ceremony, legitimizing their union – and their children – once and for all. Having accomplished this, Nina left the Wild Boar of Corsica for good. Pierre spent his final days in drunken debauchery and poverty, while Nina set her sights on her family’s future. Illiterate, despised, and impoverished, Nina had only one asset left: at long last, she and her children were officially Bonapartes.
If Napoleon Bonaparte may be history’s most ambitious social climber, his nephew’s wife could probably give him a run for his money. Despite her own illiterate background, Nina’s son, Roland, soon proved to be a brilliant scholar – who shared his mother’s ambition and love of money. Roland didn’t have any money, but by god, he was a Bonaparte, and they might not be on the throne at the moment but the Bonaparte family had a habit of turning up like a bad penny. Nobody was ready to count the Bonapartes out of world history just yet. It was the Gilded Age, the belle epoque, when the Industrial Revolution produced its first generation of children ready to marry their new money to old names. Nina only had one son, one opportunity to marry him off to the right match. She only had one card to play, and in 1880, where else could you place your one big bet but the great gambling hall of Europe: Monaco.
In 1806, while newly crowned Emperor Napoleon fought to secure his territory, a set of twin boys, Francois and Louis Blanc, were born in southern France. Their father died just before the twins were born, leaving their desperate mother scrambling for means to keep food on the table. The two boys began working almost immediately, taking odd jobs as dishwashers and cafe waiters, but they had a knack for gambling in all its various forms. They made money as easily at the card table as they did on the stock market. Eventually, in 1843, the brothers opened their own enterprise: a sparkling new casino in the town of Bad Homburg (Bat Hohm-bourg). Practically overnight, the casino’s success propelled the Blanc brothers into the social stratosphere. This was no lowdown gambling hall: the Blanc casino drew a dazzling clientele of aristocrats, wealthy playboys and beautiful heiresses. No matter how much money they lost, everyone seemed determined to return to the casino to try their luck again – before long, François Blanc, most often seen walking the floors and shaking hands with high rollers, acquired the nickname “the Magician of Homburg.” Nothing touched him – even a near-disaster turned out his way in the end.
On September 26th, 1852, another bored aristocrat walked through the casino’s doors: Charles-Lucien Bonaparte, the elder brother of Pierre Bonaparte, a.k.a. “the Wild Boar of Corsica”. Unlike his brash, brawling younger brother, Charles-Lucien passed his time studying, illustrating and discovering new birds. The mourning doves I grew up listening to outside my bedroom window are named after Charles-Lucien’s wife. François Blanc wasn’t exactly shaking in his shoes when the most mild-mannered member of the Bonaparte clan walked through the door. Perhaps because of his unassuming disposition, or perhaps because he had the tremendous and rare good luck not to have Napoleon anywhere in his name, over the next three days, Charles-Lucien enjoyed an incredible run. Within 72 hours, he broke the bank and walked out with a staggering 180,000 francs, at a time when the average French man earned 2 francs per day. Charles-Lucien spent two days resting, probably distracted by a new type of crested sparrow, and then walked back in the casino. If his first run had been improbable, his second run seemed nothing short of miraculous. The ornithologist from New Jersey, the least ambitious member of the world’s most ambitious family, the cousin of Emperor Napoleon III, won another 560,000 francs. The number was staggering – almost enough to sink Europe’s grandest casino. After probably spending a few moments in the casino kitchen with a glass of brandy, François Blanc turned disaster into opportunity: the same way an airport casino in Las Vegas might flash a giant “LOOSE SLOTS” sign above the front door, Blanc told Europe, “Hey, we’re giving away money over here! Don’t miss your chance!” The ploy worked, and thousands of European aristocrats, heirs and fools streamed through the casino doors, eventually losing so much money that the Magician of Homburg turned a profit on the whole venture. The house always wins, y’all.
In 1863, the magician had a new trick up his sleeve. François Blanc purchased the casino of Monaco, along with every bit of real estate the nation had for sale. His considerable fortune grew into the kind of personal wealth usually guarded by a dragon. Money followed wherever he went, and even though he spent most of his time in Monaco, he kept an eye on events back in his native country. When Emperor Napoleon III’s rule collapsed ahead of the invading Prussian army, his secretary sent daily dispatches from the front lines of the war and the Commune. When the shaky Third Republic ran out of funds to finish Paris’s fancy new opera house, François personally lent it the money. As always, his bet paid off, and the architect, Charles Garnier, was so grateful that he traveled down to Monaco to build a beautiful new theater for François’s casino. When the impoverished young boy from the countryside finally died at the age of 71, he left behind a grand legacy: profitable businesses, a personal fortune of 88 million francs, and oh, yes, a lovely 18 year old daughter, Marie-Felix. Somewhere outside Paris, a scheming old woman felt a great disturbance in the force. Nina, the Princess of Canino, the three-times-over wife of Pierre-Napoleon Bonaparte, knew just the perfect husband for such a girl.
When Marie-Felix Blanc met Roland Bonaparte, he was a brilliant scholar who had just graduated at the top of his class at the prestigious Saint-Cyr military academy, founded by Napoleon Bonaparte himself. A handsome young man with a great mind and an even greater name, wrapped up in a flashy uniform – what naive young girl could resist? And Marie-Felix was certainly naive. As the youngest of six chidren, Marie-Felix was her elderly grandfather’s favorite. We don’t know much about her childhood, except that it was so gentle that it produced a sheltered, gullible girl who could barely make eye contact with the world. Somewhere along the lines, however, she made eye contact with Roland Bonaparte, and fell head over heels. Marie-Felix’s mother disapproved of the match completely, with good reason: Nina Bonaparte was still a social outcast with nothing to offer but her name. But what a name it was! Marie-Felix’s siblings had married for less, including her older sister, who had recently married a very dashing, very broke Polish prince. By now, the Gilded Age horse trade of an ancient name for new money made even the son of a famous murderer into a suitable match for an heiress. The two mothers came to an agreement, and on a rainy November 17, 1880, Roland Bonaparte and Marie-Felix Blanc were married in a fabulous ceremony at the Blanc family church. Roland and Nina began their scheming only an hour into the marriage: after escorting his new bride into a carriage after the ceremony, Roland made a sudden change of direction. Instead of taking Marie-Felix to the wedding reception, where her mother, siblings, and friends were waiting to celebrate, Roland sped them straight out of town to his estate outside Paris. If you’ve read anything about emotional abuse, or just know anything about human nature, your inner air raid siren is probably going off. The new bride gathered up the courage to ask, “Where are you taking me?” but Roland simply said “To my house.” You may think a carriage suddenly changing direction on a wedding day is a bit too on the nose, but nobody ever accused the Bonapartes of subtlety.
Upon arrival at Roland and Nina’s estate in Saint-Cloud (Sahn-Kloo), just outside Paris, Marie-Felix began a life of miserable seclusion. Roland and Nina despised the new bride: she was sheltered to the point of absurdity, and lightning and thunder scared her so much that the twenty one year old woman would flee to the basement. She was a superstitious scaredy-cat, uptight, and – worst of all – sentimental. Isolated from any friends or family, Marie-Felix kept company with cats and ducks, and gave away money like it grew on trees. In the long stretches in between visitors, Marie-Felix kept mind occupied with French and German poetry, which Roland hated, and beautiful waltzes, which Roland hated even more. Roland spent most of his days locked in his study. There was only one activity they seemed to have in common: they were both trying, desperately and without any fun, to conceive a child. Every month, Marie-Felix waited, and every month, she was disappointed. Over and over again, she visited doctors searching for answers. They all prescribed cures, medicines, techniques, and advice – but what is unclear is whether any of them suspected the truth. Did they notice the young woman in front of them seemed pale – especially pale, even by Gilded Age standards? Did they notice she was weak and frail? Did they chalk this up to delicate femininity, or did they realize what was really happening? Did Roland? Did Nina? This is the great question at the heart of the story to come: how much did Roland and Nina know, and how much did this influence their actions? Were the events to come an unforeseen tragedy – or was it something worse?
When Roland Bonaparte kidnapped his new bride back to Saint-Cloud, the very first thing he and Nina did was take out a life insurance policy on Marie-Felix. They had noticed right away what so many doctors failed – or refused – to see. Marie-Felix’s cheeks were pale. She swooned. She fainted, she coughed up blood. Marie-Felix wasn’t simply frail – she was consumptive. Nina and Roland blamed the cold morning baths, the corsets, the delicate nature of womanhood. As with so many young women of the 1880s, Gilded Age notions of fragile femininity helped disguise the essential truth that this 21 year old woman was dying of tuberculosis. For Nina, it was a race against time.
In 1881, Marie-Felix’s mother died at the age of only forty-seven. To everyone’s surprise, Roland refused to allow his wife to inherit anything from her mother, to add onto the fortune she’d already inherited from her father. Roland had been doing some digging, and knew what no one else in the Blanc family suspected: Marie-Felix’s mother had racked up enormous debts. By accepting any of her mother’s money, Marie-Felix would also be accepting her mother’s debts – and by rejecting her mother’s money, she left the burden of paying those debts to her siblings. The move stunned Marie-Felix’s siblings, who stopped talking to her – exactly as Nina had always hoped. There was only one danger left: if Marie-Felix died before producing any children, her personal fortune would revert to her siblings. So Nina and Roland encouraged Marie-Felix: go to your doctors, take their advice, swallow their medicines, and try, try, try for a baby. At long last, poor Marie-Felix discovered she was pregnant. Everything changed in a flash. For a brief period of time, the future looked rosy. Nina and Roland couldn’t have been more doting, and they kept Marie-Felix surrounded with attentive, hand-picked servants to keep her healthy during the pregnancy. Whenever Marie-Felix’s tuberculosis attacked, the servants reassured her she looked more beautiful than ever. “Am I really all that ill? Am I going to die soon?” Ah, of course not, dear, but now that you mention it, with a baby on the way, perhaps you should make a will? on March 17, 1882, Marie-Felix Bonaparte wrote a new will and testament. “Wishing to give my husband, Prince Roland Bonaparte, a proof of my attachment, I leave to him in entirety: the whole of my fortune. If I leave issue of our marriage, I leave to my husband all that the will permits me to dispose in his favor.” With this crucial task completed, Roland and Nina went to great lengths to make sure Marie-Felix – and her unborn child – would make it to the finish line. Years later, Marie Bonaparte would speak with her mother’s physician at the time. “Professor Pinard, who attended her confinement, assured me later that my mother was consumptive and that the whole of one lung was affected. He told me that in the course of her pregnancy she actually coughed up blood several times. But her consumption was something to be denied; they wanted to be able to count on her death without seeming to do so.”
On June 30, 1882, Marie-Felix went into labor. Three days later, she was still in labor. On July 2nd, Marie-Felix was fading fast, and so was the child. Professor Pinard delivered the baby, a daughter, blue and unmoving. Rushing the infant into the next room, the doctor heroically performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation for forty five minutes. Finally, the sounds of a baby crying reached Marie-Felix’s ears. Princess Marie Bonaparte, great-grandniece of Napoleon, was born.
Relieved, Marie-Felix rested quietly in her bedroom. Nina left the estate, her work to secure her son’s fortune complete. Roland disappeared back into his study. A wet nurse took care of the baby. Marie-Felix was alone again. A few weeks after the birth, Professor Pinard gave Marie-Felix permission to get out of bed. She invited her older brother over for dinner to celebrate. At the end of the evening, as Roland escorted his brother-in-law to the door, Marie-Felix turned to head upstairs. As she climbed into bed, Marie-Felix felt a terrible pain that left her gasping for breath, asking for a doctor and a priest. As Roland appeared in the doorframe, Marie-Felix looked at him sadly. “My poor Roro, I’ll never see you again.” Marie-Felix died the same way she lived: gently. She was buried a few days later in Versailles, next to her murderous father-in-law, Pierre. When Nina heard the news of her daughter-in-law’s death, she was nothing less than delighted. “What luck for Roland!” she cried out. “Now he gets the whole fortune!”
“I liked murderers,” Marie Bonaparte wrote in 1953. “I thought them interesting. Had not my grandfather been one when he killed the journalist? And my great-granduncle Napoleon, what a monumental murderer he was!” Yet Marie’s own father, the quiet scholar, could be just as ruthless as his father and granduncle. Perhaps it is no surprise that a Bonaparte would develop a lifelong interest in the dynamics of the family, but Marie’s passion stemmed as much from her traumatic birth as her last name. Reflecting on her mother’s life, Marie considered her a “scapegoat” for what she called the “Monte Carlo crime.” Perhaps Marie-Felix was always destined to die of tuberculosis. Nevertheless, Nina and Roland conspired to accumulate her fortune before she did. Little Marie grew up believing her mother’s fortune was “accursed” – and perhaps this was why she had little difficulty spending it and giving it away as an adult. First, however, Marie would have to navigate the experiences which would inspire a lifetime of study: she would have to grow up, the child of a strange family, and set out to create an even stranger family of her own.
Thanks for listening to The Land of Desire! In the next episode, we’ll discuss Marie’s early childhood experiences, which would form the inspiration of her finest work, and her marriage, which makes the rest of the Bonaparte marriages look downright conventional. If you thought this episode was juicy, believe me, you won’t want to miss part two. To tide you over until then, make sure to subscribe to the podcast newsletter at thelandofdesire dot substack dot com if you haven’t done so already, as I’ll be telling the wild story of François Blanc’s wife, which was too off-topic to fit in this script but too crazy not to tell. Keep an eye on your inboxes. Until then, au revoir!
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Welcome back! After a long break to buy new soundproofing equipment – which may or may not have been successful – we’re back with a new miniseries. I’m excited, as I think we’re covering one of the most interesting subjects this show has ever covered: the heiress, philanthropist and pioneering psychoanalyst Marie Bonaparte. Naturally, if we’re going to discuss a pioneering child psychologist we have to go back to the beginning and tell the story of her family – and oh, what a family!
Episode 71: “Marie, The Last Bonaparte”
Transcript
Bienvenue and welcome back to The Land of Desire. I’m your host, Diana, and each month I provide a glimpse into French history and culture. As I’ve settled into my new apartment, it took a little longer than I’d hoped to set up a new recording studio, and I had to order some new equipment. It was a blessing in disguise, as this delay gave me time to really luxuriate in the research of this month’s subject, someone who might be one of my favorite characters ever featured on this show.
Marie Bonaparte is what I like to call a fascinating woman, the kind of woman who spends her life being unconventional, pioneering, wildly interesting and getting away with it all by being very rich. Her life story is outrageous, shocking, and almost too on the nose metaphorically: she’s the descendant of the man who swept away the Ancien Regime, and used her inheritance to drag Europe into the modern age. Marie Bonaparte was blessed and cursed with a larger-than-life family, and this obsession with family brought her into contact with the ultimate expert on the subject: Sigmund Freud. From a line of tyrants, murderers and emperors, Marie’s own enduring legacy is that of an advocate for the refugee, the child, and the visionary. While her ancestors traded on their power, their money and their name to acquire more of the same, Marie Bonaparte used her influence to push for newer worlds, broader minds and safer harbors. She experimented with her sexuality, she launched an illustrious career, and she saved the life of one of the greatest minds of the 20th century. Marie Bonaparte’s life is far too interesting to fit into a single episode. To begin – and with Freud, where else could you begin? – we’ll focus on Marie Bonaparte’s family. Perhaps you’ve heard of them. Along the way, we’ll encounter royal refugees, lions, murderers, Hitler, a seriously weird uncle, Edgar Allen Poe, Queen Elizabeth, Leonardo da Vinci, and more. This month, settle in for the fascinating story of Her Royal Highness, Princess Marie of Greece and Denmark, the last Bonaparte.
“I do not believe that any man in the world is more unfortunate in his family than I am.” So wrote Napoleon Bonaparte in 1810, after facing another disappointment from his sprawling, fractious family. To give a little credit to the family in question, Bonaparte was as tyrannical over the dinner table as he was over the continent. In the first year of his empire, Napoleon wrote to one of his lieutenants that he expected absolute loyalty, subservience and obedience from his family if they wanted to share in his glory and power. “I recognize only those who serve me as relations. My fortune is not attached to the name of Bonaparte, but to that of Napoleon…those who do not rise with me shall no longer form part of my family.” Ruling over an enormous band of jumped-up Corsicans was like herding cats, and even General Bonaparte himself could barely manage the task. The easiest cat in the bag was Napoleon’s older brother, Joseph, with whom he had always been close. Joseph was the perfect family ally: smart, obedience, and less ambitious than Napoleon. Sometimes he was too unambitious. On the rare occasion that the brothers clashed, it was almost always because Napoleon was asking Joseph to do something besides sit around in the backyard watering tomato plants. In 1806, Napoleon ordered Joseph to go be king of Spain, which was absolutely the last thing Joseph wanted to do, and Napoleon fired back with that warning: cross me and I’ll scratch your name off the family tree. While Joseph eventually gave in, Napoleon faced stiffer resistance from his younger brother, Lucien.
Only sixteen during the French Revolution, in many ways Lucien was the “true believer” of the Bonaparte family. From the beginning, Lucien Bonaparte represented the radical branch of the family, an ominous position which would echo over multiple generations. A self-declared Jacobin, the dramatic teenager vowed to “die with a dagger in his hand” and as long as his older brother represented a threat to the Ancien Regime, Lucien would do anything to support his cause. In 1799, Lucien was elected president of the Council of Five Hundred, and his flair for drama played a pivotal role in securing Napoleon’s rise. On the infamous 18th Brumaire, when Napoleon attempted a coup d’etat, Lucien slipped out of the council room and told the guards that the Council of Five Hundred were being harassed by a bunch of terrorists. Then, in a supremely goth 20-something move, Lucien pointed his sword at Napoleon’s heart, and swore to plunge it through his brother’s chest if he ever betrayed the country. At that moment, Lucien ordered the guards to expel anyone who resisted Napoleon’s coup d’etat. The guards marched in, the opposition marched out, Napoleon became the First Consul, and the French Revolution came to an end. Without Lucien, Napoleon might never have come to power – but the moment he did, Lucien began to wonder whether he had not created a tyrant. Napoleon and Lucien clashed over Napoleon’s iron-fisted rule over Europe – but they exploded when Napoleon extended his rule over Lucien’s private life.
Before the French Revolution, the teenaged Lucien disobeyed his parents and married the illiterate daughter of an innkeeper. After bearing him two children, Lucien’s first wife died, and the Bonapartes couldn’t wait to marry their third son off to someone more suitable. Unfortunately for Napoleon and his parents, Lucien already had a new wife in mind: a scandalous young widow named Alexandrine Jouberthon. She was completely unsuitable. Despite the objections of his family, Lucien married Alexandrine, and launched another tradition which would continue down his branch of the Bonaparte family for generations to come: marrying below one’s station. Only Mama Bonaparte recognized her son’s marriage – nobody else was willing to risk Napoleon’s anger. Despite a civil ceremony, Napoleon refused to recognize Lucien’s second marriage, or the child it produced, and in 1803 Napoleon made good on his threat and sent Lucien, his wife, and their children into exile. But the enemy of my enemy is my friend – and Napoleon had a lot of enemies, so it didn’t take long for Lucien to make wealthy, powerful friends, including the Pope.
In 1804, Napoleon rose once more from First Consul to Emperor. Napoleon issued a reminder to any members of the Bourbon family who still had heads on their shoulders: don’t even think about trying to reclaim your throne, and he issued a proclamation outlining the Bonaparte line of succession. Lucien Bonaparte, without whom Napoleon might never have risen to power, disappeared from the official Bonaparte family tree. A few years later, Napoleon offered Lucien another chance: divorce your wife, and I will welcome you back into the line of succession, and recognize your children as my family. You can even keep Madame Jouberthon as your mistress, so long as you bend the knee and apologize for what you did. Lucien rejected the offer, and tried to escape the continent altogether. Sailing for the United States, Lucien and his family were captured by the British, who allowed him to live the life of an English country gentleman. Napoleon was convinced Lucien was conspiring against him, when in truth the former Jacobin spent most of his time geeking out about telescopes and writing terrible poetry about Charlemagne. After Napoleon’s fall from power, Lucien moved back to Italy, where his friend the Pope granted him the title Prince of Canino. With oodles of money and a dozen children to occupy his time, Lucien spent his days scribbling more mediocre writing and excavating his backyard for Roman ruins. To the last, Napoleon couldn’t stop telling his little brother what to do, and even from his exile on the remote island of St Helena, Napoleon wanted Lucien to “cease writing poetry and to busy himself with writing a history of the Revolution and the Emperor’s reign.” Napoleon died before reconciling Lucien to the official family tree, and the Bonaparte line of succession soon became a headache which would rattle Europe for the next century.
Napoleon’s legacy was supposed to be a child of destiny. In 1810, desperate for an heir, he’d married the great-niece of Marie Antoinette, a neat little way to tie up loose ends and bad feelings. The couple could barely stand one another, but they did their duty well enough to produce Napoleon Junior. In 1814, he reigned as Napoleon II for two weeks – and before you scoff, what did you accomplish as a three year old? Not for the last time, the Bonaparte family made a home in Vienna, where Napoleon spent his time twiddling his thumbs, doing nothing of importance and then dying of tuberculosis at the age of 21, without an heir. Napoleon’s older brother Joseph had died without having any sons, so the line of succession should have passed to Lucien, old but still kicking around the Italian countryside. But since Napoleon had erased Lucien and all of his children from the Bonaparte family tree, the line of succession skipped down to the next Bonaparte brother, Louis. Unlike Lucien, Louis was determined to do whatever it took to stay in Napoleon’s good graces. By hook or by crook, he was going to write his family into the Bonaparte line of succession in permanent marker. Louis sucked up to his older brother in the most predictable fashion: his first son was named Napoleon Charles Bonaparte. His second son was named Napoleon-Louis Bonaparte. Then, just for good measure, he figured why not hedge my bets, here’s my third son, Charles-Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. Hedging bets was a good idea, since the first two Napoleon Bonapartes died young. So for those following along at home, Napoleon Bonaparte died on St Helena, his son Napoleon Bonaparte died of tuberculosis at 21, and the claim passed to his 24 year old nephew, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte.
Meanwhile, back in Italy, Lucien’s children were growing up, and one son in particular seemed to have inherited his father’s legacy, for good and bad. Despite being scratched out of his brother’s line of succession, Lucien also enjoyed naming all of his kids after the emperor. His fourth son, Pierre Napoleon Bonaparte, was a real chip off the old block: just like his father, he spent his teens and twenties desperate to “die with a dagger in my hand”. Known as “the wild boar of Corsica” Pierre enjoyed nothing more than a good old-fashioned street fight, to the exasperation and embarrassment of his parents, who on at least one occasion begged the Pope to arrest their son for his own good. They weren’t wrong, and right after Pierre was released he went off and stabbed someone to death. Pierre was sentenced to death, but come on, nobody’s gonna be the one to execute a Bonaparte, so Lucien sent his idiot son off to America until things cooled off. Pierre fell in love with New York City, probably because it offered so many more alluring opportunities for a street fight, and at some point he ran into his cousin, Louis Napoleon, the new heir. Louis was trying to gather supporters for his cause, but Pierre was more interested in gathering mistresses for his bedroom. Then, in 1852, history repeats itself, this time as farce. Louis-Napoleon makes his move, and names himself Napoleon III. That same year, Pierre Napoleon falls in love – with a woman completely below his station. The new Emperor Napoleon tells his cousin to knock it off, but like father, like son, Pierre tells the Emperor to stuff it, and marries Nina, the illiterate daughter of a foundry worker. Then, you guessed it, Emperor Napoleon got mad, and refused to recognize Pierre and Nina’s marriage. Nevertheless, the couple have a bunch of children and putter around the countryside, where Pierre raises a pet lion and manages to keep himself out of street fights – for a while, at least. In 1867, Pierre and Nina got married again, in the hopes that Pierre’s cousin would recognize her and their children, but Napoleon III still refuses. In fact, he tells Pierre to stop using his middle name in public: there can only be ONE Firstname Napoleon Bonaparte, buddy, and I’ve got dibs. Pierre, Nina and their children are social outcasts, and in a surprising turn of events, this did not turn Pierre’s mood around. In 1870, Pierre took time to troll some anti-Bonapartists with an outrageous letter to the editor. The anti-Bonapartists took offense and a pair of gentlemen marched over to Pierre’s house the next day. After ringing the doorbell, they challenged Pierre to a duel. We can never be sure what happened next, but the next five minutes changed the family’s fate forever: Pierre Napoleon Bonaparte, cousin of the emperor, shot an unarmed man to death in his front parlor. Pierre Bonaparte’s case was the trial of a generation. 100,000 Parisians attended the victim’s funeral, and European intellectuals saw the trial as the end of an era. In a letter to Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels observed, “This Pierre Bonaparte scandal…is a splendid initiation to the new era in Paris. Louis is decidedly done for. For the bourgeois a most unpleasant awakening from their illusions, as if the whole foundation of corruption and vileness, built up so slowly and carefully for eighteen years, were about to collapse.” Once again, however, the Wild Boar of Corsica escaped the gallows. His triumph didn’t last long, however – within a few months, the Communards looted Paris, and they took extra pains to loot the despised Pierre Bonaparte’s home before they burned it to the ground, erasing the last of the family’s fortunes in a single blow. Pierre and his cousin both hit the road for Belgium. No longer under his cousin’s tyranny, Pierre and Nina had one last wedding ceremony, legitimizing their union – and their children – once and for all. Having accomplished this, Nina left the Wild Boar of Corsica for good. Pierre spent his final days in drunken debauchery and poverty, while Nina set her sights on her family’s future. Illiterate, despised, and impoverished, Nina had only one asset left: at long last, she and her children were officially Bonapartes.
If Napoleon Bonaparte may be history’s most ambitious social climber, his nephew’s wife could probably give him a run for his money. Despite her own illiterate background, Nina’s son, Roland, soon proved to be a brilliant scholar – who shared his mother’s ambition and love of money. Roland didn’t have any money, but by god, he was a Bonaparte, and they might not be on the throne at the moment but the Bonaparte family had a habit of turning up like a bad penny. Nobody was ready to count the Bonapartes out of world history just yet. It was the Gilded Age, the belle epoque, when the Industrial Revolution produced its first generation of children ready to marry their new money to old names. Nina only had one son, one opportunity to marry him off to the right match. She only had one card to play, and in 1880, where else could you place your one big bet but the great gambling hall of Europe: Monaco.
In 1806, while newly crowned Emperor Napoleon fought to secure his territory, a set of twin boys, Francois and Louis Blanc, were born in southern France. Their father died just before the twins were born, leaving their desperate mother scrambling for means to keep food on the table. The two boys began working almost immediately, taking odd jobs as dishwashers and cafe waiters, but they had a knack for gambling in all its various forms. They made money as easily at the card table as they did on the stock market. Eventually, in 1843, the brothers opened their own enterprise: a sparkling new casino in the town of Bad Homburg (Bat Hohm-bourg). Practically overnight, the casino’s success propelled the Blanc brothers into the social stratosphere. This was no lowdown gambling hall: the Blanc casino drew a dazzling clientele of aristocrats, wealthy playboys and beautiful heiresses. No matter how much money they lost, everyone seemed determined to return to the casino to try their luck again – before long, François Blanc, most often seen walking the floors and shaking hands with high rollers, acquired the nickname “the Magician of Homburg.” Nothing touched him – even a near-disaster turned out his way in the end.
On September 26th, 1852, another bored aristocrat walked through the casino’s doors: Charles-Lucien Bonaparte, the elder brother of Pierre Bonaparte, a.k.a. “the Wild Boar of Corsica”. Unlike his brash, brawling younger brother, Charles-Lucien passed his time studying, illustrating and discovering new birds. The mourning doves I grew up listening to outside my bedroom window are named after Charles-Lucien’s wife. François Blanc wasn’t exactly shaking in his shoes when the most mild-mannered member of the Bonaparte clan walked through the door. Perhaps because of his unassuming disposition, or perhaps because he had the tremendous and rare good luck not to have Napoleon anywhere in his name, over the next three days, Charles-Lucien enjoyed an incredible run. Within 72 hours, he broke the bank and walked out with a staggering 180,000 francs, at a time when the average French man earned 2 francs per day. Charles-Lucien spent two days resting, probably distracted by a new type of crested sparrow, and then walked back in the casino. If his first run had been improbable, his second run seemed nothing short of miraculous. The ornithologist from New Jersey, the least ambitious member of the world’s most ambitious family, the cousin of Emperor Napoleon III, won another 560,000 francs. The number was staggering – almost enough to sink Europe’s grandest casino. After probably spending a few moments in the casino kitchen with a glass of brandy, François Blanc turned disaster into opportunity: the same way an airport casino in Las Vegas might flash a giant “LOOSE SLOTS” sign above the front door, Blanc told Europe, “Hey, we’re giving away money over here! Don’t miss your chance!” The ploy worked, and thousands of European aristocrats, heirs and fools streamed through the casino doors, eventually losing so much money that the Magician of Homburg turned a profit on the whole venture. The house always wins, y’all.
In 1863, the magician had a new trick up his sleeve. François Blanc purchased the casino of Monaco, along with every bit of real estate the nation had for sale. His considerable fortune grew into the kind of personal wealth usually guarded by a dragon. Money followed wherever he went, and even though he spent most of his time in Monaco, he kept an eye on events back in his native country. When Emperor Napoleon III’s rule collapsed ahead of the invading Prussian army, his secretary sent daily dispatches from the front lines of the war and the Commune. When the shaky Third Republic ran out of funds to finish Paris’s fancy new opera house, François personally lent it the money. As always, his bet paid off, and the architect, Charles Garnier, was so grateful that he traveled down to Monaco to build a beautiful new theater for François’s casino. When the impoverished young boy from the countryside finally died at the age of 71, he left behind a grand legacy: profitable businesses, a personal fortune of 88 million francs, and oh, yes, a lovely 18 year old daughter, Marie-Felix. Somewhere outside Paris, a scheming old woman felt a great disturbance in the force. Nina, the Princess of Canino, the three-times-over wife of Pierre-Napoleon Bonaparte, knew just the perfect husband for such a girl.
When Marie-Felix Blanc met Roland Bonaparte, he was a brilliant scholar who had just graduated at the top of his class at the prestigious Saint-Cyr military academy, founded by Napoleon Bonaparte himself. A handsome young man with a great mind and an even greater name, wrapped up in a flashy uniform – what naive young girl could resist? And Marie-Felix was certainly naive. As the youngest of six chidren, Marie-Felix was her elderly grandfather’s favorite. We don’t know much about her childhood, except that it was so gentle that it produced a sheltered, gullible girl who could barely make eye contact with the world. Somewhere along the lines, however, she made eye contact with Roland Bonaparte, and fell head over heels. Marie-Felix’s mother disapproved of the match completely, with good reason: Nina Bonaparte was still a social outcast with nothing to offer but her name. But what a name it was! Marie-Felix’s siblings had married for less, including her older sister, who had recently married a very dashing, very broke Polish prince. By now, the Gilded Age horse trade of an ancient name for new money made even the son of a famous murderer into a suitable match for an heiress. The two mothers came to an agreement, and on a rainy November 17, 1880, Roland Bonaparte and Marie-Felix Blanc were married in a fabulous ceremony at the Blanc family church. Roland and Nina began their scheming only an hour into the marriage: after escorting his new bride into a carriage after the ceremony, Roland made a sudden change of direction. Instead of taking Marie-Felix to the wedding reception, where her mother, siblings, and friends were waiting to celebrate, Roland sped them straight out of town to his estate outside Paris. If you’ve read anything about emotional abuse, or just know anything about human nature, your inner air raid siren is probably going off. The new bride gathered up the courage to ask, “Where are you taking me?” but Roland simply said “To my house.” You may think a carriage suddenly changing direction on a wedding day is a bit too on the nose, but nobody ever accused the Bonapartes of subtlety.
Upon arrival at Roland and Nina’s estate in Saint-Cloud (Sahn-Kloo), just outside Paris, Marie-Felix began a life of miserable seclusion. Roland and Nina despised the new bride: she was sheltered to the point of absurdity, and lightning and thunder scared her so much that the twenty one year old woman would flee to the basement. She was a superstitious scaredy-cat, uptight, and – worst of all – sentimental. Isolated from any friends or family, Marie-Felix kept company with cats and ducks, and gave away money like it grew on trees. In the long stretches in between visitors, Marie-Felix kept mind occupied with French and German poetry, which Roland hated, and beautiful waltzes, which Roland hated even more. Roland spent most of his days locked in his study. There was only one activity they seemed to have in common: they were both trying, desperately and without any fun, to conceive a child. Every month, Marie-Felix waited, and every month, she was disappointed. Over and over again, she visited doctors searching for answers. They all prescribed cures, medicines, techniques, and advice – but what is unclear is whether any of them suspected the truth. Did they notice the young woman in front of them seemed pale – especially pale, even by Gilded Age standards? Did they notice she was weak and frail? Did they chalk this up to delicate femininity, or did they realize what was really happening? Did Roland? Did Nina? This is the great question at the heart of the story to come: how much did Roland and Nina know, and how much did this influence their actions? Were the events to come an unforeseen tragedy – or was it something worse?
When Roland Bonaparte kidnapped his new bride back to Saint-Cloud, the very first thing he and Nina did was take out a life insurance policy on Marie-Felix. They had noticed right away what so many doctors failed – or refused – to see. Marie-Felix’s cheeks were pale. She swooned. She fainted, she coughed up blood. Marie-Felix wasn’t simply frail – she was consumptive. Nina and Roland blamed the cold morning baths, the corsets, the delicate nature of womanhood. As with so many young women of the 1880s, Gilded Age notions of fragile femininity helped disguise the essential truth that this 21 year old woman was dying of tuberculosis. For Nina, it was a race against time.
In 1881, Marie-Felix’s mother died at the age of only forty-seven. To everyone’s surprise, Roland refused to allow his wife to inherit anything from her mother, to add onto the fortune she’d already inherited from her father. Roland had been doing some digging, and knew what no one else in the Blanc family suspected: Marie-Felix’s mother had racked up enormous debts. By accepting any of her mother’s money, Marie-Felix would also be accepting her mother’s debts – and by rejecting her mother’s money, she left the burden of paying those debts to her siblings. The move stunned Marie-Felix’s siblings, who stopped talking to her – exactly as Nina had always hoped. There was only one danger left: if Marie-Felix died before producing any children, her personal fortune would revert to her siblings. So Nina and Roland encouraged Marie-Felix: go to your doctors, take their advice, swallow their medicines, and try, try, try for a baby. At long last, poor Marie-Felix discovered she was pregnant. Everything changed in a flash. For a brief period of time, the future looked rosy. Nina and Roland couldn’t have been more doting, and they kept Marie-Felix surrounded with attentive, hand-picked servants to keep her healthy during the pregnancy. Whenever Marie-Felix’s tuberculosis attacked, the servants reassured her she looked more beautiful than ever. “Am I really all that ill? Am I going to die soon?” Ah, of course not, dear, but now that you mention it, with a baby on the way, perhaps you should make a will? on March 17, 1882, Marie-Felix Bonaparte wrote a new will and testament. “Wishing to give my husband, Prince Roland Bonaparte, a proof of my attachment, I leave to him in entirety: the whole of my fortune. If I leave issue of our marriage, I leave to my husband all that the will permits me to dispose in his favor.” With this crucial task completed, Roland and Nina went to great lengths to make sure Marie-Felix – and her unborn child – would make it to the finish line. Years later, Marie Bonaparte would speak with her mother’s physician at the time. “Professor Pinard, who attended her confinement, assured me later that my mother was consumptive and that the whole of one lung was affected. He told me that in the course of her pregnancy she actually coughed up blood several times. But her consumption was something to be denied; they wanted to be able to count on her death without seeming to do so.”
On June 30, 1882, Marie-Felix went into labor. Three days later, she was still in labor. On July 2nd, Marie-Felix was fading fast, and so was the child. Professor Pinard delivered the baby, a daughter, blue and unmoving. Rushing the infant into the next room, the doctor heroically performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation for forty five minutes. Finally, the sounds of a baby crying reached Marie-Felix’s ears. Princess Marie Bonaparte, great-grandniece of Napoleon, was born.
Relieved, Marie-Felix rested quietly in her bedroom. Nina left the estate, her work to secure her son’s fortune complete. Roland disappeared back into his study. A wet nurse took care of the baby. Marie-Felix was alone again. A few weeks after the birth, Professor Pinard gave Marie-Felix permission to get out of bed. She invited her older brother over for dinner to celebrate. At the end of the evening, as Roland escorted his brother-in-law to the door, Marie-Felix turned to head upstairs. As she climbed into bed, Marie-Felix felt a terrible pain that left her gasping for breath, asking for a doctor and a priest. As Roland appeared in the doorframe, Marie-Felix looked at him sadly. “My poor Roro, I’ll never see you again.” Marie-Felix died the same way she lived: gently. She was buried a few days later in Versailles, next to her murderous father-in-law, Pierre. When Nina heard the news of her daughter-in-law’s death, she was nothing less than delighted. “What luck for Roland!” she cried out. “Now he gets the whole fortune!”
“I liked murderers,” Marie Bonaparte wrote in 1953. “I thought them interesting. Had not my grandfather been one when he killed the journalist? And my great-granduncle Napoleon, what a monumental murderer he was!” Yet Marie’s own father, the quiet scholar, could be just as ruthless as his father and granduncle. Perhaps it is no surprise that a Bonaparte would develop a lifelong interest in the dynamics of the family, but Marie’s passion stemmed as much from her traumatic birth as her last name. Reflecting on her mother’s life, Marie considered her a “scapegoat” for what she called the “Monte Carlo crime.” Perhaps Marie-Felix was always destined to die of tuberculosis. Nevertheless, Nina and Roland conspired to accumulate her fortune before she did. Little Marie grew up believing her mother’s fortune was “accursed” – and perhaps this was why she had little difficulty spending it and giving it away as an adult. First, however, Marie would have to navigate the experiences which would inspire a lifetime of study: she would have to grow up, the child of a strange family, and set out to create an even stranger family of her own.
Thanks for listening to The Land of Desire! In the next episode, we’ll discuss Marie’s early childhood experiences, which would form the inspiration of her finest work, and her marriage, which makes the rest of the Bonaparte marriages look downright conventional. If you thought this episode was juicy, believe me, you won’t want to miss part two. To tide you over until then, make sure to subscribe to the podcast newsletter at thelandofdesire dot substack dot com if you haven’t done so already, as I’ll be telling the wild story of François Blanc’s wife, which was too off-topic to fit in this script but too crazy not to tell. Keep an eye on your inboxes. Until then, au revoir!
Sources:
- Bertin, Celia. Marie Bonaparte. Yale University Press, 1987.
- A. Bingham, ed., A Selection from the Letters and Dispatches of the First Napoleon, Vol. II (London, 1884), p. 207.
- Henri Bertrand, Napoleon at St. Helena: The Journals of General Bertrand, January-May 1821, deciphered and annotated by Paul Fleuriot de Langle, translated by Francis Hume (Garden City, 1952), p. 203.
Bowley, A. L. “Comparison of the Changes in Wages in France, The United States, and the United Kingdom, From 1840 to 1891.” The Economic Journal, vol. 8, no. 32, [Royal Economic Society, Wiley], 1898, pp. 474–89, https://doi.org/10.2307/2957090.
Walton, Jean. Fair Sex, Savage Dreams: Race, Psychoanalysis, Sexual Difference. Duke University Press, 2001, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv125jjq5.- https://www.psicoanalisi.it/psicoanalisi/reflections-on-the-five-copybooks-of-marie-bonaparte/6478/
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The post 71. Marie Bonaparte, Part I appeared first on The Land of Desire.
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