'Madame Mere de Sa Majeste l'Empereur' that she boycotted the imperial
coronation in pique.It was evident that now, above all, the turbulent Bonaparte family was a
thorn in the emperor's side. Essentially the reason Lucien and Jerome
were in disgrace was that they had married without their brother's
consent. Napoleon suggested to Lucien a dynastic marriage with the
widowed queen of Etruria (Parma and Tuscany) but Lucien would have
none of it. He obtained the senatorship of Treves (Trier) with a salary of
2 s,ooo francs together with the castle of Poppelsdorf on the Moselle,
which had its own theatre and art gallery. Lucien then went on a
spending spree, piling up debt, to fill the gallery with Flemish old
masters. But he refused the lucrative office of Treasurer to the Senate so
as not to impair his rights to the consular succession.
On 26 October r8o3, without consulting Napoleon, he married the
widow of a bankrupt speculator, Madame Alexandrine Joubertuon.
Napoleon exploded with rage at this blatant act of defiance and tried to
enlist Letizia on his side to give Lucien a dressing down. But she sided
with her perennial favourite, causing coolness between First Consul and
mother; it was this, as much as anything, that lay behind the formal title
'Madame Mere' awarded at the time of the imperial proclamation. Insult
was added to injury when Madame Mere said that as Napoleon had not
consulted the Bonaparte family about his marriage to Josephine, the same
rule should hold good for his siblings. The imbroglio ended in a slanging
match between the two brothers, after which Lucien stormed off to travel
privately in Italy and Switzerland; he told Joseph he hated Napoleon and
would never forgive him. According to one colourful version of the
altercation between the brothers, Napoleon upbraided Lucien for
marrying a 'whore', to which he replied forcefully: 'At least my whore is
pretty!' It was Lucien, too, who was most assiduous in spreading the
rumour that Napoleon had slept with Hortense de Beauharnais and that
Louis's son was really Napoleon's.
Jerome meanwhile gave offence in even more spectacular fashion.
When war broke out again, Jerome deserted his ship in the West Indies
and made his way to the United States. There, as described above, he
met and, on Christmas Eve r8o3, married a Baltimore beauty, Betsy
Patterson, the daughter of a wealthy shipowner. Husband and pregnant
wife soon took ship for Holland, to find that the Empire had been
declared and that 'a woman named Patterson' was not to be allowed to
land on French soil or that of its allies (a euphemism for vassal states like
Holland). The weaklivered Jerome, faced with a choice between his wife