Watertown Republican

MADAME JEROME BONAPARTE.

In Scribner's for May there is an interesting account of "The Baltimore Bonapartes," by E. L. Didier, accompanied by striking portraits of Jerome and Madame Bonaparte, their son and grandson. We quote as follows:

Madame Bonaparte is still living in Baltimore, at the age of ninety years. She says she has no intention of dying until she is a hundred. She has been in Europe sixteen times, and contemplates another trip this summer. This old lady has more vivacity, and certainly more intelligence than many of the leading women of fashion of the present day. She expresses her opinion upon all subjects with great freedom, and sometimes with bitterness. She has a tithe or no confidence in men; and a very poor opinion of women: the young ladies of the present day, she says, all have the "homo mania." All sentiment she thinks of weakness. She professes that her ambition has always been—not on the throne, but near the throne. Mr. Patterson, her father, died in 1836, at an advanced age, in possession of a large fortune. In his will, which is one of the most remarkable documents that has ever been deposited in Orphans Court of Baltimore, he says: "The conduct of my daughter Betsey, has, through life, been so disobedient that in no instance has she ever consulted my opinion or feelings; indeed, she has caused me more anxiety and trouble than all my children put together; her folly and misconduct have occasioned me a train of experience that, first to last, has cost me much money"—in this, he means the marriage of his daughter to Jerome Bonaparte. The old gentleman left her, out of his great wealth, only three small houses and the wines in his cellar—worth in all about ten thousand dollars.

Madame Bonaparte is very rich: she has made her money by successful speculations and by her life-long habit of saving. For years she has lived at a boarding-house in Baltimore, seeing very little company. Her costume is ancient, and there is nothing about her appearance that suggests the marvelous beauty that led captive the heart of Jerome Bonaparte. Her eyes alone retain some of the brightness of former days.

For forty years, Madame Bonaparte kept a diary, in which she recorded her views and observations of European and American society. Some of her remarks are severely sarcastic. A well-known Boston publishing house, it is said, recently offered ten thousand dollars for the manuscript volumes, but Madame refused to sell them at any price, and has committed them to the custody of her younger grandson, Charles Joseph, recently a law student of Harvard, now a rising member of the Baltimore bar. They will probably be published after the writer's death.