NAPOLEON I

N Laugier, graveur; Charles de Steuben, editeur, baron (1788–1856)

Location : Musée Carnavalet

He was about five foot six, but then men were not as tall as they are now generally.  There was even talk that he's special parts were insignificant.  He was also compartmentalized.  He was a natural leader and he changed history.  Thousands fought with him and for him, believing his military campaigns would benefit their countries or their politics.  Thousands died on the battlefields as soldiers but also as civilians.

Interested in all things Napoleon?  Learned that there is an online website devoted to him and here's the link: NAPOLEON ORG and FOUNDATION OF NAPOLEON

MARIA LACZYNSKA - WALEWSKA : MARRIED POLISH MISTRESS OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE FROM 1806 TO 1810

MARIA LACZYNSKA - WALEWSKA

1786 - 1817

When you hear of legendary lovers, you hear "Napoleon and Josephine."  However, Josephine (Marie Josephe Rose Tascher de la Pagerie) was the history making military leader Napoleon's first wife whom he married in 1796, but divorced.  Possibly this was because she had not become pregnant with him, though she had children in her first marriage. When married, both Napoleon and Josephine had affairs and he had children with mistresses. Her affairs were blamed or tolerated because he was gone so much on his military campaigns. The widowed mother of a son by her first husband, Josephine was the sentimental favorite but discarded wife. Perhaps the idea that she was his true love also comes from the rumor that her name was upon his lips when he died.

While Napoleon considered Maria to be his "Polish wife," he left Josephine behind and sought his next wife, Marie Louise, Archduchess of Austria, whom he married on March 11, 1810 by proxy: He was not actually there and had a stand in. Marie Louise was nineteen at the time.  This marriage raised Napoleon's status further because Marie Louise was also a great-niece of Marie Antoinette, the Queen. Napoleon, born in 1769, would remain married to this second wife for the rest of his life, till 1821. 

Marie Laczynska - Walewska, our Mistress of the Month, came from a noble Polish background. She was married to a nobleman, Anastase Colonna Walewski, a noble of of Italian and Polish heritage, when she was either sixteen and a half or seventeen and a half. He was about fifty years her senior and was a widower who had grandchildren older than Marie. Her mother was delighted when the teenager who Marie liked went away into the military and this old neighbor came calling. Old Walewska began his pursuit by throwing her a party to celebrate her completion of what was a finishing school for noble young women, a kind of debut. Marie was persuaded to marry him to do right by her family, whose fortunes were of concern after her father died. Although she took to being the lady of a beautiful palace, the marriage left much to desire.

Although the relationship between Maria and Napoleon was well known, even decades later when their son rose to prominence in France himself, and people mentioned how much he looked like his father, he would say how much he looked like Anastase Colonna-Walewska.  Their son was named Alexandre Joseph Colonna- Walewski.

Marie was already the mother of a son, about a year and a half years old, when she took up with Napoleon.  She divorced Anastase Colinna-Walweska in 1812. after having been Naoleon's mistress.  Her relationship with Napoleon was intense but in it she also experienced long periods of time when he was away.  In 1816 she married Phillipe Antoine d'Ornano, and her third son with him, named Rodolphe d'Ornano.

Now, according to the book by Christine Sutherland, which is the primary reference for this month's posts, Marie Laczynska was one of seven children and a beauty.  It feel upon her to rescue her family financially by marrying old Anastase Colinna Walewski.

When she was eight, her father was killed in a ferocious battle in Praga with the Russians that left 12,000 people (including civilians) dead. Of a noble family, her father's death left her mother to send the sons to private schools for good educations and the daughters to what we could call 'finishing schools" so they would be ready to assume the role of an elite wife.  Her mother hoped that the marriage she contracted for her daughter would preserve and replenish the Laczynska estates.

One description of her went like this. ...  (Madame Laczynska) had a very beautiful teenage daughter, Marie, with incredibly large blue eyes, blonde hair which she wore down to her waist, and a particularly sweet expression on her face.  She made me think of an angel or a wood nymph." (Page 23)

Soon after she turned fourteen, Marie was sent to the Convent of Our Lady of the Assumption in Warsaw, to finish her education.  Not far from the Vistula river, a royal palace had been built by King Sigismund III.  She returned home at sixteen in 1803, with high recommendations about her personality and character.  But it was her beauty was most remarked upon in society.  Besides her thick curly hair worn to the waist, her teeth were even and white, her skin very light white, her eyes cornflower blue, her lashes long.

At the time, a marriage that would benefit the whole family was a more important consideration than the wishes of individuals.  Anastase had been the Chamberlan to the last King of Poland and owned a castle called Walewice. He was the biggest landowner in the province. He was too old to fight, and though he had accomplished much in his lifetime, he retired.  So, he arranged a party in her honor upon her return from school.

It took Marie some time to adjust to her marriage but she had a son with Anastase. Living in luxury, and part of elite social circles that believe Napoleon's military leadership would serve Poland, she had every reason to put the hero in her sights. But when it came time to actually meet him, she asked her husband if they could skip the event.  He insisted that they go and that she be well dressed and bejeweled.  At first Anastase's ego was burnished when Napoleon took an interest in his wife, then he had no choice but to let her to to the man...

One of the most interesting aspects of the relationship of Maria and Napoleon for me is that this military leader strategically lead battles that resulted millions of deaths.  According to Wikipedia, Civilian deaths are impossible to accurately estimate.  While military deaths are invariably put at between 2.5 million and 3.5 million, civilian death tolls vary from 750,000 to 3 million. Yet he seems to have been able to also compartmentalize his personal life, enjoying gossip with Marie and entertaining a romantic correspondence. Yet, there were many times when he had to have left their bed to gather the troops and she might have always wondered if he would return alive.

Marie did divorce the old husband she had married so young and did remarry but not to Napoleon.  There is reason to believe that Napaleon was the love of her life but she married a cousin of his.  In 1815 Anastase Walewski died.  Napoleon fled Naples.  Maria went back to Paris with their son.  She married Ornano in early September 1816 and was soon pregnant. In January 1817 she arrived back at Walewice, Poland and there was found to be seriously ill with kidney disease. She had been warned in her previous two pregnancies not to breast feed because of this kidney problem but had anyway.  Now her health was precarious.  She gave birth in Liege in 1817 to Rodolphe Auguste Ornano, her third son.  She died at thirty one, in December of 1817. Still a young woman by today's standards, childbirth took it's toll on women.

Maria Laczynska was well regarded for her modest character, for no matter what riches she was exposed to, she would remain so.  Napoleon told others he loved Marie, all the while searching for his next marriage, which he wanted to be a dynastic one.  While she was pregnant with his child, which pleased Napoleon, while she lived with him in Austria at the Shonbrunn lavish estates, and when it was time to leave Austria, Maria proceeded to France without Napoleon, in order to give birth there.  Napoleon was getting around to divorcing Josephine and Maria's husband was probably not aware that she was pregnant.

According to the book by Christine Sutherland, in her land will Marie said that she wanted her heart to remain in France, where she had traveled to live as Napoleon's mistress, and her body was to be buried in Poland in her family graveyard.  And so an urn with her heart in it remains in the famous Pere Lachaise graveyard in Paris in the Ornano family vaults.  It says "Marie Laczynska, Comtesse d' Ornano.  As the mother of three sons with three different fathers, Marie left her two oldest son's in the care of her brother.

This month I will tell the story based on Sutherland's book and some additional research I've done. I will not detail Napoleon's military failures and successes but the relationship between him and this young Polish beauty.

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DO YOU HAVE A RELATIONSHIP or A SITUATIONSHIP? : OPINION and RELATIONSHIP ADVICE BY MISSY

 I just recently heard this new word, this new concept, called a SITUATIONSHIP.  What it means is that your contact with another person might seem like a RELATIONSHIP, but it's held together by the situation you're in together, or your situation in life - or his.

We can all understand that some relationships depend on being co-workers, or being in a college class together, or maybe going to the same church or living in the same town.  Someone changes a job or finishes school or moves on and soon the relationships that once held importance to you are no more, or barely held together by rare contact.  If the relationship was a long one maybe it will continue on, but as I've personally found all it takes is traffic jams and transportation difficulties to another part of town to make a local person geographically undesireable.

Sadly this term is perhaps more accurate when applied to when a person keeps you in their life even though they know they do not feel as you do.  He knows he is not serious and never will be and is keeping his options open to meet other women.  He might be in your life enough that you can't believe this would be so but he knows this truth.  You are there because you benefit him in some way, more than he is of benefit to you. Most obviously, sexually.  Perhaps if he didn't have you in his life he would not have regular sex or any sex at all. Perhaps he gets his pleasure without consideration for yours and it's not just the two of you figuring out what works, he's lazy or doesn't actually care and he figures you don't mind because you don't speak up.  (As I see it no one should be doing friends with benefits or booty calls.)  It can be because he doesn't want to be known as a man who doesn't have a woman in his life. Out and about he wants to be seen with a woman - you -  because other men, he figures, will think better of him.  Maybe he's even in the closet, even though it's more popular in big cities in America to be "out."  (Yes, many men who decide they are gay have had heterosexual experience and can have sex with women too.  Some are bisexual.  Not all men who identify as gay find women totally unattractive or totally undesireable. As one man who has been in a committed gay relationship for years told me, "I was engaged to be married to a woman and I enjoyed sex with her but then I had sex with a man and it was just so much more exciting.)

How does a person get into a SITUATIONAL?

No one way, wish their was. I think it's sometimes because a person doesn't know what they want and need.

If you realize you are and don't want to be, don't beat yourself up over how it evolved.  Just don't stay in a SITUATIONAL if you know the relationship is stalled out and you're not getting what you really want and need.  I do know it can be so difficult.  You may love the person, way more than they have ever or could ever love you.  When you break with the person, be loving and kind but firm.

Time passes and so does your libidinal energy, which at best should be devoted to the person or persons who actually love you and want what you do. Through the years in a serious relationship there is give and take and sometimes you might be the one giving more, but you do have needs and always being the giver is probably not healthy or sustainable.  It's not about money or just about money.  There are all sorts of benefits to having a good relationship beyond money.  We all need people we can be ourselves with, people we can speak our truth with, people we can trust, and people we can depend on.

Now, this is not to say that no woman ever kept a man in her life even though she knew he was not it for her.  Some women marry because they feel "it's time' if they want to have children and raise them, for instance.  What's so sad is when you hear of people who stay married for years unhappy and unsatisfied because they did not want to remain unmarried.  Find your courage.

You really have to think about your life, what you want, what is realistic, give it thought and decide.  It might have a lot to do with what chapter of your life you're in.  For instance, some people are content with sharing someone with another person or being a mistress rather than a married woman.  Some younger men go off with an older woman and are happy and devoted, while others figure they'll get sex, career benefits, notoriety, or something else while it lasts.

Ask yourself if changes in a person's life will include you or not.

Missy

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THE PRINCESS SPY BY LARRY LOFTIS : MISTRESS MANIFESTO BOOK REVIEW

This book was just so exciting!  The author Larry Loftis did a find job of presenting the authenticity of Aline Griffith (also known as Aline Griffith Dexter) who spied for the OSS, a predecessor to the CIA, during World War II.  A college graduate from a small town in New York who was patriotic and wanted to contribute to the war effort, she became a spy in a coding office in Spain. She managed to do this while also able to hold down a full time job and do a lot of socializing, weaving her life with the upper class and high society of Spain at the time.  

Aline, mixed with the politicians, the bull fighters, the women who ordered luxury clothing from Balenciaga. In the process, she met the man who she eventually married, who came from one of the most prestigious and wealthy families of all in Spain. Though he was simply named Luis Figueroa, as time went on, and his grandfather and father died, he rose to the title of Romanones, as she did. Both Catholic, they married for better or worse and it seems it was mostly for the better. 

On the International Best Dressed list for years, a fashion icon, Aline Griffith, the girl who had graduated from college and become a Hattie Carnegie model in New York, also bore three sons, and did a lot to help the United States and its Allies to win the war in Europe. 

The trouble is that Aline wrote five books in her life, two non- fiction, two memoir, one a novel.  The memoirs and novel were about her days as a spy but she may have changed some things in them to, as they say, protect the innocent, enough so that there was a question about how much truth the books contained.

I confess that I read the all years ago and I loved them. The language was direct and beautifully unique to her and I got a fine feel for her personality and her daring

The author of The Princess Spy knew Aline Griffith had  been accused of making it all up and also questioned if she had ever spied. Before marriage she had told Luis the truth and he laughed it off, so perhaps her femininity and other aspects of her character and behavior threw people off. Perhaps that people could not possibly think she was capable of spying was an excellent cover!

Larry Loftis, the author, used NARA (National Archives) and other sources to verify that yes, Aline really was a spy. Loftis was able to discover the names of the various operatives (spies), and what their code names were, and what code names Aline had given them. He was also able to confirm some of her reportage. Overall, I was a bit disappointed to learn that he did think she had changed so much in her works that they were all fictive. I reason that some of this might have been because her need to protect others but also because what records were kept of the spies by the government was limited. I also know that no memoir or even autobiography is going to cover every moment of a person's life. It's always possible that there was much to be found that was not, maybe because it was destroyed.  And mostly, would any person who spied be willing to tell the whole truth and nothing but?

I want to respect this author, who also wrote another book about a woman who spied, respect for all this effort, but I have to tell you that I still think Aline, Countess of Romanones' books are worth the read. I think she did a fine job of writing them and I would not be surprised if because of those books more women applied to work for the secret services.

Below are just two of her books!

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WHAT'S NEW? : LINDA RONDSTADT

Linda's voice.... one of the best!  From her album with the classic Nelson Riddle orchestra, one on my shelf.

ACCEPTANCE and ENDURANCE : THE BEGINNING OF DIVORCED TO HER HUSBAND and THE DAY I SAW THEM TOGETHER

Page 247 :  "In June 1993, Andrew and I were seen together at dinner, and then the press snapped him kissing me at Balmoral.  The papers were full of stories about our rumored reconciliation.  The Firm as all aflutter --- why couldn't I just limp off into the sunset like a good little victim?  Suddenly, without consulting either of us, the Firm put out a release to announce our "formal separation."  Which did absolutely nothing, except to reveal the depths of the courtier's concern. In fact, their worries were misplaced.  While my husband and I were feeling easier with each other, if only because the pressure was off, we were essentially playing for time.  We had no set plan for our future -- and no intention of expunging our past.

I was never one to erase a man from my life after a romance was done.  People cannot be reduced to "girlfriend" or "boyfriend" -- when they share something good and real, it lives on forever.  Eight years after we broke up, Paddy McNally remained one of my closest, most trusted friends. More than a year after our separation, Andrew and I still loved each other and we didn't care what the world thought."

(Sarah was inspired by reading about Queen Victoria and her love of her husband Prince Albert, who died at age forty-two.  Victoria remained in love with him her entire life - another forty years or so.  Sarah went on to write  Victoria and Albert : A Life at Osborne House.  Published in 1991, some of the proceeds went to the Prince Andrew Charitable Trust. Secondly, in 1993, she published Travels With Queen Victoria.  Both books were well received.  She says the research and writing of these books helped her understand both Victoria and Queen Elizabeth's sense of duty and sacrifice.  She herself, felt at that point that she had failed miserably.)

Page 282 : "On Wednesday, April 17 (1996), twenty nice uncontested divorce were processed at the family division of the High Court in London.  At the bottom of the list was this one : HRH The Duke of York v. HRH The Duchess of York.   ( A week later,  Andrew and I would have dinner with both lawyers and their wives at a restaurant near Windsor.  We were setting new standards for amicability.)"

Page 287 : "On May 30 (1996), while my daughters and I watched Ballymoss go through his paces at Hickstead, a clerk at Somerset House dated a non-descript sheet of paper, then swung down a red rubber stamp.... My divorce was final."

***

Since this book was published in 1996, Sarah and Andrew continue to be housemates and best friends and have lived at Royal Lodge, Windsor for years. It's a large house but home.  Their daughters are grown and married and the long divorced couple are grandparents to three.

How have they managed the last twenty six years?

She said "We are co-parents who support each other and believe that family is everything.  I'm proud of the job we have done together in bringing up our children and sustaining a strong family unit.  Our bywords are communication, compromise, and compassion."  February 2023 to Hello Magazine.

And now my story...

Long ago I was at an event that The Duke and Duchess of York came to. Word got out that they were coming and suddenly there was a set up between where their limo would pull up and they would get out and walk into the building. A barrier to keep photographers several feet away was set up. The photographers showed up; every kind of camera. Sarah had a Lady In Waiting with her to whom she passed bouquets of flowers off to. She was the epitome of courtesy. Not an Anglophile, but having met some celebrities, I could still feel the excitement in the air. There was great curiosity about them.

I was astonished at how gorgeous they both were. Sarah's hair was thick, not a stray hair. Her complexion creamy. I thought she was well dressed - conservatively - but certainly not frumpy.  And she had jewels in her hair that you could imagine were worth millions. The two of them glowed with health. They were blissfully happy.  They seemed so unified, so in love, I could not imagine that they would have their troubles and end the romance in divorce. One was left with the knowing that yes, these people from the highest society of England were in fact different.

A little while later, the building crawling with Secret Service (really!) I and a friend of mine entered the event. A crowd of perhaps a hundred people were polite but well around them. We never approached or tried to make our way closer. They stayed maybe a half hour and then were whisked away. Leaving us to feel that the event lacked luster now that they were gone.

Missy

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IN THE CARDS

 

LONELINESS WAS AN OLD FRIEND : SARAH RESIGNS FROM THE FIRM AND HER MARRIAGE and IS ENTRAPPED IN SCANDAL

Page 177 : For years I hauled the emotion around as my own furtive burden - the hard gauge of loneliness, after all, is the lack of someone in whom you can confide.  But I was losing control over what feelings I showed and where I showed them.  My private anguish began seeping into my public persona, that flossy shell that was supposed to be all-right-Jack at all times.

Pages 178 -179 : On November 2, 1989, four months pregnant, I arrived in Houston to pay tribute to that city's Grand Opera. I stayed at the home of Lynn Wyatt.  For five days I attended to duty... I also met Steve Wyatt, Lynn's son, and a friend of his named Pricilla Phillips.  We fell to talking -- about the mountains, I think, which they loved as much as I did - and within minutes we seemed like old cronies.  

Steve and Pricilla were less inhibited than the people I knew in London, more open to matters of the spirit; they both meditated which I found intriguing.  When they were around, the darkness lost its power.

Page 197 : For the Merry Wives of Windsor, as the press called Diana and me, 1991 would be a year of unrest.  The two of us were groping in the dark - we were the blind leading the blind out of our Brother's Grimm nightmare.  We had no idea where we were headed, but we knew that we could not sit pat.

Page 202 -203 : The events of annus horriblis were a long time germinating. In May of 1990, I had taken a brief holiday on the Moroccan coast with Pricilla....  I had no way of knowing that an anonymous tipster had called the London tabloid Today and reported that Steve Wyatt was with me in Morocco - an absolute falsehood.... The whole invention was flimsy and ridiculous, a web of fabricated facts" and harmless pictures. ... New Scotland Yard was called into investigate and came up with nothing.  But one police source told the press the obvious - that the photographs might have been planted to embarrass me, "as part of a conspiracy to tarnish her image and destroy her marriage."

Page 205 : At the Palace, I now realized, I had sold myself into a package deal. To be married to Andrew was to be we to The Film, and I had to get out.  No longer could I feign to respect, honor, and obey that institution.  It was one thing to live in a gilded cage; people trade freedom for security all the time.  it was another when they electrified the bars of that cage and aimed their heartless sights your way, as though it were Saturday at Sandringham and you were the prize pheasant.....  On January 21... I told Andrew at dinner that I thought we should separate.  We were both very sad; it was the last thing we had wanted.  But he saw my resignation and did not try to argue: If this will make you happy, then I still stand by you."

Page 207: Nothing had changed.  But everything had changed.  Within days of our trip to Sandringham, I was cut out of the Court Circular.  Engagements were canceled without notice or explanation.  ....  (When Diana was separated from Charles later that year, her calendar was unaffected.)

Page 208: Apparently non gratis throughout the Western World, I  was an absolute nonperson in Buckingham Palace.

***

Sarah had been warned by Andrew that it would be difficult, but as they were separated but not divorced, he still considered her his wife. She had her titles. With two children now, Beatrice and Eugenie, she did move out of  Sunninghill to a rental house called Romeda Lodge knowing her housing allowance would not cover the rent. She had ambitions to turn her Budgie books into more - perhaps film or television.  And when she re-met John Bryan in 1992, who she and Andrew first met in 1990 at a dinner party, she asked him to be her agent. The man was full of fresh ideas. Trusting him, she even gave him power of attorney. It never occurred to her that he might be using her as a passport to a higher social circle where he could sell high-technology investments. It was while on a vacation to St. Tropez, booked under assumed names, that the infamous toe-sucking pictures were taken and they were just joking around at the time. Her daughters were there. It wasn't sexual, she says. Once again there was a possibility that she was set up. She says she believes a photographer and his assistance photographed them for three days, basically spying and waiting for a scandalous photo  She believes The Firm colluded with the press by leaking details of her whereabouts.

***

Sarah, the Duchess of York's book has had an effect on me that I didn't expect.  It strengthens the complaints of Princess Diana about the Firm and frankly the suspicions that Dodi Fayed's father and others have had that the accident that killed Diana was a set up- not that Sarah discusses that but because she reports having a truly horrible time with The Firm. It also strengthens the complaints of Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.

Now, the the other book I've looked at, which I'll review soon, suggests that Fergie had an affair with Steve Wynn and then exchanged him for John Bryan, and that John Bryan was an opportunist. It suggests that Sarah was clever and had these affairs to get back at her husband, who is depicted as a bit hapless in the situation. 

Stay tuned!

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