Napoleon rises at six most mornings at Malmaison. He works all day, seated on the grass, at an office he has set up on the bowling green, and only appears at about six in the evening when, in the warmer months, he likes to dine outside, under the trees.
On days when the family has company, he and Josephine and their guests join in children’s games on the lawns. In the games of barres, in which players of one team try to tag players of another team who stray from their base, Napoleon throws off his coat and runs like a hare. His enthusiasm is infectious. Visitors find him outside more often than not, sitting on the ground in his leather breeches and riding boots, as if he is camping out.
If visitors are surprised and delighted to find Napoleon relaxed and convivial at Malmaison it is because it is such a remarkable change in behaviour for someone notoriously arrogant, self-absorbed and downright rude.
Jean-Antoine Chaptal, Napoleon’s Minister for Agriculture, Commerce and Industry, is one of his greatest supporters. Yet in his memoir Mes Souvenirs sur Napoleon (My Memories on Napoleon), Chaptal pulls no punches. He writes:
‘Accustomed to take everything to himself, to have no eye for anyone but himself, to esteem no-one but himself, Napoleon paralysed at last everybody and everything around him. He desired no glory but his own. He believed in no-one’s talent but his own.’1
Chaptal writes that Napoleon can be brutally blunt, and to women is often breathtakingly offensive. At a court dinner, he asked a lady her name, and when told exclaimed, ‘What? They told me you were pretty!’ To the wife of one his generals he sneered, ‘I suppose you enjoy yourself now that your husband’s away on campaign.’ To elderly women he often remarked, ‘Well, at your age one hasn’t long to live.’2 And when embracing children he would pinch them to make them cry.
On many occasions, Napoleon has invited large numbers of people to join him at court festivities but fails to attend, and at dinner parties he will get up and leave before others have even finished their soup, and not return. It is his habit, too, of ignoring or drowning out conversations by whistling loudly.
At Malmaison, it seems, the monster miraculously mellows, but only when Josephine is on hand to smooth his sharp edges. Bored and lonely when left alone at Malmaison, he invariably stays in Paris until Josephine returns. Typically, when she is away taking the waters at Plombières, a spa resort in the Vosges mountains, he writes:
‘The weather is so bad here that I have remained in Paris. Malmaison, without you, is too dreary.’ He adds, ‘Some plants have come for you from London, which I have sent to your gardener.’3
The woman who once had a mere dozen threadbare dresses to her name has made up for lost time. According to the French historian Frédéric Masson, ‘so extravagant was she in gratifying this passion that annually her stipend of 600,000 francs was entirely consumed, and year after year her debts increased to an appalling degree.
‘Her toilet consumed much time, and she lavished unwearied efforts on the preservation and embellishment of her person. She changed her linen three times a day, and never wore any stockings that were not new. Huge baskets were brought to her containing different dresses, shawls and hats. From these she selected her costume for the day.
‘She possessed between 300 and 400 shawls, and always wore one in the morning, which she draped about her shoulders with unequalled grace. She purchased all that were brought to her, no matter the price.
‘The evening toilet was as careful as that of the morning. She appeared with flowers, pearls, or precious stones in her hair. The smallest assembly was always an occasion for her to order a new costume, in spite of the hoards of dresses in the various palaces.
‘Bonaparte was irritated by these extravagances. He would fly into a passion, and his wife would weep and promise to be more prudent, after which she would go on in the same way.’4
Inside the chateau at Malmaison, the renovations and decor are evidence that Josephine’s taste in interior design tends to the frivolous, yet prominent in her boudoir are books on botany and other scientific studies. Her plan for the surrounding acres is neither fad nor fashion, but rather something she takes very seriously. And she is determined to be taken seriously, unlike the despised Marie Antoinette, who kept a flock of sheep in the gardens at Versailles in order to amuse herself and her courtiers by posing as a peasant shepherd girl.
Thanks to her supreme status as Napoleon’s wife, Josephine has no difficulty convincing ambassadors and travellers to collect plant and animal specimens for her.
Even in wartime, ships carrying specimens for Malmaison are granted a peaceful passage, and England, the perennial enemy, is among her most enthusiastic suppliers.
She hires noted botanists and artful gardeners to cultivate the exotic and improve upon the prosaic, and dreams that within ten years every region of France will boast collections of rare plants from her nurseries.
Josephine grows pineapples and bananas from the Americas, and mangoes from southern Asia, in glasshouses heated by the sun in summer and by coal stoves in winter. In time, she will introduce Europe to more than 200 new plant species, including camellias, dahlias, magnolias and peonies, and some 250 varieties of rose – the flower often seen as her legacy to the world.
In the dedication to Josephine in his book Jardin de la Malmaison, the renowned botanist Étienne Pierre Ventenat writes, ‘You have gathered around you the rarest plants growing on French soil. Some, indeed, which have never before left the deserts of Arabia or the burning sands of Egypt, have been domesticated through your care.’
With a lugubrious nod to Napoleon, Ventenat adds, ‘Now, regularly classified, they offer to us, as we inspect them in the beautiful gardens of Malmaison, an impressive reminder of the conquests of your illustrious husband and the most pleasant evidence of the studies you have pursued in your leisure hours.’5
Her head gardener, Felix Delahaye, not only shares Josephine’s fascination with the great southern continent but has actually been there and seen native Australian plants in their natural environment. Delahaye served on the d’Entrecasteaux expedition sent in 1791 to search for the missing Lapérouse. And not only did he bring back live plants and seeds, he established the first European garden on Australian soil. At Recherche Bay in Van Diemen’s Land, where the expedition’s two frigates, Recherche and Espérance, made first landfall, Delahaye planted cabbages, potatoes, onions, peas, turnip, radishes, celery, chervil and chicory as a food source for future voyagers. At Malmaison, he will establish the largest and most diverse collection of living Australian plants in Europe.
Josephine, ever keen to impress with her depth of knowledge, rattles off the scientific names and obscure details of plants as she guides visitors through the gardens. But while some visitors – botanists in particular – are suitably impressed, others are bored to distraction. One of her ladies-in-waiting, Georgette Ducrest, recalls that each day began with a routine inspection of the greenhouses, and on the way there Josephine named every plant. ‘The same phrases were generally repeated over and over again, and at the same time,’ says Ducrest. ‘Circumstances well calculated to render those promenades exceedingly tedious and fatiguing. I no sooner stepped onto that delightful walk, which I had so much admired when I first saw it, than I was seized with an immoderate fit of yawning.’6
Collecting and transporting live birds and animals across oceans is expensive, with a high attrition rate. There is no shortage of explorers, officials in conquered territories, travellers and others keen to curry favour with the Bonapartes, however, and soon the estate is home to ostriches, antelopes, gazelles, chamois and llamas, grazing freely in the fields and drinking from the streams. Dangerous animals captured for Malmaison, such as lions, are donated to the Museum of Natural History in Paris in exchange for more docile beasts.
Josephine also donates to the museum birds and animals that have died at Malmaison, notably a female orangutan from Borneo. Josephine had been particularly fond of the ape, which she dressed in children’s clothing and trained to sit quietly on a chair like a well-behaved child. Unfortunately, the animal died within a year, possibly of an intestinal disorder, and ended up a stuffed exhibit at the museum.
Josephine, ever eager to add to her menagerie of exotic creatures from distant lands, is excited to learn that the famed explorer Nicolas Baudin has applied to the Institute of France for support to mount a voyage of discovery to New Holland. Like all collectors, Josephine considers the southern continent to be the Holy Grail not only of botany but of zoology, and knows that a collection of its unique animals would make Malmaison the envy of the scientific world.
She knows, too, that such an expedition can only go ahead with her husband’s permission. Napoleon has been fascinated with New Holland ever since he was a lad with hopes of sailing there with Lapérouse, and Captain Cook’s journal is one of his favourite books, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to persuade him. It’s time to whisper in his ear.
The whisper works. Napoleon not only gives the expedition his blessing but issues orders to Captain Baudin as to which specimens are to be earmarked for Malmaison – specifically live animals, insects and birds. In his view, animals for Josephine’s menagerie should be chosen not for their scientific value but for their beauty, which is patronising but hardly surprising. Napoleon takes pride in his reputation as a patron of the sciences, and brings teams of scientists along on his military campaigns. Yet he seems unable to accept that ideas of scientific merit can come from a mind behind a pretty face.
At Malmaison, some exotic birds are kept in ornate cages in the atrium of the chateau. Others are set free to nest in the trees, and Napoleon takes advantage of this. According to Jean-Antoine Chaptal, ‘At Malmaison, he kept a carbine in his room, and with it fired out of the window at rare birds which Josephine had introduced into the park.’7
Clearly, Napoleon has yet to get into the spirit of things.