Mud Baths & Dusty Coffins:
In Search of Josephine B.
A writer's obsession
with Josephine Bonapart has taken her through palaces and battlefields
— and to a historic spa in the mountains southeast of Paris.
Published in The Globe and Mail, July 25, 1998.
Over two decades ago I was rather bitten by
a curiosity bug: Josephine B., it whispered. As in Bonaparte.
As in wife of Napoleon. As in, simply, Josephine.
The symptoms
of this affliction are obvious: books overflowing shelves,
curios gathering dust, obscure portraits covering the walls
of my house.
It was a
case both chronic and acute: I gave up my day job as an editor
and crossed the line, as they say on The X-Files, to
the other side. I became an author.
My obscession took me into the palaces
and battlefields of Europe. It has spawned, so far, two novels
based on Josephine's life. The first, The Many Lives &
Secret Sorrows of Josephine B., was published three years ago; the second, Tales
of Passion, Tales of Woe, appeared this spring. I am starting
the third book now.
Seeking Josephine has been an adventure on a global scale.
Researching the first book took me on missions to Paris and
Martinique, where Josephine was born and raised. For this
second, I traced her voyage through northern Italy and into
the Vosges Mountains of France.
Among the places I travelled to was Mombello, Josephine and
Napoleon's summer residence during the first Italian campaign.
Described in other books as palatial, the villa surprised
me by it's small proportions. What was their bedroom is now
a school lunchroom, a plaque on the wall the only evidence
that they were ever there. In Milan, their Palazzo Serbelloni
was also a far cry from the glittering confection commonly
described. Now it is a government office building. In Josephine's
suite, the rooms were small and dark. No wonder she was unhappy
here, I thought.
The sumptuous villa Manin de Passariano, northeast of Venice,
on the other hand, stunned me with its majesty. It was there
that Josephine smoothed tempers as Napoleon negotiated a peace
treaty with Austria.
But nowhere revealed more to me about Josephine
than the tiny spa of Plombières-les-Bains in the mountains
southeast of Paris.
I arrived there at night. Immediately I opened the doors to
the balcony facing out over the village. The ancient grey
houses clustered along a mountain valley, "as if they
had tumbled into a crevice and were too weary to rise,"
I had Josephine describe it in the novel. She loved Plombières,
as had her daughter Hortense and Hortense's son Oui-oui (more
commonly known as Napoleon III).
Doctors had recommended that Josephine "take the waters"
at Plombières because she'd been unable to conceive a child
with Napoleon. (Today the waters are believed to cure intestinal
problems and rheumatism, although not infertility.) As modest
as the village is, it had been visited by almost all the royals
and demi-royals of Europe of the late 18th and early 19th
centuries. Its appeal, and its history, can be traced to the
Romans, who had also come for the hot mineral water that surges
through the rocks under the village.
In the morning I presented myself at the deluxe Thermes Napolˇon,
where I managed to convey that I wished to try a variety of
water treatments such as those Josephine herself might have
taken in the late 18th century. A amused nurse ticked off
a number of items on a card. Then, in blue plastic pantouffles
and a white terry robe, I shuffled through the
vast, wet marble halls to my first treatments: bain radio-gazeux
(a Jacuzzi gone mad), and compress thermale (a series
of steaming towels). For my third treatment I was encased
in a heavy cocoon of warm mud followed by a vigorous massage
under a shower.
After a few inquires, I located where Josephine had stayed
nearby. The former inn was smaller than I'd expected. I looked
up at the windows to her corner room (now a dentist's office),
examined the height of the balcony that had given way under
her, the fall nearly crippling her. Immediately after her
fall, a sheep was slaughtered and she was wrapped in its skin.
Musicians had seranaded her as she healed, likely standing
on the very cobblestones I myself was occupying.
Days later, I left Plombières for Paris, from where I immediately
set out for Malmaison, Josephine and Napoleon's home in nearby
Rueil-Malmaison. I walked through the familiar, elegant rooms,
imagining. At closing I set out on foot for the village. I
was in luck: The church was open. I bought a rose at the florist's
shop across the square and once inside the empty church, stood
before Josephine's tomb. I'd gone to mass in the church of
her childhood; this was the church of her death. Both were
small, village churches. In-between she'd been crowned Empress
of the French in the cathedral of Notre-Dame of Paris.
Overcome with a feeling Josephine might have called melancholy,
I lay the rose on top of her tomb, took a few swipes at the
dust, and left. I knew I would return.
Now, preparing
to write The Last Great Dance on Earth, the last of
my Josephine B. novels, I've spread out the maps once again.
I'd like to visit Evreux, northwest of Paris, where Josephine
was often obliged to live after Napoleon remarried. I'd like
to see the castle of Laeken near Brussels where she consoled
her grief-mad daughter, struck dumb by the death of a son.
I know the facts, but the facts are not enough. The places
reveal so much more.
