Dear listeners,
Happy Halloween! I’ll make this month’s newsletter quick, since my American listeners are probably busy dressing up babies and dogs as tiny little pumpkins and that is Important Work.
As I mentioned in this week’s episode, Marie Bonaparte’s grandfather was the gazillionnaire casino tycoon from Monaco, François Blanc. If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, don’t worry about not knowing who those people are, it adds a little 🌶 s p i c e 🌶 but it’s not a prerequisite here. The problem with this month’s episode is that with all the juicy gossip provided by the Bonaparte half of Marie’s family, there’s barely any time to get to the Blanc half of her family. (Just wait until next month, when we get to her in-laws… 👀) The story of Marie’s maternal grandparents sounds like an off-brand My Fair Lady which would get sent back to the writers’ room for being “a bit too much, don’t you think?” so I had to share it here.
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1852 was a rough year for François Blanc. On the surface, he seemed like a man who had it all: the former “Magician of Homburg” had transformed the tiny principality of Monaco into a gambling mecca, and he was its leader. He had wealth beyond comprehension, social standing which surpassed his obscure birth, and the respect and admiration of Europe’s finest; yet that year, it seemed as though everything was slipping through his fingers.
First, François’s twin brother, Louis, with whom he had shared every adventure in life, passed away at the age of only 46. Then, François’s wife, Madeleine-Victoire Huguelin, his business partner and the mother of his two children, died at the age of only 29. Reeling from the grief of these two unexpected losses, Charles-Lucien Bonaparte walked through the doors of the Monaco casino and broke the bank - twice. With no one but his two young children and an elderly housekeeper waiting at home, François was desperate for company. There was only one other person to keep him company during that horrible year: his sixteen year old maid, Marie Hensel.
(Oh, like you weren’t thinking of it too? Pfft. ‘Tis almost the season..)
Meet Marie Hensel: beautiful, nigh on illiterate, and essentially wild. She was one of 12 children belonging to the local cobbler, she’d spent most of her life caring for her siblings at the expense of education or etiquette training. At the age of 14, Marie began working for the Blanc household, and she helped care for François’s first wife as she grew ill and died. François fell head over heels for the young girl in his house, but also recognized that she was still a child - one without any other options. François approached Marie’s father, the cobbler, with an offer he couldn’t refuse: “Allow me to send your daughter to a good school to finish her education. After she has finished her schooling in a few years, if she is willing to have me, I would happily marry her.”
Does it sound creepy in 2021? Yes, absolutely. But in 1852, of course, such age differences were uncommon but not unheard of and for Marie, this was like getting a full basketball scholarship at a Big Ten school. You take the offer, and if basketball doesn’t work out, hey, you get a free education out of it and that can open up a lot of doors. So Marie jumped at the chance and absolutely did not waste her shot.
Within only a few years, Marie spoke immaculate French, and could converse knowledgeably about history and art. If faced with European nobility, Marie knew how to curtsy - and thanks to her assiduous late night studies of the Almanach de Gotha, she knew that aristocrat’s coat of arms and what side their family fought on during the Hundred Years’ War. When François visited Marie at graduation, he found an elegant, educated young woman eager to accept the winning lottery ticket she’d been offered.
Psst - I have an bonus anecdote about this scene at the bottom…
François, the ultimate self-made man, saw his equal in Marie: born into nothing, able to snatch every opportunity, willing to do whatever it took to ascend the ladder of social and economic power. The two married in 1854, and lived happily together. Marie bore François a son, then a daughter, and then, in 1859, one more daughter: Marie-Félix, future mother of Marie Bonaparte. When she wasn’t raising five children, Marie Blanc helped François run the family businesses, taking a keen interest - and a very active, hands-on role - in real estate development and fine jewelry. François and Marie ran their empire as a true partnership until finally, in 1877, François died at the age of 71. He left Marie a personal fortune of 88 million francs. Not bad for a cobbler’s daughter!
With this story in mind, recall the story of Roland Bonaparte’s betrothal to Marie-Félix, and how it was Marie Blanc who turned her nose up at the idea. Her primary objection? The social status of Nina Bonaparte, Roland’s low-born mother. You might not think that the daughter of a cobbler would get pretentious about her daughter’s in-laws, but perhaps knowing how hard she’d worked to climb the social ladder, Marie was worried about slipping a rung. Nevertheless, Marie agreed to the betrothal, and continued running the family’s affairs (while running up debts, as mentioned in the episode…) until her untimely death at the age of 47.
When Marie Bonaparte was born, she was the direct descendent of at least 3 spectacular social climbers: Nina Bonaparte, François Blanc and Marie Hensel. I like to think Marie’s great-granduncle Napoleon - perhaps the greatest social climber in history - would have been proud.
One last, utterly unrelated anecdote: in the scene from My Fair Lady above, in which Eliza Doolittle is introduced to the Queen of Transylvania, said queen is played by the real life Baroness Veronica de Goldsmidt Rothschild. What I have heard is that, since she was the absolute leader of Parisian high society in the early 1960s, she offered to stage an enormous, elegant Paris premiere of the film in exchange for a small speaking role. But of course, it would be gauche to admit such a thing. George Cukor, ever the gallant, portrays it as a favor to him rather than the other way around. In one interview, he said "I was at a loss to find a woman with true queenly bearing…one who would walk and speak as a queen should. Not that an actress couldn't learn to do it, but learning to be a queen and naturally moving like one are two different things." Now, reread that quotation and remember what movie he’s talking about, and let your mind wander over the Bonaparte family tree…
Bisous,
Diana
P.S. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the American equivalent of this story, which happened right here in my own San Francisco! Alma Spreckels was an impoverished immigrant’s daughter who worked as a model to pay for art lessons. According to legend (I choose to believe), when 18 year old Alma posed for a statue commissioned by the sugar magnate Adolph B. Spreckels, he demanded to meet the model IRL and married her, making her one of the wealthiest women in America. You can still see that statue today in Union Square. Alma Spreckels went on to build up one of the greatest collections of French Impressionist art on the West Coast, now housed in the Legion of Honor and de Young Museums, and lived with Adolph in the Spreckels mansion, only a few blocks away from my own considerably more humble apartment. Her nickname for her husband? That’s right: Adolph Spreckels was the original “sugar daddy"; now I’ve given you my favorite anecdote. Alma once said, “I’d rather be an old man’s darling than a young man’s slave.” I think Marie Hensel would agree.