Clodagh Finn: When Napoleon’s niece ‘ruled’ Waterford

She was interested in local politics and she apparently threaded her shoes with orange laces so that she could drag them through the dust. That was her way of criticising the Irish Protestant ascendancy and voicing her support for Henry Villiers-Stuart, who was elected as an MP on a Catholic Emancipation ticket in 1826.

The wags suggested that Letitia’s interest in Villiers-Stuart was more than political. It doesn’t feel right to repeat the rumour, but much of what we know about this formidable woman has a whiff of controversy about it.

As Clíona Purcell, researcher at Waterford Museum of Treasures, puts it in a highly entertaining blog, Letitia Bonaparte Wyse had a “lifelong courtship with scandal”.

How, then, did she end up with Sir Thomas Wyse, a diligent, studious man interested in politics, diplomacy, and travel?

Well, the story goes something like this: While Sir Thomas was on his grand tour — the jaunt around the world seen as a rite of passage for rich young men — he met Lucien Bonaparte, prince of Canino and brother of the deposed emperor, along with his then 11-year-old daughter, Letitia.

When he finished his tour — five years later — he called on the Bonapartes again. (On an aside, it’s worth giving a bare-bones account of that trip. It took him from Athens to Constantinople — present-day Istanbul — on into Cairo, down the Nile into Sudan, and later on to Palestine and Lebanon, where he assumed Arab dress, before travelling back to Naples. Little wonder men of means went off travelling.)

In any event, once back in Italy, he called to the Bonapartes’ country villa at Viterbo and was reintroduced to Letitia. By then she was 16 and, of course, beautiful and charming: ‘The Venus of the Bonapartes’. The less romantic versions of the story make more of the fact that a potential match would enhance Wyse’s political ambitions to lead Irish Catholics.

We can only speculate, but the £10,000 dowry that came with her was a much-needed boost to the coffers of the Wyse family.

It was not, shall we say, a marriage made in heaven. The couple’s first son, Napoleon Alfred, was born in Rome in January 1822. By that summer, though, Thomas Wyse (with support from Letitia’s father and the Vatican) had his wife put in a convent.

As Clíona Purcell says: “His reasoning, as he explained to her parents when seeking their approval, was that despite the fact that they hadn’t been married long, they fought often, and in one of these marital tiffs Letitia’s temper got the best of her and she struck Thomas clean across the face.”

Given the descriptions of her independent spirit, it’s a wonder that Letitia ever looked at him again, but when Thomas returned to Waterford in 1825, she went with him.

A second son, William Charles, was born in January 1826. Thomas was rarely home. He spent much time in Dublin campaigning for Catholic emancipation.

Yet, without his wife’s approval, he sent the couple’s elder son, Napoleon, to a private school, while William was looked after by one of his aunts.

Letitia left for London without telling her husband. Some accounts say that the Irish weather was the final straw for the Italian princess, although it’s clear there was a lot more going on in this unhappy union.

The Dictionary of Irish Biography describes the break-up like this: “Though Thomas Wyse and his wife, Letitia, shared intellectual interests, they were temperamentally incompatible and so their marriage broke down. On 30 January, 1828, she left Waterford for London. The pair never met again.”

Wyse went on to become an MP and a diplomat in Athens, Greece, while Letitia had to face down the scandal of being in London without her husband’s permission. In spite of that, she carved out a life for herself and had three more children.

Yet, she was still officially married to Thomas Wyse. This infuriated him, and he went to see Emperor Louis Napoleon (Napoleon Bonaparte’s nephew) to try to prevent Letitia from citing him as father of her three youngest children. The emperor apparently said that he found it easier to rule France than his family.

The emperor did, however, pay Letitia’s debts and granted her a pension, on condition she agreed to leave the Wyse family alone.

Thomas Wyse died in 1862. And, writes Clíona Purcell, his wife appears to have had the “last laugh”. After hearing of his death, “she then left for Waterford to contest his will. Victorious, finally, Letitia commissioned a local stone sculptor to place a sculpture of the Bonaparte imperial eagle above the main entrance door at the Manor St John, the family home of the Wyses and, beneath it, emblazoned the words ‘Letitia Bonaparte Wyse’.”

The same year, she took up residence at the family mansion with her son, Napoleon Alfred, the Waterford News reported.

He became a justice of the peace, deputy lieutenant and high sheriff of County Waterford, but eventually he was forced to sell up. He died in Paris.

His brother, William Charles, bought the manor and went on to become a recognised Provençal poet, who led the revival of the Provençal language.

Letitia Bonaparte Wyse died in 1871, but her memory lives on in Waterford, even if it seems to have faded outside of that city.

Her uncle, Napoleon, gave her a lock of his hair and, after he died, she received a mourning cross, one of 12 jet and gold objects made for the female members of the family. Hers is the only one that survives intact.

You can go to see both artifacts and Letitia’s box piano at the Bishop’s Palace in Waterford.

Speaking of artifacts, Ireland also has Napoleon’s horse-hair toothbrush. It was donated to the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland by the family of the emperor’s personal surgeon at St Helena, Irish-born Barry Edward O’Meara. That’s a fascinating story for another day.

It does provide a focus, though. As the French critics take out the carving knives for the movie Napoleon — ‘Barbie and Ken under the Empire,’ according to Le Figaro — we might use the biopic to explore the many links to the French emperor that are held in museums and archives around Ireland.

What better project in a week when the Archives and Records Association, Ireland launched ‘Explore Your Archive’, an initiative that encourages people to delve into their local archives.