OLD SOC I E T-Y BY The Marriage of Wyse Thomas Eileen Holt and Let it ia Bonapart e. John Mulholland Julian C. Walton DECIES is published.thrice yearly by the Old Waterford Society and is posted free to ambers in January, May and September. OLD WATERFORD SOCIETY EDITORIAL It is intended to mkke DECIES F5 (~ept.1980) aa index volume to the previous ;fourteen ~ssuesEUI then to 'negitl a new series of DECI%S. As indexing la a rather te6ious process WGI would be grateful for any help offeyed. Due to the pusta++trike some of our contributors have not had the oppor-ty to check the prooT.s of thei~scripts and me a~olo@sein advance for q errors that may have occurred, The Amwl General Meeting of the 0. W, S, was held March 23rdd; 1979. !We following officers md commL+tee wzre elected:- CEIANWS 324 GQNSTIWTIOE: The meatzag resol-.-eb, (i) on the appoinkent of a hanormy Press Ofricer a30 ahoul2 br m ex-offtcio member of the oommittee, and (ik) thet it is -the palicy of the Society to issue a publication for which an editor shall be elect9d md who will be an ex- offioio member of the committee. Thcae changes ell be incorporated in a new issue of the Const.it.~tion of %beOld Wrterford Society which will ba available t u members shortly. SUBSCRIPTIOEJ: In view of the +onfinued rapid rise in merabership,tlne subscription for 1980 will re~cinat &2,50. Pleaae forward aq subacriptians fir 1979 (&2.50) still au'tstandinq to Ban. Trec~urer: Mrs. R. Lunley, 28, Qnisy Terrace, Waterford. SIR THOMAS WYSE -. "..- MAD& LETITIA BONAPARTE -WSE THE MARRIAGE OB THOMAS WYSE AED BTIlIIA BONAPAR!L%. By Eileen Holt. In 1815, after Napoleonla defeat at Waterloo, when the continent was agaln 'open ta travellers, a young Irishman set out upon the Grand Tour, and duriq the winter of 1815/16, he arrived in Rome. He waa the f'uture Sir Thomas Wyse, then known as Tho- Wyse junior. He waa twenty-four years old, the eldest of er family of six, and hair to the ancient estate of The Manor of St. John, Waterford, which had been In the Catholic fmlly of the Wysea fmr generatione. Already an accomplished am3 cultured young man, if a somewhat puritanical and almost wholly humamleas one, he was later to become associated mhDaniel O'Connell in the etruggle for Catholic Emancipation, and to be elected as a Member of Parliament, firstly for County Tipperary, and later for Waterford City. He became Lord of the !Treasury, Secretary of the India Board of Control, and in 1849 was appointed ea British Minieter in Greece, which post he held until his death in Athens in 1862. Re was to attain fame primarily as an educationalist, and it is on his career in the'fields f education and diplomacy that his biographer, J.J.Auchmufy, concentrates. Nevertheless, this biography does confain much interest- ing and valuable information about Thomasts private life, much of it Wed upon material From the Wyse family archives. There is also a fascinating and entertaining mcount of Thom%als marriage and the subsequent life of his rife ~7 her children to be found in %he Spurious Brood by Olga Banaparte- Wyse, an account also based on family correspondence and documents. The story of this marriage, reconstructed from these two sources, f3mm contemporary accounts in Memoirs, newspapers and co r spondence, and from hitherto unpublished papers in the family archl e T37 and i. .the erchlms af !Phe University of Illinois at Ur~a-Champaign,~4~'is seen to be one bbntllib elementa of drama, if not melodrama, of idyllic happiness followed by deep unhappiness, of gaiety and boredom, and of the pathos of exile and parting, The story beans in that winter of l8l5/l6, when Thomas, provided with lettem of introduction by Lord and Lady Llandaff, called upon Price Lucien Banapart6 and'his family who had returned the previous year to live in Rome, afte~epend- $gx-_foyr years in exile in England. Zucien, brother of Napoleon, had been refused the title of a Wench Price, but in 1814 the papal title of Prince.of Canino, taken from hia estate at Cmino, had been bestowed upon him. His first wife Catherine-Christine Boyer had died in 1800, and of this marriage twa daughters survived, Christine-Charlotte, and Christine - Charlotte- Alexandrine--%a. In 1803 he married again, and this miage was a source of great Etnger to his brother who had had a dynastic alliance in view for him. Napoleon refused to recognirse Lucienls second wife, the former Alexandrine Jauberthon, as his aiater-in-law, md brought pressure to bear upon his brother to divorce her. Lucien,however, steadfastly refused to do so, tarxi in 1815 was 1i~Lnghappily with his wife and children in Rome.. The children now numbered eight, the two daughters by his first marriage, and two daughters and four sons of the second maxriage. The family was not yet complete, other children would be born later to Alexandrine. The eldest daughter of the second marrtage was Letitla, who had been born in Milan on let December, 1804, the eve of Napoleon's corolzation as Emperor. Lucien had not been invited to the ceremony, and hfs mother, Madame Mere, waited with him in Milan in the hope that an invitation would be issued for him. It did not however arrive, and Wame Mere refused to go without him, to the peat annoyance of Xapoleon. It was after her paternal grandmother that Letitia was named, and when Thomas first arrived in Rome she was a child of eleven years old. Many years later, T omasls niece, Winifrede Wyse, wrote down an account of her Unclefe marriaa (57, and told how he became intimate with Luoien and hi. family, and particularly devoted to Lucienls wife. ~ftera second winter in Rome, young Vpe atasted out on a tour of the Xear East which was to last for two years. On his return, he visited the Bonapartes at their villa near Viterbo, and Winifrede tells us how during his absence, the daughters had grown into young women. She goes on to relate how Thomas "dazzled by the ertraordimry beauty, the apparent modesty and gentleness of the tWd daughter, Letltia, at once fell deeply in love with her". The word %ppment?is a significant one, for even bearing in ntnd ',I'inifreders adoration of her ITnole, Euld her wholehearted dislike of his wife, it has to be adnitted %hat the picture.which emerges of Letitia is not one of modest and gentle woman. WiniA?ede goes on to relate how Thomas, elthough in love,hed no thoughtmf proposing for Letitia in view of his familyfa financial situation which was a difficult one. Price Iluciqu a& his Prife were, however, anxious to have Urn for st son-in-lew, stnd he was therefore persuaded -to prapose, and ww accepted. I Thomas and Letitia were married at Canino on March 4th 1821. The bride wae 1 sixteen years old, the bridegroom in his thirtiet'? year. In a letter to his siater 'Harriet dated 8th March, 1821, Thomas described the ceremony, and apoke of his great happiness. Of his wife he r;:id: "She draws, sings, and playa, composes in FTench nnd Itaiian; I have already begun Latin and English with her, and we read Bel.les Lettres adliil.:tory tggether. She is beloved here to an excess, which even in this fd1.y is extraordinary, w e e everything is harmony, attachment, rtrd dignified and utaful pxr~at.~~t6f There is no doubt that for mhomaa at least, ther2 as et firof 3 period of idyllic happineas, even if Leatitla, as we shzll see, my well have had some reservations from the very early days. On 6th January 1822, their first sm, ITapolean idfrea was born. Hia sponsors were John Talbot, &;f.t;exwards,.?ar', of Shxewsbury, and Charlotte, his mother's half-sister. It ma's at the 'om of Charlotte, now Princess Gabrielli, in R&, that Napoleon was born, On the returnlu Viterbo some months later, discord was first noticed between husbwd ~ndwife. It was commented upon in family correspondence, and we can also fin3 a reflection of it in the fragment of an uqublished novel, tvritten in the hand of Letitia herself, and obviously autobiographical. This ncvel caa be dated from references to it in family letters, as having been composed I.x 1823. 1;;is written in French and entitled: Madnxne Verunpi racconte (sic) llhistoirs de son amie la Contesae (sic) d~bell~~etitia~s first lmgu~ge wwas Itslian, but whether she was writing in Italian, French or English, she frequently made mistakes in spelling md in gmaaar. The following passage is taken from the beginning of the story, and we can substitute 'Romef for tPlorencelan8 Letitia herself for 'my friend, the Countess of kbervill~.~: "When I. came to Florence, my f?rie:ld was barely 19 years old, and had been m8srfed for more than three years to a man who was as virtuow mid good as he was cold and reserved. He amred and lover' her more than any other woman he had ever met, although he loved her much less than his books and his other nccupations, axil did not ah:?? her as much as the objects dtart which decorated his salons, and that since the first days of their mamiage!' !&re we have an indica-Lion that Letitia's own disillusionment with inarried life probably started very early on.