The Garden Intrigue

I've been in the midst of Book Launch Countdown for my next book, The Garden Intrigue (coming to a bookstore near you on February 16!). There's a reason it wound up with "Garden" in the title. A large part of the book is set in Josephine Bonaparte's famous garden at Malmaison. Since the plot was so dependent on the location, I knew I had to go check it out. (Although I was pretty sure I wouldn't run across anything like this.)



Malmaison is a bit of a strange beast– er, house, and never more so than in the summer of 1804, when The Garden Intrigue takes place. As you can see from the facade pictured here, it started out as a simple gentleman’s house, not what anyone would call humble, but certainly not a palace. It served as an informal weekend place for the Bonapartes and their friends, a place where Josephine’s teenage children and Bonaparte’s younger aides would play games of Prisoner’s Base in the back yard and the entire family would engage in amateur theatricals.

The problem? In 1804, Napoleon had himself voted Emperor. Malmaison scarcely had room for the imperial family, much less their retinue. What it did have, though, was land. Lots of land. Josephine Bonaparte had the grounds at Malmaison designed and redesigned, constantly adding to her garden. There was room to build a miniature theater for the family's amateur theatricals and also to erect temporary tents to house the growing numbers of staff required to wait upon the Bonapartes and their growing retinue.

The back of the house boasted a wilderness garden, complete with artificial stream and artfully artless follies. Here’s one of my rather lopsided photos of the back of the house:



Here’s what it would have looked like when Emma (heroine of The Garden Intrigue) was partying there:



And here I am, checking it out. (Confession: I’d broken the heel off a shoe tromping around Paris, so I was forced to roll up the hems of my jeans and resort to my only-in-case-of-emergency pink moccasins. That's why I look like a little kid playing dress-up in someone else's clothes.)



I’m standing right near the spot where Napoleon’s private theatre once stood. Unfortunately, it was torn down long, long ago– but it was there in 1804, home to the Bonaparte family’s amateur theatricals. (And, of course, to a masque by one Mr. Augustus Whittlesby!)

Sadly, not much of Josephine’s famous rose garden remains. I visited in October– and the book is set in summer– so you have to imagine all of this blooming wildly. You can also read all about in Jardin De La Malmaison: Empress Josephine's Garden .



On the other hand, Napoleon’s summer house did survive. The Emperor liked to work out here in hot weather, a detail than proved very useful for the purposes of my plot.



What struck me the most about the place-- which I hope came through in the book-- was how very small and modest it really was. You could see why they had to put servants, and sometimes their guests, in tents in the garden. More than anything else, Malmaison provides a visual representation of the odd leap from private citizen to Emperor. No matter how Napoleon tweaked the estate, it could never be a truly imperial residence.

You can find the first chapter of The Garden Intrigue here.