Josephine in Martinique

AN ISLAND EMPRESS: Martinique’s Josephine de Beauharnais
France Guide - Magazine of the Maison de la France, 2007
BY DEANNA MACDONALD

LINK: http://us.franceguide.com/Info-and-Publications/Publications/FRANCEGUIDE-2007-English/AN-ISLAND-EMPRESS.html?nodeID=906&EditoID=83885

“You will be greater than a queen.” According to legend, these were the words of a fortune teller to a young girl in Martinique. It must have seemed an improbable future for a girl who had spent her childhood living on the first floor of a sucrerie (sugar factory) on her family’s plantation, over 4,000 miles from France. However, this girl was Marie-Josèphe-Rose Tascher de la Pagerie (1763-1814), better known to history as Josephine—the name given to her in Paris many years later by her second husband, Napoleon.

Though she left Martinique for France at 16, her island upbringing stayed with her. Josephine often reminisced about her “easy, pleasant life in Martinique” and her contemporaries often described her as a “true Creole” (the French term for a European raised in the Caribbean)—vivacious, sensual, elegant and compassionate. These traits would help make her a leading figure in Parisian society and help her fulfill her childhood prophecy: she was crowned Empress in Notre Dame in 1804, a scene immortalized in Jacques Louis-David’s famous painting in the Louvre.

And just as Martinique was part of Josephine, so Josephine left her mark on Martinique. The island today is, in fact, a bit like Josephine: a blend of the tropics and France. It is a bustling French département like no other. A voluptuous island of black sand beaches, rolling mountains and flourishing fields of pineapple, banana and sugar cane (from which is produced its famous A.O.C. rum), Martinique also boasts boulangeries, and routes nationales filled with the latest Renaults and Citroëns. Like Josephine’s, the local accent has a pleasing Creole cadence and la métropole (Paris) is spoken of as if it were next door (which, with direct flights daily, it almost is).

Josephine—or Rose, as her family called her—grew up across the bay from Fort-de-France, near Trois-Ilets, today one of Martinique’s prettiest villages and just a 20-minute ferry ride from the capital. She was baptized in the town’s terra-cotta-colored church, which is now found on rue de l’Impératrice Joséphine. The same street leads out of town to her family’s plantation that now houses the Musée de la Pagerie, devoted to Josephine.

Set in a lush tropical valley, the ruins of the “great house” where she was born and the sugar factory where her family lived after a devastating 1766 hurricane are beautifully set among bougainvillea, palm and frangipani trees. A small stone building that was once the kitchen is now filled with memorabilia: Josephine’s childhood bed; a lock of her pale chestnut hair; pictures and documents that stir memories of her life—her first marriage to a revolutionary viscount who lost his head at the guillotine (a fate she barely escaped herself); her marriage at 31 to a rising 25-year-old general, Napoleon; his passionate love-letters; their divorce when she could not give him an heir. Napoleon’s last word on his deathbed: “Josephine.”

The museum attracts a variety of visitors from local school groups to European royalty. “Napoleon adopted Josephine’s children from her first marriage and they married into the ruling houses of Europe,” explained Germaine Renciot, a guide at La Pagerie. “Monarchs from Sweden and others countries have come here as the descendants of Josephine.”

But all is not romance. The museum also displays a document of emancipation signed by Napoleon for a slave in Josephine’s service, as well as rusted slave chains, sobering reminders of the underbelly of plantation culture. “Visitors from abroad are often surprised to learn about her slavery associations,” said Ms. Renciot. Not only did Josephine’s family own over 200 slaves, but Napoleon re-instated slavery in Martinique in 1802 after it had been abolished by the Revolution. “Of course, people are proud to have an Empress from Martinique, but it is not so simple; her history is complicated.”

This paradox is evident in her memorial in Fort-de-France (where Josephine attended school from 1773 until 1777). Erected during the Second Empire when Josephine’s grandson, Napoleon III, ruled France, an elegant statue of the Empress presides over the city park, La Savane. However it is missing a key element: her head, which was clandestinely lopped off several years ago.

Most, however, view this symbolic decapitation with humor. Martinique’s history of pirates, slavery and sugar is considered just that—history, which visitors can learn about at several interesting museums around Trois-Ilets. La Maison de la Canne, an ancient rum distillery turned museum, explores the history of Martinique through its most vital industry: sugar cane. Called “white gold,” it made families like Josephine’s rich, but also brought African slaves to Martinique.

The history of slavery is confronted in a unique fashion at La Savane des Esclaves, which re-creates life in the villages established by escaped and freed slaves. “It is so important that future generations remember this way of life,” said creator Gilbert Larose, who built the entire village himself and who is on hand to guide visitors and teach them about life in these communities, explaining everything from how to build a roof from sugarcane leaves to the medicinal uses of cinnamon.

Josephine’s family plantation also produced coffee, and the Musée de Café et Cacao, presents a fascinating hodgepodge of coffee paraphernalia (including a tiny neo-classical espresso cup with Josephine’s portrait) and informative panels on the history of coffee and chocolate on the island. Visitors discover, for instance, that Napoleon loved coffee, reportedly declaring; “Le café fort me ressuscite.”

Even more evocative of historic Martinique are the several surviving plantations throughout the island. Many, like La Pagerie, are mostly picturesque ruins, such as the 17th-century Habitation Céron, practically engulfed in tropical jungle north of St. Pierre. Others have been put to new uses, such as Plantation Leyritz, near Basse-Pointe, on the northeast side of the island, which is now a resort hotel overlooking the Atlantic. Habitation Clément near the town of Le François, today one of Martinique’s celebrated rhumeries, is most reminiscent of plantation life in Josephine’s day. Located along the Atlantic Coast, about a 30-minute drive from Fort-de-France, it is the only fully-restored plantation house in Martinique and gives an idea of their elegant practicality: cool tile floors, louvered windows and doors, shaded verandas and furniture of rich local wood. Wandering its airy spaces, it is easy to imagine a life of languid comfort.

The true majesty of Josephine’s Martinique was, and still is, the land. From the majestically landscaped plantations to the views from the autoroute—flowering trees, stately palms and fragrant eucalyptus are everywhere. Josephine never forgot the exceptional natural beauty of her childhood home; and as Empress, she would even try to recreate a bit of Martinique’s tropical splendour at her home near Paris, Malmaison. She wrote to her mother in Martinique to send “trees and seeds of as many species as possible,” which Josephine then grew in her famous gardens and greenhouse. She even grew sugar cane so that her grandchildren could experience the tastes of her childhood. (Josephine had a serious sweet tooth, which is usually credited for her famously bad teeth).

Legend also claims that Josephine once swam in the Baignoire de Joséphine, a dazzling stretch of shallow turquoise water off the coast of Le François. On the short boat ride out to the sandbar aboard La Belle Kréole, I asked the captain, a friendly grandmother named Denise, did she really come here? With a wink and a laugh she replied, “If she did, I am sure she loved it.”

For more information on Martinique, visit www.martinique.org