AS A rule, before marrying it is advisable to spend some time getting to know the prospective in-laws, if only for the insights they can provide into the character of your intended. No doubt in later life Thomas Wyse wished he had spent a little longer scrutinising his wife's kith and kin while there was still a chance of calling off the wedding, writes Robert O'Byrne
He was the scion of a highly respectable Waterford family, the sort invariably described as being "pillars of the community". No scandal had ever attached itself to Thomas Wyse's forbears. However, the same could not be claimed for his bride's relations who, almost without exception, seemed to attract trouble - and to relish the consequences.
Thomas was approaching 30 when, in 1821, he chose to marry; but while this decision was sound enough, his choice of bride is open to question. Then aged only 16, she was Laetitia Bonaparte, niece of Napoleon and eldest daughter of his brother Lucien. An ardent republican, Lucien had never been one of the erstwhile Emperor's greatest supporters; he was already living in self-imposed exile in Italy by the time Laetitia was born in Milan in 1804. She was among the nine children from Lucien's second marriage. None of the Bonapartes was known for taking the words "till death do us part" too literally and perhaps Thomas, who would always be a good Catholic, ought to have considered this fact before he went to the altar.
Initially the couple remained in Italy, but it wasn't long before problems between them arose: Laetitia was high-spirited and giddy, her husband serious and reserved. After the birth of their first child, Napoleon Alfred (who was, it seems, always known as "Nappo"), Thomas deliberated with his wife's father and they agreed to have her confined to a convent. She emerged from this unofficial imprisonment in 1825 when Thomas was required to return to Waterford and Laetitia's family proposed he take her with him.
The stir she caused in his home town can be imagined. As if having Napoleon's niece move into the neighbourhood wasn't enough, Laetitia - by now aged 21 and mother to a second baby son, William Charles - threw herself into local politics in a way that was normal for a Bonaparte but rather less expected for the spouse of an upright Waterford burgher. In the election of 1826, she campaigned vigorously for the pro-Emancipation candidate Henry Villiers Stuart, while her husband served as his agent. Four years later Thomas would be the second Catholic elected to the British House of Commons (Daniel O'Connell had already taken his seat there in 1829); but by that date Laetitia had long since fled Ireland and any semblance of respectability.
It appears that, after moving to London, she staged a suicide attempt and was duly "rescued" by a military admirer, Captain Studholme John Hodgson. In 1831, despite not having lived with Thomas for the past three years, Laetitia gave birth to a baby girl. Lest there be any doubt over the identity of the infant's father, she was christened Marie Studholmina. Further children followed, whose paternity was never established.
What Thomas wanted to make absolutely plain was that he had played no part in the conception of any of them. Aside from her first two sons, none of Laetitia's brood were entitled to use the surname Wyse (although this doesn't appear to have stopped them doing so). At one point he even paid a visit on his estranged wife's cousin, Napoleon III, to see if he could prevent Laetitia from citing Thomas as the father of all her children.
The Emperor agreed to pay Laetitia's debts and provide her with a pension provided she make no further claim on her husband's family. Not that Napoleon III was exactly a model of marital fidelity; his love affairs were numerous and supposedly he had only agreed to marry Eugenie de Montijo because when asked, "What is the road to your heart?", she had cleverly replied: "Through the chapel, Sire."
Laetitia's character seems to have been closest to that of her aunt Pauline, of whom one admirer said that, even while still in her teens, "she was an extraordinary combination of perfect physical beauty and the strangest moral laxity". These traits were, in turn, inherited by Laetitia's daughter Marie Studholmina. Like her mother, she was extremely pretty and quickly attracted admirers, in turn marrying at the age of 16. On this occasion, however, she was the one deserted following her husband's emigration to the United States. She then settled in Paris with her mother and the two women kept a brilliant salon frequented by the likes of Victor Hugo, Dumas fils and Eugene Suë. Again following Laetitia's example, Marie Studholmina had a child out of wedlock, the result of an affair with Count Alexis de Pommereu; as well as many lovers, she had two further husbands and still found time to write many plays, novels, newspaper articles and poems.
Meanwhile, Thomas Wyse continued to be a thoroughly reputable member of society, being granted a knighthood in 1857 and, following his death in Athens five years later, a Greek state funeral. Laetitia outlived him by a decade, long enough to see the downfall of her cousin's empire and the re-establishment of the French Republic so admired by her late father. Waterford, from which she fled during her life, has since come to cherish the memory of Laetitia and her rackety ways.
Much of the Wyse-Bonaparte family memorabilia is held by the city's Museum of Treasures and now the Waterford Institute of Technology has bought a substantial archive of letters and other documentation. Although the link with Napoleon may have caused the Wyses some embarrassment, it has since become the subject of considerable interest.