The Carefully Broken Heart
Elizabeth Patterson (1785-1879) was the quintessential Baltimore Belle. "The Carefully Broken Heart" is a 4-part SATB a cappella interpretation of her story of love and loss.
Lyrics:
How does one survive
To ninety-four or ninety-five?
You need a cause for which to strive,
A reason to stay alive.
And Betsy managed to find it
When she was young, and she stood behind it;
She was stubborn and single-minded:
Collecting heartache from the past
And making sure that it would last.
Betsy Patterson had beauty
Which compared to few before her and few since,
Yet she turned her suitors down when she met her prince.
So she married her Jerome
And sailed off to his home,
The prince’s lovely bride
Sailing off to Paris, France with their child inside.
But Jerome wasn’t just any Frenchman,
No, Jerome was the brother of Napolean
Who had them met at the dock by his henchmen
Who turned her back again.
Betsy spent some time in London
Where she bore their son: Jerome Napoleon,
But she never saw her spouse;
Napoleon annulled their wedding vows.
How does someone start
To move on with a broken heart?
When all your dreams just fall apart
Survival can be an art.
Some say time brings healing
To every heartache they are feeling,
But Betsy turned her ordeal
Into a cause that wouldn’t end
And didn’t allow her heart to mend.
Back in Baltimore poor Betsy
Let no one forget, she made it quite an art:
Putting on display each day her carefully broken heart.
Jerome had joined the military,
Napolean had him marry
Some old German tart;
That’s what Betsey tucked awy
In her carefully broken heart.
Betsy flatly refused to accept it;
She believed it was she who was Jerome’s wife.
So when her heart tried to heal she wouldn’t let it.
Resentment became her way of life.
Betsy wandered Baltimore alone
With just her son Jerome
Napoleon Bonaparte,
Sharing with each passer-by her carefully broken heart.
When Napoleon’s reign was done,
When Jerome was dead and gone,
Betsy even lost her son,
But her mission continued on.
When her life’s fitful fever was finally over
She was laid to rest in Greenmount’s clover:
Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte
With her carefully broken heart.
© 2010, Daniel C. Meyer