Clodagh Finn: When Napoleon’s niece ‘ruled’ Waterford

A portrait reputed to show a young Letitia Bonaparte Wyse, a woman who had 'a lifelong courtship with scandal'.

Infamy and Bonaparte are words that often appear in the same sentence, as we have been reminded by the release of Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, a biopic of the ‘infamous’ emperor. Not to be outdone, Bonaparte’s niece — his favourite, it was said — caused a sensation when she lived in Waterford.

Letitia was the talk of the city when she moved there after marrying one of its illustrious natives, Sir Thomas Wyse, in 1821; the year her famous uncle died. It sends a little shiver up my spine to think of this lively young princess flitting from dinner party to dance in the first quarter of the 19th century.