SOME NAPOLEONIC BOOKS.* Napoleon had lived in the dawn of
history, his name, no doubt, would have come down to us enshrined amid a cycle of legends, and modern criticism would have begun to discover that, like other demigods, he never existed. As it is, there can be no more striking testimony to the amazing character of his career than the fact that, in spite . of its having ended less than a century ago, it yet partakes in great measure of the nature of a myth. Even in his lifetime this legendary quality appears to have attached in some mysterious way to the great Emperor. Men looked upon him with dazzled eyes, and judged him as if he were either more, or less, than a mortal. The whole passage of his life upon earth was something so extraordinary that when it was ended there seemed to he no standard by which to measure it, no mental framework into which it would fit. " Sa grandeur eblouit l'histoire," as Victor Hugo says ; and the result has been that he has become the subject of far more controversy than any other historical personage. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that his
existence is the only thing about him which has never been called in question. Nor is it merely in the uncertainty and controversy which still hang over his career that one can trace an element of myth. Napoleon, like a true legendary hero, has so impressed himself upon our minds that we are never tired of hearing new stories about him, or 'old stories told in a new way. The Napoleonic saga is still growing, and every year adds a score or so to the number of books con- cerned with its exposition. These books may be divided into two distinct classes : the strictly historical books, of which the primary object is a scientific one,—to arrive at the truth as to the events of Napoleon's life and their bearing upon the history of the world ; and works of a humbler and less elaborate nature, occupied for the most part with the private and personal aids of his existence, and aiming rather at entertainment than at any definite addition to knowledge. It is in the latter class that we must place two books on the female members of Napoleon's family, which, appearing almost simultaneously, afford remarkable proof—if proof be needed—of the living and widespread interest in Napoleonic affairs. They illustrate too, no less clearly, the curious difference between our own methods and those of our neighbours in the treatment of this kind of work. M. Turquan's volume, adequately translated into English by Mr. Trowbridge, is a compact and artistic whole, made up of studies of Napoleon's three sisters, and written throughout with liveliness and skill. One feels that M. Turquan, when he began to write, knew exactly what he wanted to do, and that he has done it ; his object was to amuse, and he does amuse, and if at the same time he is some- what unsympathetic and not always too careful as to his facts, these are faults which only the most scrupulous and serious of his readers would wish to remember against him. They perhaps will prefer Mr. Williams's two volumes, which, whatever their drawbacks, are undoubtedly conscientious. Unfortunately they are also rather heavy, because Mr. Williams, with that lack of artistic feeling which seems, alas! to be so common on this side of the Channel, has been far more occupied with the collection and verification of his facts than with the arrangement of them. His attempt to weave the stories of the "Women Bonapartes " into a con- tinuous narrative leads to some restlessness and some confusion; his translations are not happy; and his efforts at sprightliness strike one as almost painfully cumbrous after the easy points of M. Turquan. Mr. Williams seems never to have quite made up his mind whether he was writing gossip or history, but the merit of his work certainly lies in the more purely historical portions of it, and in the free use which it makes of M. Masson's admirable and important researches in Hapolecra et sa Famine.
However, in spite of their differences, these books produce on the whole a precisely similar impression upon the mind,— and this impression is by no means a pleasant one. Whether
• (1) The Sisters of Napoleon. By Joseph Turquan. Translated and Edited by W. B. H. Trowbridge. London T. Fisher Unwin. [15s. net.]— (2) The Women Bonaparte' s the Mother and Three Sisters of Napoleon I. By H. Noel Williams. With 36 Illustrations. 2 vols. London : Methuen and Co. [24s. net.] —(3) Memoirs of the Comte de Bambuleau. Edited by his Grandson. Trans- lated from the French by J. C. Brogan. London : J. M. Dent and Co. [1s, net.]—(4) Napoleon and his Fellow-Trarostiers. Edited, with Intro- duction and Notes, by Clement Shorter. With 4 Plates. London Cassell soul Co. [12s. net.]
we adopt the cynical standpoint of M. Turquan, or Mr. Williams's more impartial outlook, we can hardly escape coming to the conclusion that the fundamental characteristic of the Bonaparte family was meanness. The more we read about them, the more convinced do we grow that they mere, to use the slang but expressive phrase, "a bad lot." Their history is one long tale of petty jealousies, and aimless quarrels, and ' overweening ambitions, and base ingratitude. Nor were they merely mean in their minds ; they were, in addition, vulgar in their tastes, so that their inherent lowness of character was unredeemed by external qualities. Do what they would, they could not behave like ladies and gentlemen ; and Napoleon himself was no better than the rest. When his sister Caroline could scarcely contain herself with rage at the wives of Louis and Joseph receiving the title of Princess, Napoleon, Madame de Remusat tells us, took pleasure in publicly taunting Madame Murat, until she burst into tears. Nothing is more extraordinary than the contrast between these sordid little family naggings and the vast destinies which lay behind them. Surely never before or since has overwhelming genius been lodged in such an unworthy home ! Without doubt the most attractive of the three sisters was Pauline, not only because of her beauty, which was very great, but because, in spite of her frivolities and stupidities, she knew how to be generous and brave. "La reine des colifichets "—the queen of trifles—Napoleon called her; and, indeed, if we were to believe all that M. Turquan says of her, we should think the phrase hardly strong enough for the case. Fortunately, however, as Mr. Williams points out, a great deal of the scandal about the Princess Borghese was scandal and nothing more. Perhaps, though, we may believe in the genuineness of her famous reply after sitting for the nude to Canova. "My dear, how could you bear it?" asked a friend. "Bear it ? " was Pauline's answer. "Why not ? There was a good fire in the room." When Napoleon fell, she alone of the sisters remained faithful to him, selling her diamonds and sending him the proceeds when she thought he lacked supplies. After Leipsig. the brother and sister met. "Oh, Napoleon, qu'avez-vous fait P" was her exclamation. But he never answered the question.
It is interesting to turn from books of this kind, the essence of which lies in compilation, to one or two examples of the ever-increasing mass of original Napoleonic material upon which all later work is necessarily based. The Memoirs of the Comte de Rambntean form one of the latest additions to this immense collection, but unhappily the light which they throw on Napoleon's life and character is neither very new nor very penetrating. Rarnbuteau was one of the Emperor's chamberlains, and lived on to do good work as Prefect of the Seine under Louis-Philippe, his long career only closing on the very eve of the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, The Memoirs produce the impression of having been written by a character in Balzac, one of those stalwart relics of the Empire—courageous, high-principled, hard-working, colossally respectable, and somewhat thick-headed—who flit in and out of the Comedie Humaine. What he has to say of Napoleon reminds the disappointed reader of Browning's Memorabilia. He. had known the great man very well; he bad often had long talks with him ; he had had the honour of having his ears pulled by him ; and—somehow or another that is all. One remark of Napoleon's which he records is, however, worth repetition, if only as an example of Imperial bad taste. "I have achieved the greatest success known to history," he exclaimed one evening to an admiring circle. "Well, in order that I may leave the throne to my children, I must be master of all the capitals of Europe!" Really, it is difficult to decide which was the more remarkable thing about Napoleon,—his generalship or his lack of humour.
More entertaining and more vivid is a collection of some little-known narratives by eyewitnesses relating to Napoleon's sojourn on the 'Bellerophon' and the Northumberland,' put together by Mr. Clement Shorter under the title of Napoleon and his Fellow-Travellers. Every reader. who has a taste for the curious and personal details connected with great historical events—and who has not ?—will be grateful to Mr. Shorter for bringing these forgotten narratives once more into circulation. The most interesting piece in the collection is the reprint of a very rare pamphlet by the Hon. W. H. Lyttelton, afterwards third Lord Lyttelton, containing an account of a conversation with the Emperor on board the Northumberland,'—an account which was committed to writing immediately after the event. Lyttelton, who was a fluent French speaker, was able to " draw " Napoleon upon a great variety of topics, and his description of the conversation is full of spirit and good sense. There were some awkward moments before the ice was broken, when Lyttelton and his companion, Bingham, were left alone with the Emperor in his cabin, and could think of nothing to say. At last Bingham, who could speak no French, and was "extremely uneasy," pulled his friend by the sleeve and whispered : "For God's sake, say something to him, if it be but about a dog or a cat." One can imagine the comic, embarrassed figures of the Englishmen ; but Lyttelton pulled himself together, and came off, in the end, with flying colours. The chapter concerning Napoleon on the Bellerophon,' from George Home's curious Memoirs of an Aristocratic, is less trustworthy, for it was written some twenty years after the occurrences it describes, and it is tinged, too, with an obvious bias. But there are some good things in it. There is Maitland's abrupt question, "Have you got him P" to the Lieutenant who had been sent to bring Napoleon on board. And there is the story of the boatswain who " shuffled up to Napoleon, and pulling off his narrow-brimmed glazed scraper, made a duck with his head, accompanied with a scrape of the right foot. 'I hope,' says he, 'I see your honour well" Mr. Shorter in an interesting introduction protests, like George Home, against the treatment which Napoleon received at the hands of the British Government. "Why do all historians," he asks, "even Napoleon's apologists, seem to think that it was inevitable that he should have been sent to St. Helena P A more magnanimous Government than that of Liverpool and Bathurst would have permitted the exile to come to England; would have offered him some such place as Hartwell House
would have garrisoned Aylesbury," so that "escape could easily have been made impossible." The answer to Mr. Shorter's question is not far to seek. Napoleon's hopes, according to more than one witness, kept up until he learnt that St. Helena was inevitable ; then there was a complete change ; "it needed but a glance," says Home, "to convince a most caitless observer that Napoleon con- sidered himself a doomed man." The inference is obvious. It was not the climate nor the discomfort of St. Helena that made Napoleon despair ; it was the fact that be was not to be allowed to set foot in England. If it had been indeed true that in England "escape could easily have been made impossible," he would have considered himself a doomed man the moment he boarded the Bellerophon.' He did not, because lie knew quite well that if be could only reach England there was a chance not only of escaping, but Of retrieving his fortunes and plunging the world once more into carnage and disorder. That was a chance which it was the plain duty of the British Government never to allow to come into existence. To have acted otherwise would have been to be " magnanimous " to Napoleon, no doubt, but to no one else. True magnanimity does not allow a ravening tiger to go about on the end of a rope, however strong the rope may be; it locks him up.
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