NAPOLEON'S LETTERS TO JOSEPHINE.
[To THE EDITOR OF ,TELE "SPECTATOR:1
Sin,—There are one or two points raised by your reviewer in the Spectator of June 28th where the indications of error, to
be useful to the criminal and instructive to your readers, might to the advantage of each be more fully defined. Yon Moltke.—The "Von" is said to be a "snobbish superfluity"; but why? Is the use of a title always so, or is it only when a certain altitude is reached that men, like May-flies, cast off the last shreds and patches of their nymph" bodies and become to posterity Bacon or Bunsen, Montaigne or Moltke? But if that were so, why do our leading historians continue to speak of De Ruyter, a name for all time more significant to an Englishman than Von Moltke? Bright still speaks of Van Tromp, and indexes him under "V." Why should Chambers in their " Biography " give Van Dyck under "V" and Van Eyck under " E " ? Shall we get De Wet in the " D's " in the next volume of the "Encyclopaedia." or will he, like De Witt, have to welter in the "W's " ? What about De La Rey ? After three centuries, their two Elizabethan proto- types still figure as Shane O'Neill and Hugh O'Neill, under the letter "0." I find in Bright's " History " (Part IV., p. 480) :—" General d'Aurelle had set the army of the Loire in motion and had won over Von der Tana, at Coulmiers, the only real victory won by the French during the war. Moltke recognised the danger." D'Aurelle is for euphony, but if Moltke, why Von der Tann P By the way, Napoleon used to translate the "Von." " Vous i)tes un homme, Monsieur de Goethe" ! he said at Erfurt,—which brings us to the Duke of Saxe-Weimar. Here perhaps, however, in the absence of an adequate " hoffahig " library, I fail to find my error. If Karl. August did not marry Louise, sister of theEmperor Alexander, who was his wife ? De Meneval (as Sherard calls him) cer- tainly speaks of her as such. The Duchess was, from Jena days onwards, one of Napoleon's beaux-ideals, and our Princess Charlotte was another,—both proofs that he was not such a bad judge of feminine character after all. He told Caulain- court in 1813: "This Grand Duchess of Weimar is an extra- ordinary woman. She has the talent of a clever man." Respecting the rupture of the Treaty of Amiens, I was con- verted by Bignon long before I saw Mr. Oscar Browning's book. England covenanted to withdraw from Malta, France from Naples. Which kept her word, and to which was war the more advantageous ? As was recently pointed out by Mr. H. W. Wilson (Monthly Review, April), Napoleon was caught napping, and France was unprepared. I wish to apologise here, as I have done elsewhere, for the slip in the quotation from Lord Acton,—he said genius, not goodness. As to the delinquencies of Feuillet de Conches, I confess absolute ignorance. Aubenas is my authority that the Baron's "science and authority in the matter of autographs is well known" ; and after all, is it surprising to find that a forger should be an expert in calligraphy? The history of crossed cheques shows that a forger's utterances may be sometimes accepted, and even utilised to advantage. The dial,' of events was intended to be such as would interest or influence Napoleon, not Josephine. It could be made much more useful if any of your readers know of some contemporary time-route from Paris to the leading towns of the Continent. By allowing for the extra speed of Napoleon's couriers, the Diary would then show what world-history was before Napoleon at the actual moment that he was penning not only the twelve-score letters to Josephine, but the thirty thousand others which, as the Athenzunt has recently pointed out, require to be collected and
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