LETTERS OF NAPOLEON Selected, Translated, and Edited by J. M.
THOMPSON INTRODUCTION Not that all Napoleons letters, or even many
of them, are of a selfrevealing kind. In youth he had few
confidants in middle age he had little to confide. la the stress of
business and war he soon shed the idealism of the patriot, the
fatalism of the f evolutionary, and the romanticism of the lover.
Any sense he may once have had of the beauty, the pathos, or even
the humour of life was coarsened by flattery and success. He can
still declare, exhort, abuse, persuade, even charm but always in
the interest of a policy, and to gain an end. He is wise,
clearsighted, eloquent, heroic but hardly ever a human being in
repose. Nevertheless, Napo leons letters remain, beyond anything
written about him, or anything else he wrote or said about himself,
by far his finest portrait. When he was a young man, Napoleon wrote
in the rapid and already confused hand of the relatively rare
letters signed Buonaparte or Bonaparte. With growing age and work,
his handwriting became so slovenly as to be wellnigh illegible
whilst his signature shortened from Napoleon to Napol., Nap., Np.,
and N. Though he still wrote some private letters, and the more
important military and diplomatic despatches, he habitually
employed secretaries, and carried on the bulk of his correspondence
by dictation. Napoleon had three principal secretaries Bourrienne
1797-1802, Meneval 1802-13, and Fain 1806-14. All of them wrote
Memoirs, and there is no lack of evidence as to how their work was
done. In a rather unkind conversation at St. Helena, Napoleon said
that Bourrienne wrote a good hand, and was active, tireless, and
patriotic, but that he was a gambler, whose face lit up when his
master dictated any thing dealing with big figures: he was in fact
dismissed for becoming involved in financial speculation. His work
was done partly at the Luxembourg, and partly at the Tuileries. In
his Memoirs he describes Napoleons appear ance, dress, and habits
in minute detail. From breakfast at 10 to dinner at 5 every hour
was taken up with reading petitions, correcting letters, giving
interviews, or attending meetings. There were two tables in the
study at the Tuiler iesone for Napoleon near the fireplace, and
another for Bourrienne near the window, through which, in summer,
he could see the foliage of the chestnut trees in the garden. The
chief ornament of the room was a portrait of Louis XIV, to the
forehead of which some zealous Republican had fastened a tricolor
cockade. ...................
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