During a walk on Sandy Bay in March 1820 he met Hudson Lowe's wife
and was surprised to find her very pretty - he had not lost his interest in
feminine beauty. As a 'reward' for this vision of the female form, he laid
aside his hatred of the Governor sufficiently to allow Mrs Lowe's
daughter to visit Longwood.
In many ways Napoleon was at his most admirable while stoically
enduring the unendurable at Longwood. Gradually it bore in on him that
there would be no release from a life sentence on the rock. For a long
time he fastened his hopes for release on a change of government in
England or pressure of public opinion throughout Europe. His family
lobbied assiduously on his behalf: Eugene de Beauharnais interceded with
the Czar while Jerome and Madame Mere wrote impassioned letters to the
Prince Regent. The saintly Pius VII wrote a masterpiece of redemptive
forgiveness, saying he pardoned Napoleon for everything and that it was
now time to release him from a cruel fate. This letter too winged its way to
the detestable 'Prinnie' but the fat hedonist did what he did with all letters
urging compassion fo r Napoleon: he refused to answer it.
A reading of Hume's History of England gave Napoleon new insight
into the mentality of his captors. Although he admired the bravery of the
British soldier and the longevity of its Parliament, he found the British 'a
fe rocious race'. Here was a people, after all, who had transported 78,ooo
of their own kith and kin to Australia during nine years of the Napoleonic
wars, many for faults no more serious than the abstract advocacy of
political radicalism. He never lost the sense of France versus England
being in some sense civilization and barbarism. A misogynist himself, he
still had a tender, sentimental regard for women, which he found absent
in English culture. What kind of mores were those that expelled women
after dinner so that the men could quaff port? As for Henry VIII's
egregious insensitivity in marrying Jane Seymour the day after he had
had Anne Boleyn beheaded, in point of barbarism this went beyond
anything Nero had achieved. For this reason, although he was agog at the
arrival of each new ship from England, he lived on hope rather than
expectation. Aware of the grim, unforgiving and ruthless nature of the
English ruling class, he once upbraided his courtiers for their pious
hopes: 'We are behaving like grown-up children and I, who should be
giving an example of good sense, am as bad as any of you. We build
castles in Spain.'
All the news from the outer world tended to depress him rather than
buoy him up, and he concluded that pessimism was the only recourse of
the sane man. 1816 was a particularly bad year when he finally pieced
together the news from Europe from the preceding year. Apart from the
marcin
(Marcin)
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