NAPOLEON I (1769-1821), Emperor of the French] – Hugh, 2nd Earl FORTESCUE (1783-1861), as Viscount Ebrington. Autograph manuscript, ‘Memorandum of two Conversations with the Emperor Napoleon at Porto Ferraio on the 6th & 7th of December 1814’.
NAPOLEON I (1769-1821), Emperor of the French] – Hugh, 2nd Earl FORTESCUE (1783-1861), as Viscount Ebrington. Autograph manuscript, ‘Memorandum of two Conversations with the Emperor Napoleon at Porto Ferraio on the 6th & 7th of December 1814’. 43 pages , 8vo (202 x 135mm) , green paper wrappers (spine worn with 19th-century repair), autograph note by comte Antoine Drouot (Portoferraio, 5 December 1814, ‘Le Cte Drouot a l’honneur de prevenir S.E. le vicomte Ebrington que Sa Majesté le recevra demain a 8 heures du soir’) and a letter by Henry, 3rd Baron Holland endorsing the manuscript (‘It is really extraordinary how much information thought & character are to be found in so small a compass’), n.d., laid in to inside upper and lower covers; blue morocco slipcase by Riviere. Provenance: by descent to the present owner. ‘He answered without the slightest hesitation upon all subjects, with a quickness of comprehension & clearness of expression beyond what I ever saw in any man: nor did he in the whole course of the conversation betray either by his countenance or manner a single emotion of resentment or even regret’. An account of two frank and wide-ranging conversations with the deposed emperor, on subjects in the frst conversation including the Bourbons, the character of the Frenchman (‘sa vanité le rend capable de tout entreprendre’), the army, the old nobility, the British constitution, his fellow monarchs Alexander I of Russia (‘si léger et si faux’), Francis I of Austria and Frederick William III of Prussia (‘un caporal infiniment le plus bête des trois’), the Russian campaign including the burning of Moscow by the Russians (‘parbleu, il faut avouer que cela a montré du caractère’), the leading military and political figures of his reign – including an extraordinary reminiscence of the death of his friend Geraud Duroc after Bautzen in 1813 ‘who, when his bowels were falling out before my eyes, repeatedly cried to me to have him put out of his misery. Je lui dis, je vous plains, mon ami, mais il n’y a pas de remède, il faut souffrir jusqu’à la fin ’ – and the Egyptian campaign; the second conversation, on the following day, resumes on the subject of the British constitution and the leading British statesmen, on religion in France and elsewhere, the slave trade, polygamy (which Napoleon surprisingly endorses), the War of 1812 with the United States, and on his own family and personal situation, including his two wives. Viscount Ebrington was one of a series of English visitors to Napoleon in his first exile in Elba (many, like Ebrington, associated with the French-sympathising Whig circles around Lord Holland), and his account is a celebrated depiction of the charm and variety of the exiled emperor’s conversation. It was published in 1823, closely following the text of this manuscript in the main (with occasional stylistic emendations). Ebrington records in the introduction to that edition that the memorandum was ‘taken immediately after the interviews which it records’; he also notes the omission in the printed text of ‘three or four passages, which [...] refect severely on private characters’, and these are indeed present in the manuscript ” the most scathing characteristically relate to Talleyrand, of whom he remarks ‘que voulez-vous [...] d’un prêtre defroqué, d’un Evèque marié et marié avec une putain’. One unsignalled omission in the published text is an appealing description of the Emperor’s physical appearance: ‘His appearance was that of robust health, his countenance very like most of his pictures & busts but with less expression except in speaking, & with the most pleasing & goodnatured smile. His figure short & fat, but very square & well proportioned’.
NAPOLEON I (1769-1821), Emperor of the French] – Hugh, 2nd Earl FORTESCUE (1783-1861), as Viscount Ebrington. Autograph manuscript, ‘Memorandum of two Conversations with the Emperor Napoleon at Porto Ferraio on the 6th & 7th of December 1814’.
NAPOLEON I (1769-1821), Emperor of the French] – Hugh, 2nd Earl FORTESCUE (1783-1861), as Viscount Ebrington. Autograph manuscript, ‘Memorandum of two Conversations with the Emperor Napoleon at Porto Ferraio on the 6th & 7th of December 1814’. 43 pages , 8vo (202 x 135mm) , green paper wrappers (spine worn with 19th-century repair), autograph note by comte Antoine Drouot (Portoferraio, 5 December 1814, ‘Le Cte Drouot a l’honneur de prevenir S.E. le vicomte Ebrington que Sa Majesté le recevra demain a 8 heures du soir’) and a letter by Henry, 3rd Baron Holland endorsing the manuscript (‘It is really extraordinary how much information thought & character are to be found in so small a compass’), n.d., laid in to inside upper and lower covers; blue morocco slipcase by Riviere. Provenance: by descent to the present owner. ‘He answered without the slightest hesitation upon all subjects, with a quickness of comprehension & clearness of expression beyond what I ever saw in any man: nor did he in the whole course of the conversation betray either by his countenance or manner a single emotion of resentment or even regret’. An account of two frank and wide-ranging conversations with the deposed emperor, on subjects in the frst conversation including the Bourbons, the character of the Frenchman (‘sa vanité le rend capable de tout entreprendre’), the army, the old nobility, the British constitution, his fellow monarchs Alexander I of Russia (‘si léger et si faux’), Francis I of Austria and Frederick William III of Prussia (‘un caporal infiniment le plus bête des trois’), the Russian campaign including the burning of Moscow by the Russians (‘parbleu, il faut avouer que cela a montré du caractère’), the leading military and political figures of his reign – including an extraordinary reminiscence of the death of his friend Geraud Duroc after Bautzen in 1813 ‘who, when his bowels were falling out before my eyes, repeatedly cried to me to have him put out of his misery. Je lui dis, je vous plains, mon ami, mais il n’y a pas de remède, il faut souffrir jusqu’à la fin ’ – and the Egyptian campaign; the second conversation, on the following day, resumes on the subject of the British constitution and the leading British statesmen, on religion in France and elsewhere, the slave trade, polygamy (which Napoleon surprisingly endorses), the War of 1812 with the United States, and on his own family and personal situation, including his two wives. Viscount Ebrington was one of a series of English visitors to Napoleon in his first exile in Elba (many, like Ebrington, associated with the French-sympathising Whig circles around Lord Holland), and his account is a celebrated depiction of the charm and variety of the exiled emperor’s conversation. It was published in 1823, closely following the text of this manuscript in the main (with occasional stylistic emendations). Ebrington records in the introduction to that edition that the memorandum was ‘taken immediately after the interviews which it records’; he also notes the omission in the printed text of ‘three or four passages, which [...] refect severely on private characters’, and these are indeed present in the manuscript ” the most scathing characteristically relate to Talleyrand, of whom he remarks ‘que voulez-vous [...] d’un prêtre defroqué, d’un Evèque marié et marié avec une putain’. One unsignalled omission in the published text is an appealing description of the Emperor’s physical appearance: ‘His appearance was that of robust health, his countenance very like most of his pictures & busts but with less expression except in speaking, & with the most pleasing & goodnatured smile. His figure short & fat, but very square & well proportioned’.
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Suchauftrag anlegen![NAPOLEON I (1769-1821), Emperor of the French] – Hugh, 2nd ...](http://www.christies.com/lotfinderimages/D59494/napoleon_i_emperor_of_the_french_hugh_2nd_earl_fortescue_as_viscount_e_d5949415g.jpg "Quelle: Christie's")
