Napoleon by Ruth Scurr

Author:Ruth Scurr [Scurr, Ruth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-05-06T00:00:00+00:00

Savary tells me that you are always crying. That is a pity. I hope you have been able to go for a walk today. I sent you some game from my hunt. I will come and see you when you tell me that you are being sensible, and that your courage is winning the day. Tomorrow I am busy with my ministers all day. Goodbye my dear, I am unhappy today too. I want to hear that you are satisfied, and to know that you are recovering your balance. Sleep well.61

Members of the institute, those who had been newly elected, and those who had recent publications, were invited to the Tuileries Palace in December 1809. They assembled in their green costumes while the emperor was at Mass. The naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, white-haired, sixty-four years old, stood in line holding his new book. Lamarck remembered the Ancien Régime; he had known the great Buffon and Daubenton; he had botanised with Rousseau and published a three-volume book on the native flowers of France.62 As a medical student in Paris, he had become fascinated by the clouds he observed from his garret window and interested in predicting the weather. He had survived the Terror, working in the Jardin des Plantes as Professor of Invertebrates. From studying the lowly earthworm he had developed an early theory of evolution, the inheritance of acquired characteristics, which challenged the idea of the fixity of species. He knew he had enemies, fellow scientists who disagreed with and disliked him. Sometimes he thought there were conspiracies against him. Some people suspected him of atheism. He had been mocked for his interest in meteorology and his publication of weather forecasts in an annual almanac. He worried ill will would spoil the reception of his Philosophie Zoologique. He clutched the bound copy he was going to present to Napoleon.

Lamarck was standing near François Arago, a mathematician, physicist and astronomer, too young to remember the Revolution. Arago’s election to the institute earlier that year, aged just twenty-three, had been controversial. After measuring the meridian arc in Spain, where he had been accused of being a spy for the invading French army and imprisoned on the island of Majorca, Arago had escaped and had many adventures trying to get back to France. He had only recently been released from quarantine when he received the summons to the Tuileries Palace. Some of the older scientists thought his election premature. As Napoleon processed past the line of scholars, he stopped and said to Arago: ‘You are very young, what is your name?’63 But before Arago could answer, a scientist to his right replied on his behalf. ‘What science do you cultivate?’ the emperor asked. Again, another colleague, desperate for attention answered. Arago was dismayed by the pushy behaviour of institute members vying to get noticed. Napoleon moved on to Lamarck. Arago watched as the naturalist well known for ‘his beautiful and important discoveries’ humbly presented his book. The emperor abused Lamarck in sharp sentences. Perhaps he meant to be jocular.

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