The Emperor's Last Island by Julia Blackburn

Author:Julia Blackburn [Blackburn, Julia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-82922-1
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-10-02T16:00:00+00:00

Shouting for Marchand to come down, ‘Mamzelle Marchand’—as he called this gentle-faced man—‘Mamzelle Marchand come down, the sun is shining’ and then Noverraz, Pierron, the cook, the groom, the Chinese, Montholon, Bertrand, everyone, everyone must come and be set to work. None of the Frenchmen had ever done this kind of thing before and Napoleon’s own hands were so soft that they blistered easily when he used a shovel, but for as long as he was enthusiastic he expected the entire household to join him in his enthusiasm. They stopped for breakfast at around eleven o’clock, and usually Napoleon would retire to his room to sleep or read or take a bath, and then if the weather was still fine he would reappear in the afternoon to walk around his garden, admiring it and making plans for its future.

Captain Nicholls now suddenly found that his duties were much easier. In his diary he records seeing Bonaparte in October 1819, ‘walking in his Gardens this afternoon about 5 o’clock, he had a handkerchief tied around his head and was in his dressing-gown … he appeared very fat.’ In November the Emperor was playing with Bertrand’s children in the garden; in December he had a spade in his hand and was at work superintending the transplantation of some young oak trees. In January 1820 he was wearing a large straw hat, and strolling contentedly across the grass, unbothered by the fact that it was raining. In that same month he was seen out in the garden at 5 A.M., watering his flowers even before the sentries had left their posts, and later in the day he was sitting and staring at the red fish in their tubs of water. In February he was impatiently awaiting the delivery of fifty peach trees that would form a new line of concealment right along the western boundary of his garden and in March, at six in the evening, he stripped off all his clothes and plunged into the cistern pool, while Count Montholon and two servants waited to help him out and dry him with towels.

It is from Nicholls’ diary and from the diary of Captain Lutyens, the Orderly Officer who took over his job in February 1820, that the story of the chickens, the goats, the pig and the ox is best told, although St. Denis and Marchand also mention the same sequence of events. In spite of all the ditches and ramps, the walls and fences, it was still easy for domestic animals to make their way into the Longwood garden if they were determined to or if someone happened to leave the gate open. In the early weeks of 1820 Napoleon discovered a group of five or six chickens busily scratching up the pansies and the eternelles growing in his flowerbeds. He told St. Denis to fetch one of the guns which he had not used since the days when he had gone out riding with Gourgaud; he took aim and managed to kill three chickens with one shot.

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