The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1882-02-15
[st. James,s Gazetta.l
Bonaparte's Handwriting.

Francis 1. of Austria said of his son in-law
after the battle of Waterloo; II always thought
| that man would end badly: he wrote such
villainous hand" And indeed it became so
bad as to be almost wholly illegible. If read at
all it is by guess, or that second sight which
the "blind clerks" of the Dead Letter Office
are popularity supposed to possess Much OF II
is represented by blanks in the transcriptions,
and there are many words at the translation Of
which by an expert the welltried reader Of
manuscript can only shake doubling head.
| But this was not always so. While he was
| s1baltern of artillery his hand although never
| good, was at least human and clear and legible.
There was sort Of correspondence between it
and his simple erect bearing of those days,
when he disdained personal appearance, and
the long, flat, straight black hair partly hid and
heightened the sallow face, and everything
about him was grave, rude, austere. He was
not born to bad hand, although, like Lamar
tine, Byron and many other great men, he
could never learn how to spell; and after the
18th Brumaire the laws of photography incom-
moded him quite as little as any others. But
no matter how bad his writing was, "La plume
entire les manis," as Lsmartine wrote, 'nou3
valut une epee."
In a recent publication, 81 'Histoire de Ma
polson 1. d'apres son Ecriture," the Able
| Jean-Hippolyte Michon, graphologist, as he
| calls himself, makes an analysis Of the EN-
| peroT'S writing and character; and clever and
interesting book it is, due allowance being
made for the eccentricities and occasional wild
ness of the specialist and expert, which in
themselves are often amusing. The Able
maintains that it was the passionate vehemence
of his nature and his impenetrable dissimula-
ton that broke out in the furious illegibilty of
his writing and conquered the earlier habits of
his pen, which still sometimes reappeared in
the English exercise he wrote at st. Helena
with Las Casses. One of the most remarkable
facts is that the change for the bad took place
rapidly when the Corsican Captain B uonaparte
of 1872, "who distinguished himself so much at
the seige OF Toulon, became the French Gen-
eral Bonaparte. Carlyle brought his Trench
Revolution" to close !, With t kodccee dcee on the 18th
Tssnndemaire (4th October, 1885; and it is, cur
iously enough, from General Bonaparte's
skillfully garbled draft report of that day,
whea he really entered on the scene, that M
Michon first has occasion to Demonstrate the
complete graphic change. Thenceforward his
writing altered but little. Frankness has van
| ished; letters became confused, Topped strange
| ly scamped, often replaced by formless scratch
| es which are utterly illegible. The pen, says
| the Able, seems to swallow the words, which
have to be OWNED. 1t is hidden hand. This
| was natural result says this biographer, In an
| arch-conspirator against everything, who bad
above all to rely upon profound dissimulation
| and absolute impenetrability Men who can
hold their tongues show this peculiarity in
their writing: for the writer is the slave OF the
sbs f4a the dsy wsn ssj4
| prehensive glances showed him the mastery Of
| Europe, and he began to combine those plans
| which astonished the world Fine "gladlo-
| late'' strokes which sometimes terminate
1 almost every word, indicate that marked
finesse which, allied to his powers OF conceal
ments, made the complete diplomatist who
| showed himself in the tortuous, horribly SER
| pentine, almost spiral lines OF his writing,
which Talleyrand, the king Of negotiators,
| never surpassed
Napoleon's passionate nature, to which his
/ microscopic historian attributes many OF his
| gigantic mistakes, always acted on hrst impress
| sions when it broke through the haDitual nrm
/ calm to which he ever tried TO school himself.
| This mighty struggle OF the head with the
| heart shaped the whole Of his fateful history,
| and is shown to this student Of his writing by
the constant mixture of upright with sloping
| letters. In intimate connection with TINS sign
| is the extreme variability OF the height OF the
| letters, which indicates great mobility OF i'm
| pressions. sThe soul of fire was volatile as
| flame" The faculty of thought was In contin-
| ual lamentations. The imagination scars
| with the long stroke of d.
But the volcanic portion OF his character
| would have been controlled had 1t not been 1or
| partial organic lesion of the brain, which Is
the true key to the great dissonance OF his acts
| He himself said (but 1t was at 81. delenal
che goes mad who sleeps in the bed OF kings (;
and it was this cerebral alteration, which COM
bining with his headstrong passion, LED him con-
| stantly to declare war within twenty-four hours
against the first conner; to divorce w4e no
loved; to propose kingdom of Hayl to Louis
| XVIII. or to take million OF men INTO the
| steppes of Russia. Chateaubriand said Oh the
| Napoleonic ideas, "systeme dun fou ou dun
enfant'; but the mental arrangement was
made palmer to the Able by the apparent un-
| conscious leaps and bounds of the imperial pen,
| and especially by the strange abnormal form
and excessive development OF the letter p IN
Napoleon's writing. The historian maintains
that the writing of all the partially deranged
which he has examined exhibits some similar
terrible sign. which he calls 'la petite bette. !"
This ''sign" generally consists OF a nervous,
disordered, unusual stroke, which falls fatally
and spontaneously from the pen. Pascal, whose
imagination was so out OF gear that ne always
saw an abyss yawning at his side, and whose
writing in his after years Napoleons most re-
sembles, used an extravagant and accusing g..
The clear-headedness and precision OF the
general whose whole art OF war eliminated IN
being the strongest at a particular point is
shown By his often using fresh paragraph for
a fresh idea, and in the profusion OF space ana
| light between the lines, the words, and often
between the letters of his earlier handwriting
| But the intuition the eagle eye which enabled
| him always to seize this point OF concentration
is manifested by the frequent separation OF the
| letters in his words. Like Mazarln, TOO, ne
runs several words together: mark OF the de-
ductive logician, of the positive, practical man,
who tends rapidly and directly towards the
realization of his aim. His strong will, his
masteriul and despotic nature. are denoted by
| the forcible nature in which he crosses his {
high up Wonderful tenacity is shown BY the
"harpoops," or horizontal pot-hooks which ter
inmate the last stroke of many words:they are,
| as it were, the claws of the eagle. A profuslon
of club-like strokes show indomitable resolu-
tion and obstinacy, which may be seen to have
been intractable by the implacable hardness
and angular rigidity of the whole writing. Inc
dash of meanness which was always present ID
the man who gave a name to "csporal tooac-
| co is shown in the little crooks which some.
time commence or terminate the letter m, and
in his signature, which was not royal like that
| of Louis XIV. Until he became Emperor he
always wrote his name Buond- or BondPd
ar ahreYiated it BP. Afterward he wrote Nd-
| P0te0n or
[Blackwood's Magazine.I