The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1935-01-18
LOST NAPOLEON
NOTES FILL GAP
AUTHOR SOUGHT
French Biographer Mourned
Lack: Believed Letters
Gone Forever.
BY WILLIAM VI. LAAS
Times special Writer

Napoleon BOnaparte has been
called the greatest letter-writer OF
all time" He left behind him more
than 100000 letters and documents,
more perhaps than any other his
toric individual. Yet no autograph
is more in demand by collectors
than the Little CoTporals majestic
scrawI. The rarity that makes auto
graphs valuable does not apply-the
tracks of the Eagles claw are
eagerly sought. no matter how many
of them are discovered.
Napoleon was one Of the most
versatile, as we'll as one Of the most
prodigious of history's famous cor
respondents. His letters are, IN
deed. the only authentic history of
his life. Scholars of Napoleonana
have been VIGOROUSLY biased.
Either they loved him or they hated
him. and their narratives are col
ored accordingly. Only the letters
speak the truth.
In a sad comment on the lack oil
known correspondence between
Napoleon and Marie Louise, Fred
eric Mason, one of the great
French authorities on Napoleon, re-
marked;
This terrible gap, which appar-
entity never will be completed, l
closed I'D as best could, but how
badlvl For Just one of those
letters who would not give all the
commentaries? They are character,
temperament, genius. and the soul
itself With them before you, you
neither suppose nor deduce: The
man himself appears"
Missing I ink Supplied
Mason had spent years of I'M
renting effort in search for this
correspondence, but his zeal netted
him but one letter from Marie
Louise and but six or seven from
Napoleon. They we're the Sorely
missed link in the learned scholars
knowledge of the great Corsican-
It IS these missing letters which
we're recently purchased by the
French government, and which will
be published for the first time since
they were written. 12l years ago,
in The Indianapolis Times. The
terrible gap has at last been
closed.
The existing correspondence of
begins with a boyish
"BuOnaparte," signed in the minute
book of the Revolutionary Commit
tee of Ajaccio, Corsica. when the
future emperor was a lad in his
early twenties.
II continues TO the height of his
pomp and power, when in the Tuil-
cries in Paris he affixed an imperial
IN" to doSsiers and documents. 1t
ends on the island of St. Helena in
1916. when the chained Titan signed
a shaky but still defiant Napoleon"
Great Napoleon Explained
Letters from Elba often bore a
wretched "Napn." and on st. Helena
Napoleon" became shaky and al
most Senile. but written in full as
"BOnaparte' had been written in
his youth.
While the signature of Napoleon
is superintendent. letters written in
full photographs. as the experts
call them are extremely rare. One
reason was that his handwriting
and his grammar-were utterly
atrocious.
He said himself: 81 can not write
well because my mind is engaged
on two subjects at once; one, my
ideas: the other, my handwriting.
The ideas go on fastest, and then
goOd-by to the letters and the
lines" His letters often end in
blot-the pen has collapsed!
The letters that The Indianapolis
Times Will publish are a historical
document. a love story, an exhibit
of pSvchOanalySiS. More than any
of the multitudinous relics known
before their discovery, they perform
an amazing ServiCe-they explain
tho ur0nt NanOIaof1