Coulee City dispatch. [volume] (Coulee City, Wash.) 19??-19??, 1936-06-18
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Evils Done the Dead by Half Cooked
Writers of History.

launched mouthful. The Little
Corporal must have sensed what
he was to suffer at the hands of
his biographers, those ink-stained
harpies who marked time against
the hour his star fell at St. Helena
where, on frail army cot surrounded
by a handful of the faithful, he
writhed into the everlasting shadows
addressing the mirage of his army.
This man of destiny ended his earthly
career in weller of fat, his ankles
bullying over patent leather shoes like
something splitting into space >. The
jowls Of him fell into a soiled collar,
open at the throat, disclosing the ivory
pulp of a flabby breast housing a
heart that for twenty years had set
the tempo for victorious cannonading
under the banners of France.
Twenty thousand volumes written
in every living tongue flowed for more
than hundred years from the i'm
petuous pens of biographers, self-con-
secrated to lay bare the life of the
Corsican-born adventurer who lived to
shake the world. From the confusion
wrought of countless pens, the fear
some Bonaparte now stalks-half mon
ster; half god, an eXecrated and a
deified personality, mythologized with
the accommodating years, and all that Is
germane to his influence upon the
Ninnfnnnfh ic int hi,
torical disorder.
Biography Written by Ear.
Unfortunate, indeed, that history is
not clarified by time. Once an error
creeps into the record it remains there
forever, modified at intervals but never
wholly corrected for the enlighten-
ment of posterity. 1t is quite the
vogue with modern biographers, to
take one characteristic of the de-
ceased and upon that rebuild the per-
sonality to suit themselves.
Memoirs are equally noxious, not
for what they present, but for what
they withhold Most biography is writ
ten In the measure Of one grand sweet
ear for music. Recently in Washing
ton a conscientious attempt was made
by congressman and an artist to
contrive mural decoration that
would show just how our colonial
statesmen looked when properly
CARRIED in the style of that period;
nothing, understand, built along
quantity production lines or shot with
shoddy, but the crackerjack hand
made breeches, buskin and waistcoat
of the James Madison, Ben Franklin
and Aaron Burr school, showing George
Washington in profile and Alexander
Hamilton from the front elevation.
Fair enough, and knockout, so l
understood. But has anything been
done to clear up some of the exag-
gerations, inaccuracies and dirty
cracks taken at George and Alex by
the gentry who adulterate biography
with fiction?
Not long ago l picked up a book
that dealt in part with that dramatic
chapter in the life of Bonnie Prince
Charlie, who was rescued from Brit
ish pursuers in the Isle Of Skye by the
heroine Flora Macdonald after the
battle of Culloden, which rang down
the curtain of Charles kingly ambi-
lions. TO quote:
Story of Royal Romance.
''It seems to have been his (Char-
lie's) thought that if she (Flora) cared
for him that the two might well love;
and he gave her every chance to show
him favor The youth of twenty five
and the girl of 5twepty-four roamed to-
gether in the long, tufted grass, or lay
in the sunshine and looked out over
the sea. But to the last he was either
too high or too low for her. according
to her own modest thought ;"
Well, there it is, offered as history.
of Skye, shopping into that affair, vari-
ously distorted by writer's totally ig-
norant of the truth. The facts are
these: Following Culloden, Bonnie
Charlie took it on the run with $780,
600 reward on his curly head. Loyal
Highlanders, mere handful, escort
ed him through the rain-swept barren
hills, keeping him concealed under COW
er of night. Flora, true blue, unim-
peachable and courageous was Sc
lected by Charles escort to get the
prince out of his difficulties. She
agreed to take the risk and set about
her arrangements to get him to a point
of safety disguised as her maid.
Myth Is Debunked.
After ten days of breath taking ad-
venture, Flora, bossing the entire job,
succeeded in her mission, and on the
night of July l, 1746, in the presence
of Highland gentlemen, one of them a
relative of Flora, the Bonnie Prince
babe her respectable Unconditional
good-by in Room 5 of Royal hotel at
Portree, climbed out of the window
and escaped in the boat that her eff
forts had provided. The actual time
consumed in the plot for his flight
was ten days, during five of which
Flora never set eyes upon the prince.
During the five remaining days she saw
him three times, always in the COM
pany Of his Highland henchmen. Rain
and cold weather prevailed. Not once
De ,nhJ In