NAPOLEON ON HORSEBACK

John Tarttelin

Description

My statue of Napoleon and how this piece of sculpture has inspired me over the past thirty-five years. My reflections upon the Emperor.

Sujets

• Napoleon I
• Art
• First French Empire
• History
• Inspiration
• Sculpture

Informations

• Publié par: Souladream
• Publié le: 11 septembre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 808
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 26 Mo

Extrait

NAPOLEON ON HORSEBACK
A PIECE OF HISTORY
JOHN TARTTELIN2
I discovered this piece in Sheffield, England around 1976. I was doing
my teacher training at Sheffield City College of Education, studying
history and geography. I lived in Marshall Hall, a hall of residence that
was in Collegiate Crescent. Every day I would get up at six in the
morning and jog down the steep street to Ecclesall Road, turn right and
head for Endcliffe Park.
I don’t know when I first spied the figure but it was in a shop window
on the opposite side of Ecclesall Road, near its junction with Collegiate
Crescent. Whenever I went to the nearby Post Office, there was Napoleon
in all his majesty and grandeur, evoking a long-lost world of glory and
achievement.
Marshall Hall
I can’t even remember when I first took an interest in the Emperor, but I
know I began to be fascinated by him by the time I was fourteen. Maybe,
like many an adolescent, I felt somewhat confused and out-of-place – a
bit like the young Napoleon when he left Corsica and went to Brienne in
France. He was an outsider and what adolescent isn’t?
I remember that on one school visit prior to my Teaching Practice, I did
a lesson on Napoleon’s life with the 1812 Overture playing in the
background. Not very original perhaps, but I certainly enjoyed that
lesson. Napoleon had relatively humble origins and that appealed to me
as well. As Stendhal and others have written in their novels, Napoleon
shows us all what is possible, what can be done, no matter what the
obstacles.3
I do not know the provenance of the piece. When my four-year B.Ed.
course came to an end I decided to treat myself and buy it. Already I had
been alarmed when the statue disappeared from the window – it had
become such a feature for me, almost a companion there in the shop
window, that I dreaded the thought that someone else might already have
purchased it.
Collegiate Crescent4
If memory serves me right I think what caused me to think twice was
that the then Labour Government had put luxury purchase tax on such
items – 12% instead of the usual 8% (?) It cost me about £100 which was
a King’s ransom for a student. On much more familiar ground, I can
recall that Guinness was 25p a pint in the College bar and a whisky was
only 17p. My hall fees were £11 all-in a week.
The year I passed my ‘A’ Levels – 1973 – a teacher’s starting salary
was only £26 a week, £1,300 a year. In 1974 the Houghton Review
doubled that to £52 a week or £2,600 a year. So my Napoleon was the
equivalent of two weeks’ of the new pay – and of course, he was worth it!
I must have stared at his unique profile dozens of times in that shop
window. He was an inspiration and a solace, a figure of wonder and awe.
Whenever College got me down I always knew I could go and ‘see’ the
Emperor and he never failed to cheer me up.
For those who might be knowledgeable about such things, there is a
large S struck-through above a Made in GDR mark. The old East
Germany for sure - but where exactly? The piece obviously owes its
origin to the famous Meissonier portrait of the Emperor as he defended
France in 1814. Most people mistakenly believe it shows Napoleon in the
Russian snows of 1812. I have that very painting on my wall as I write.
Meissonier was born in 1815, the year of Waterloo and he painted his
Campaign of 1814 in 1864 as the Civil War raged in America. He died in
1891, the year after the last of the so-called ‘Indian Wars’ – the
ridiculously named Battle of Wounded Knee was in December 1890 (the 5
very month and year my grandmother was born). For me, my Napoleon
on horseback always reminds me of a time nearly 35 years ago (but a
mere twinkling of the eye), when I was young. As Heine says ‘Come let
us talk about the Emperor, when all was gold and green’.
Around 1986 I came across 'Eyewitness Accounts' of the 1812
campaign. It fired my imagination and I began planning my novel '1812'
the following year. I began writing it in 1989. I have uploaded to Amazon
Kindle all that I have done so far - 105,000 words - and I hope to add a
lot more to it. My admiration for the Emperor was engendered within me,
and still survives, despite a grammar school education that conveyed the
usual one-sided British bias towards him. Most of the books I have read
about Napoleon are hopelessly partisan and antagonistic. Some of my
articles for the INS take their authors to task - something I have wanted to
do for years.
Plato told an allegory about a cave. He said that it is as if all human
beings are staring into the back of a dark cave and all they see of reality
are shadows cast upon the darkened wall from light that shines from
outside in the 'real' world.
Sometimes as I read about Napoleon and look though a glass darkly
into a window on the past, I feel that I am merely a fleeting raindrop
coursing down that historical pane of glass - but that 'reality' lies on the 6
far side, within. We are but moths drawn to the light of a genius who
once lived and breathed like the rest of us, but was so much more than we
shall ever be. And even his detractors, especially his British ones, just
have to go on denigrating him because he committed the unpardonable
sin of not being 'English'.
"Great men are destined to be consumed in illuminating their century,"
Napoleon said, shortly after he saw the famous comet of 1811. So it is, so
it shall ever be. Leonardo once said: "Tell me if anything has ever been
achieved?" The painter of the Mona Lisa, the inventor, the polymath par
excellence of the Renaissance, felt himself to be a failure. Great men
might be hard to understand, but they nevertheless remain great. No
wonder that Napier, the famous British historian of the Peninsular War,
wept on the news of Napoleon's death. No wonder that General Wilson
who had been attached to Kutosov's Army in 1812 and who then hated
the Emperor, learnt to 'see things in another light'. He was distraught
when the news of Napoleon's passing was posted in the streets of London
in 1821.
Many of the British soldiers who fought Napoleon ached for just a
glimpse of the man Napier called a "genius". And the British tars on the
'Billy Ruffian' (Bellerophon - Napoleon asked for asylum from its
Captain Maitland - he did not 'surrender' after Waterloo) were absolutely
chuffed when the Emperor who they had heard so much about deigned to
watch them put on a play on the vessel. He especially liked seeing the tars
who were in drag and he laughed heartily at their antics. (H.G. Wells
wrote in 1920 in his History of the World that Napoleon 'never
laughed' !!!)
The tars called Napoleon a "Fine fellow who does not deserve his fate".
They were in awe of him and silently lined the ship when he left. There
was total silence - a phenomenon unknown before to the crew of a
boisterous English vessel. They knew they were witnessing the passing of
an age, the final steps of a Titan. One officer nearly stole Napoleon's
pistol because he so much wanted a memento of him. Such was
Napoleon's greatness to these men who had fought against him - yet lived
to see him in the flesh.7
It is an incredible story that makes this Englishmen proud of his
long-dead countrymen. They had lived to see the light of the comet and
were scorched by the experience. Those memories of Napoleon were
seared into their brains.
© John Tarttelin 2012
A SOULADREAM PRODUCTION