John Barth - Letters

And with her all my hopes, he writes, no longer of saving Bonaparte from exile, but of ensuring if I could that he went to St. Helena instead of to the Wood of Suicides in Hell. For he has now decided not only that a taste of true exile might be the best argument for inclining Napoleon to the Louisiana Project, but that with the aid of the Baratarians he is far more likely to effect a rescue from St. Helena than from the Tower of London. Almost before he realizes what he’s doing, therefore, he flings himself off Eurotas into Plymouth Sound, kicks away his boots, and strikes out for Bellerophon.

A cry goes up from both vessels. Andrew has jumped from the side opposite Eurotas’s guard boats and nearer Bellerophon’s, which therefore pause in their labors to save him from drowning. Before he can be placed under arrest and transferred back to Eurotas and thence to shore, he shouts a warning to Bellerophon’s watch officer that the launch fast approaching bears the feared habeas corpus from the King’s Bench. Sure enough, Mackenrot stands in her bows, waving his paper — and now the Count de Las Cases has recognized “André Castine” and says something to Commander Maitland. Orders are given: to his great relief Andrew sees another boat lowered to fend off the redoubtable Scotsman; he himself, there being nothing else presently to be done with him, is fetched aboard Bellerophon with the guard boats and their crews as soon as the old ship has sea room enough to begin tacking under her own power out of the sound.

You have betray’d us, Las Cases complain’d to me [he writes] as soon as we could speak privately. Nor did my argument much move him; for while he agreed that rescue might be more feasible from St. Helena than from Britain, he vow’d the Emperor was still adamant on that score, and was prepared to take his life rather than submit voluntarily to exile. As for that, I thot, it was likely mere bluff, inasmuch as his sentence was now clear beyond doubt, and Bellerophon’s putting out to sea removed any hope of their being received ashore or otherwise delaying execution of that sentence; yet he was still alive. On this head, however, I held my peace, proposing instead what certain of those sign-boards had proposed to me: namely, that the Emperor might be dissuaded from suicide, and induced to go peacefully tho protestingly into exile, if he were shown the opportunity therein to increase his fame. His public confinement in Tor Bay & Plymouth Sound had workt considerably to his advantage in one respect: he was now more than ever the cynosure of all eyes, and his letters, from “Themistocles” forward (so I learn’d from Las Cases), tho undeliver’d or unreply’d to, had in fact been addrest less to their addressees than to History, which is to say, to Public Opinion. What better chance, then, to bend the world in his favor, than to turn his exile into public martyrdom, by writing his memoirs on St. Helena & smuggling them out for publication? He had made history; he could now re-make & revise it to his pleasure! Thus the world’s forgetfulness, which he fear’d would bury him, would bury instead his great crimes against mankind (I call’d them his little misjudgments) & eagerly believe whate’er he wrote.

Moreover (Andrew adds by way of clincher to his appeal), such a memoir will need delivery to the mainland, and publication, and collection of its author’s royalties. What better way for a trusted aide like Monsieur the Count de Las Cases at once to do his master a signal service and to abbreviate his own exile?

At 1st skeptical, the Count was by this last altogether convinced — if only, he declared, to save the Emperor’s life & honor. All that afternoon & evening, as we hove to to await Prometheus, Tonnant, Eurotas, & Myrmidon, and then beat southeast toward rendezvous with Admiral Cockburn, the Count prest my plan in private with Napoleon. That same night, I was gratify’d to hear, the unemperor’d Emperor dictated a grand letter of protest, addrest “to History…” And tho he still vow’d to the English officers they would never fetch him alive to St. Helena, I was pleased to gather, from Las Cases’ nods & winks, that our appeal was going forward.

He would have been further encouraged, could he have seen them, by editorials in the Times and the Morning Chronicle next day, expressing their writers’ conviction that the captive would have been securer from rescue in Stirling Castle, say, than on St. Helena, where “an American vessel will always be ready to take him off…”

Nevertheless, throughout that morning and early afternoon (154 years ago today), as they rendezvous with Cockburn’s squadron between Start Point and Bolt Head, exchange cannon salutes and visits between the admirals’ flagships, then move together to the calmer waters of Tor Bay in preparation for the transfer, Napoleon gives no public sign of acquiescence. Keith and Cockburn are moved to the extraordinary precaution of impounding the French officers’ swords and pistols, lest they attempt to resist the transfer with arms. Only when Bellerophon’s doctor reports to Commander Maitland that “General Buonaparte” has invited him to serve as his personal physician on St. Helena do the English — and Andrew — have reason to imagine that Napoleon has at last accepted his fate. Even then they fear a ruse (they have just learned that Las Cases, who has affected since Rochefort not to understand English, reads and speaks their language easily). Guard boats are posted to patrol the anchorage all night lest Mr. Mackenrot, or the habeas corpus people, or the Bonapartists, or the Americans, attempt rescue or obstruction, or the emperor fling himself from his cabin into Tor Bay.

At eight-thirty that evening Admirals Cockburn and Keith come aboard to read to Napoleon their instructions from the cabinet and work out the details of his transfer to Northumberland next morning; Andrew retires out of sight down to the orlop deck, where he had completed the “Washington” letter, and spends the evening drafting this one.

Rather (as I have done here on the first-class deck of the Statendam, where it is not to be supposed I have deciphered, transcribed, and summarized all these pages at one sitting, simultaneously wooing your future stepmother!), he extends toward completion the chronicle he has been drafting in fits and starts since Rochefort, as I have drafted this over the three weeks past. And as I expect any moment now this loving labor to be set aside for one equally loving but more pressing (Jane is in our stateroom, preparing for bed and wondering why I linger here on deck), so my namesake’s is interrupted, near midnight, by good news from the Count de Las Cases. Not only has the emperor agreed at last, under formal protest, to be shifted with his party to Northumberland after breakfast next morning; he has made long speeches to History, to both the admirals and, separately, to Commander Maitland, from whom also he has exacted a letter attesting that his removal from Bellerophon is contrary to his own wishes. Moreover, he has prevailed (over Maitland’s objections) in his insistence that Las Cases be added to the number of his party, to serve as his personal secretary; and he has clapped the count himself on the shoulder and said, “Cheer up, my friend! The world has not heard the last from us; we shall write our memoirs!”

Even as I, Andrew concludes, am writing mine, in these encipher’d pages, my hope once more renew’d. Tomorrow Admiral Cockburn, “Scourge of the C’s,” will weigh anchor for St. Helena with the Scourge of Mankind: a voyage of two months, during which I shall make my own way back from England to New Orleans, hoping against hope, my darling Andrée, to find you there. Where, if all goes well, you & I & Jean Lafitte will devise a plan to spirit Napoleon from under George Cockburn’s nose before he has unpackt his writing-tools!