NAPOLEON'S HOUSE.
One of the first sights to be visited in Ajaccio is the house belonging
to the Buonaparte family, and in which Napoleon was born. Every
Corsican is, of course, proud to the backbone of the great national
hero; and as Corte seems to breathe the presence of the wise, heroic,
unselfish Paoli, so Ajaccio is full of the footmarks of the world-famed
conqueror, the second son of Carlo Buonaparte, the Corsican solicitor.
The emperor, during his lifetime, did not perhaps do much for his
country. He loved it, but the benefits he intended to confer upon it
were, like many of our good deeds, from the time of Felix downwards,
put off to a more convenient season; and those he effected consisted
chiefly in the making of a few good roads in the island, and the
raising to posts of honour of many of his more talented compatriots.
His adoption of French nationality, and elevation to the imperial
throne, smoothed the path of submission to his proud and independent
countrymen, who delight to say now, with an excusable and harmless
conceit, of their paternal government, "_We_ have annexed France."
At one time it was proposed to rechristen Ajaccio after the name of
the great emperor; but this was wisely given up, and the old title
(supposed to be from an ancient hero called Ajazzo) was retained.
Turning out of a main street to the right of the sparkling Place du
Marché, runs a narrow entry, opening upon a tiny square, formed by a
garden and cottage on one side, and by a high, comfortable-looking, but
unpretentious house on the other.
Place Letitzia (so called from Napoleon's mother) is the name of this
little square, and the high, modern house was the home of Napoleon.
Going through a gate into a little garden, we knocked at the cottage
door smothered in roses and creepers, and an aged crone, of dainty
appearance and pleasant countenance, came out, key in hand. This
old lady is the _concierge_ of the house, and an old servant of the
Buonaparte family. As she was toothless, and spoke a most extraordinary
jumble of French and Italian, consisting chiefly of French words with
an Italian termination, it was difficult to understand much that she
said; but there was no mistaking her devotion to the family.
She remembered Madame Mère well, whose death occurred so many years
after that of her exiled son; and she spoke with enthusiasm of her
present mistress, a princess of the Buonaparte family, and daughter of
Prince Lucien, who lives in the upper storey of the house. "Ah!" she
said, laughing and clasping her hands, "she is so sweet and so kind,
my dear princess, and so pretty! If you could but see her! But she is
now gone to Mass, unfortunately. She does not seem more than sixteen,
she is so bright and young, although she is nearly sixty. Look at her
portrait here."
We did not see the princess, whose tame parrot kept calling from the
upper regions. But we heard that her old servant's admiration of her
amiability was not unmerited. This lady gave some pleasant _réunions_
at her house last winter, at which some of the English, resident in
Ajaccio, attended.
In some of the rooms were drawings by the late Prince Imperial, who,
with his mother, some years ago, visited the home of the founder of
their dynasty. The empress, then in the heyday of prosperity and glory,
and little foreseeing the widowed exile so soon to come upon her, was
yet deeply moved as she went through the deserted rooms, and shed tears
of emotion.
Passing through the unpretentious doorway, we went up a stone
staircase, three or four feet wide, until we reached the first storey.
It consisted of a succession of six or seven rooms, all opening one
into the other, and coming out finally at the other side of the little
landing. The rooms were square and comfortable-looking, of a good size,
most of them with chairs or armoires, or some articles of furniture
left in them. Some of the tables and chests were very pretty, of
marble, or inlaid with coloured woods.
On the first storey was the "reception-room"--a long, low apartment,
from which the chandeliers had been removed, but still hung round
with numerous small mirrors, and prettily painted. In this room M.
Buonaparte (who was a man of position, his family being considered the
second in Ajaccio, and he himself being rather a noted local orator and
politician) received a good deal of society, assisted by his beautiful
and graceful wife, Letitia Ramolini.
The portraits of Madame Mère, taken in her youth, some of which were
hanging on the walls of her house, show us the _spirituelle_ beauty,
with her dark, brilliant eyes, her sweet smile, and her bewitching
features.
Few women have had a more romantic life. Married at the age of
seventeen, to a husband who fell passionately in love with her before
she was much more than a child, and whose rank was scarcely equal to
her own, her devotion to him and to her children was only equalled by
her remarkable spirit and her natural ambition.
It is easy to see whence the first Napoleon gained his early childish
aspirations after greatness.
The wife of a simple _avocat_ in a small Mediterranean island, she
lived to see four out of her five sons crowned as kings, and two of
her daughters become princesses. But she lived, too, to see those
kings dethroned and disgraced, to see the greatest of them dying
slowly with a broken heart; and herself to close her eyes on a foreign
shore, exiled and sad of heart, driven out from her own country, and
repudiated by the very town in which her son was born. If ever any
woman had cause to learn the sad meaning of the oft-repeated adage,
"Sic transit gloria mundi," it was Madame Mère in her prolonged old
age at Rome, where, though still surrounded by loving and admiring
friends, the beautiful old lady must often have looked back with a sore
heart to the cosy house at Ajaccio, in which, years ago, she and Carlo
Buonaparte ruled over their numerous family of sons and daughters,
little dreaming of slippery sceptres, or of the unsubstantial greatness
of conquest.
The reception-room windows opened out upon a paved and enclosed
terrace, surrounded by flowers. Here Napoleon and his four brothers
used often to play, peeping through the balustrade upon the sunny
street below; and here the old concierge picked us each a spray or two
of scented geranium that was _said_ to have been growing there ever
since his time.
A little bedroom on this storey is shown as the one in which the great
man was born, and here is still the small iron bedstead always used by
madame.
This storey was kept for the use of Monsieur and Madame Buonaparte
and their friends, and for the reception-rooms. The second storey,
up another stone flight, was devoted to the children. Here we saw
Napoleon's bedroom, with a broken chair or two, and a curious old
inlaid brown wood chest, in which he kept his playthings and clothes.
Leading out of it was the children's play-room, where the boy, always
military in his tastes, made tiny cannon, and fought on the table mimic
battles, which, out of the house, developed into assaults and sieges
with his brothers or schoolfellows, of whom he was always the leader.
Even as a child, Napoleon was the ruling spirit among his brothers; he
was a second Joseph, to whose superior energy and genius the rest of
his family intuitively bowed down.
All these rooms were airy, large, and pleasant-looking; and I felt that
I had not sufficiently realized before, the comfortable position and
ample means belonging to the Buonaparte family.
We came down the stone staircase, and out of the cool, shady rooms,
with a strange new feeling of the _reality_ of Moscow, of Waterloo, and
of St. Helena; and, going across the sunny glare of the little garden
opposite, acceded to the kind invitation of our old woman to visit the
snug sitting-room.
This cottage and garden, in which she and her husband live, belongs to
the Buonapartes, but is a gift to her for life.
Her little sitting-room, cosily furnished and full of flowers, is a
perfect commentary on European history for the last century. Scarcely
an inch of the four walls is left uncovered by photograph, engraving,
or sketch: nearly all of historical interest.
Madame Mère and the first Napoleon commence the series of
portraits--taken from life, nearly a hundred years ago, in their
native land; many of the emperor's brothers and sisters are represented
also; the present Princess Marianna, with other relatives; sketches of
Napoleon's exploits, from the time he was "le petit corporal" until
he became the dethroned emperor; and every possible episode in the
life of Napoleon the Third, concluding with a large engraving of the
Chislehurst exile lying upon his pillow, the crafty, ambitious face
still and calm in the solemnity of death. Then came a likeness or
two of Eugénie in her exquisite beauty, and a row of portraits of the
Prince Imperial, developing from the somewhat plain, pugnacious-looking
boy, to the intelligent, spirited, earnest face of the young soldier
who fell among the Zulus but yesterday.
Leaving the old woman, with her smiling face and trembling limbs,
standing in her sunny porch surrounded by flowers in the quiet little
court, and emerging into the noisy street, we seemed to return, with an
effort, from the romance of the old empire to the prose of modern life.
Another little property, formerly belonging to the Buonapartes, lies at
the end of the Cours Grandval, beyond the hotel. Here is the "Grotte
de Napoléon," a little natural arbour or open cave formed by granite
boulders and shaded by ilex, where the boy Napoleon used to study his
lessons, or arrange his mimic campaigns with his companions.
It was formerly in the midst of a sheltered garden, but a road now runs
close beside it; and this publicity destroys much of its romance.
The road, a new, as it is a rough and steep one, ascends for several
miles, showing a pretty bird's eye view of the town, and by degrees
revealing a panorama of distant mountains in every direction, standing
in purple and snowy circles round the greener, smaller hills.
It is a beautiful drive; and nothing can well be more refreshing than
to wind slowly up the steep road, as we did on a breathlessly hot day,
out of the quivering heat of Ajaccio, into the vast open hill scenery
and gradually freshening atmosphere. Gardens, full of shady groves
and tall fan palms, line the way, occasionally marred by the defective
proportions of a family tomb.
Every road round Ajaccio, and, indeed, round any considerable Corsican
town, is full of these family tombs, placed in private grounds beside
the highway; sometimes, but rarely, picturesque in architecture and
embosomed in shade; but, more generally, square and hideous, bearing,
but for the iron cross on the roof, a greater resemblance to a
bathing-machine than to aught else.
There appear to be few churchyards in Corsica. Cemeteries there are,
often beautifully placed among cypress groves upon the hill-side; but
the greater proportion of the well-to-do inhabitants prefer to bury
their dead in their own grounds.
A little tomb or chapel is erected over the remains, generally large
enough to hold eight or ten people; and here, once a year, on the
anniversary of the death, the family meet to hear Mass performed.
This road, called "la route de Salario," from a fountain further
on, bearing that name, was particularly unfortunate in the style and
position of its numerous tombs.
The least unsightly were the poorest. It was touching, here and there
in a little wayside garden, to see, half hidden amongst overgrowing
herbage or creeping flowers, a simple stone cross rising out of the
ground to mark where lay the remains of the poor man or his child,
whose days had been spent in the cottage close by, surrounded by that
glorious amphitheatre of hills.