We had made every preparation for a pic-nic party to the country-house of Napoleon yesterday—but it rained. At sunset, however, the clouds crowded into vast masses, and the evening gave a glorious promise, which was fulfilled this morning in freshness and sunshine. The commodore’s barge took off the ladies for an excursion on horseback to the iron mines, on the other side of the island—the midshipmen were set ashore in various directions for a ramble, and I, tempted with the beauty of the ravine which enclosed the villa of Napoleon, declined all invitations with an eye to a stroll thither.
We were first set ashore at the mole to see the town. A medley crowd of soldiers, citizens, boys, girls, and galley-slaves, received us at the landing, and followed us up to the town-square, gazing at the officers with undisguised curiosity. We met several gentlemen from the other ship at the café, and taking a cicerone together, started for the town-residence of the emperor. It is now occupied by the governor, and stands on the fine summit of the little fortified city. We mounted by clean, excellent pavements, getting a good-natured buon giorno! from very female head thrust from beneath the blinds of the houses. The governor’s aide received us at the door, with his cap in his hand, and we commenced the tour of the rooms with all the household, male and female, following to gaze at us. Napoleon lived on the first floor. The rooms were as small as those of a private house, and painted in the pretty fresco common in Italy. The furniture was all changed, and the fire-places and two busts of the emperor’s sisters (Eliza and Pauline) were all that remained as it was. The library is a pretty room, though very small, and opens on a terrace level with his favourite garden. The plants and lemon-trees were planted by himself, we were told, and the officers plucked souvenirs on all sides. The officer who accompanied us was an old soldier of Napoleon’s and a native of Elba, and after a little of the reluctance common to the teller of an oft-told tale, he gave us some interesting particulars of the emperor’s residence at the island. It appears that he employed himself, from the first day of his arrival, in the improvement of his little territory, making roads, &c., and behaved quite like a man who had made up his mind to relinquish ambition, and content himself with what was about him. Three assassins were discovered and captured in the course of the eleven months, the first two of whom he pardoned. The third made an attempt upon his life, in the disguise of a beggar, at a bridge leading to his country-house, and was condemned and executed. He was a native of the emperor’s own birthplace in Corsica.
The second floor was occupied by his mother and Pauline. The furniture of the chamber of the renowned beauty is very much as she left it. The bed is small, and the mirror opposite its foot very large, and in a mahogany frame. Small mirrors were set also into the bureau, and in the back of a pretty cabinet of dark wood standing at the head of the bed. It is delightful to breathe the atmosphere of a room that has been the home of the lovely creature whose marble image by Canova thrills every beholder with love, and is fraught with such pleasing associations. Her sitting-room, though less interesting, made us linger and muse again. It looks out over the sea to the west, and the prospect is beautiful. One forgets that her history could not be written without many a blot. How much we forgive to beauty! Of all the female branches of the Bonaparte family, Pauline bore the greatest resemblance to her brother Napoleon: but the grand and regular profile which was in him marked with the stern air of sovereignty and despotic rule, was in her tempered with an enchanting softness and fascinating smile. Her statue, after the Venus de’ Medicis, is the chef d’œuvre of modern sculpture.
We went from the governor’s house to the walls of the town, loitering along and gazing at the sea; and then rambled through the narrow streets of the town, attracting, by the gay uniforms of the officers, the attention and courtesies of every smooched petticoat far and near. What the faces of the damsels of Elba might be, if washed, we could hardly form a conjecture.
The country-house of Napoleon is three miles from the town, a little distance from the shore, farther round into the bay. Captain Nicholson proposed to walk to it, and send his boat across—a warmer task for the mid-day of an Italian June than a man of less enterprise would choose for pleasure. We reached the stone steps of the imperial casino, after a melting and toilsome walk, hungry and thirsty, and were happy to fling ourselves upon broken chairs in the denuded drawing-room, and wait for an extempore dinner of twelve eggs and a bottle of wine as bitter as criticism. A farmer and his family live in the house, and a couple of bad busts and the fire-places, are all that remain of its old appearance. The situation and the view, however, are superb. A little lap of a valley opens right away from the door to the bosom of the bay, and in the midst of the glassy basin lies the bold peninsular promontory and fortification of Porto Ferrajo, like a castle in a loch, connected with the body of the island by a mere rib of sand. Off beyond sleeps the main-land of Italy, mountain and vale, like a smoothly-shaped bed of clouds; and for the foreground of the landscape, the valleys of Elba are just now green with fig-trees and vines, speckled here and there with fields of golden grain, and farm-houses shaded with all the trees of this genial climate.
We examined the place, after our frugal dinner, and found a natural path under the edge of the hill behind, stretching away back into the valley, and leading, after a short walk, to a small stream and a waterfall. Across it, just above the fall, lay the trunk of an old and vigorous fig-tree, full of green limbs, and laden with fruit half ripe. It made a natural bridge over the stream, and as its branches shaded the rocks below, we could easily imagine Napoleon, walking to and fro in the smooth path, and seating himself on the broadest stone in the heat of the summer evenings he passed on the spot. It was the only walk about the place, and a secluded and pleasant one. The groves of firs and brush above, and the locust and cherry-trees on the edges of the walk, are old enough to have shaded him. We sat and talked under the influence of the “genius of the spot,” till near sunset, and then, cutting each a walking-stick from the shoots of the old fig-tree, returned to the boats and reached the ship as the band struck up their exhilarating music for the evening on the quarter-deck.
We have passed two or three days at Elba most agreeably. The weather has been fine, and the ships have been thronged with company. The common people of the town come on board in boat-loads, men, women, and children, and are never satisfied with gazing and wondering. The inhabitants speak very pure Tuscan, and are mild and simple in their manners. They all take the ships to be bound upon a mere voyage of pleasure; and, with the officers in their gay dresses, and the sailors in their clean white and blue, the music morning and evening, and the general gaiety on board, the impression is not much to be wondered at.
Yesterday, after dinner, Captain Nicholson took us ashore in his gig, to pass an hour or two in the shade. His steward followed, with a bottle or two of old wine, and landing near the fountain to which the boats are sent for water, we soon found a spreading fig-tree, and, with a family of the country people from a neighbouring cottage around us, we idled away the hours till the cool of the evening. The simplicity of the old man and his wife, and the wonder of himself and several labourers in his vineyard, to whom the captain gave a glass or two of his excellent wines, would have made a study for Wilkie. Sailors are merry companions for a party like this. We returned over the unruffled expanse of the bay, charmed with the beauty of the scene by sunset, and as happy as a life, literally sans souci, could make us. What is it, in this rambling absence from all to which we look forward to in love and hope, that so fascinates the imagination?