NAPOLEON'S BAD WRITING
The. expert who, with a staff of four assistants, has accomplished the task of transcribing the letters of Napoleon to Marie Louise, shortly to be published by Hutchinson, is Professor M. Phillippe Lauer, custodian of the manuscripts department of the Bibliotheque. "It has been a terrific job," said M. Lauer; "in fact, we never had one like it before. We have often been puzzled by manuscripts of the Middle Ages, practically impossible to decipher, but in the category of modern handwriting Napoleon's is the worst. When revising our own transcriptions, we were by no means sure in manycases that we had correctly read a.word or phrase. A curious feature of Napoleon's letters is his bad spelling, and he was constantly guilty of elementary faults of orthography. ,He would write 'J'e' for 'J'ai,' 'pensser' for 'pense,' for instance. Even more extraordinary is that he should have misspelt the names of cities he had taken and ■of towns whose names perpetuate his victories."
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/EP19350427.2.187.6
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Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 98, 27 April 1935, Page 24
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164NAPOLEON'S BAD WRITING Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 98, 27 April 1935, Page 24
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