NAPOLEON’S ELBA

Greymouth Evening Star, 15 November 1938, Page 10

NAPOLEON’S ELBA

ISLAND TRANQUILITY. Whose idea was it that Napoelon should be sent lo Elba,? The island is little enough known elven in these days, and must have seemed incredibly remote then to the few who knew it existed. Those who agreed could hardly have known that both Italy and Corsica could be seen from Elba’s hills, and would be an ever-present temptation to the Man of Destiny (writes the Rome correspondent of the London "Sunday Times”). Elba is still an out-of-the-way place. It probably shares with its smaller neighbour Monte Cristo the honour of being known by name throughout the world and yet visited by singularly tew outsiders. When we decided to spend the Summer vacation there we could get no first-hand information about the island in Rome. The only solution was evidently to go and see

for ourselves. We did, and felt amply repaid. In this small corner of the world, a heap of mountains twenty-five miles long and only live miles wide at its narrowest, tranquillity is still to be found ’ despite the radio and despite a decree I contemporary with our arrival, making Elba and the neighbouring islands a military zone. This was announced by large placards threatening full rigours of the law against anyone who made pictures, sketches, or photographs of the scenery, towns, villages, ports or ships trading therein, or .looked through telescopes or binoculars, and much more to that effect. The islanders, an independent lot, were rather sardonic about it.

So they are about tourists. They like their old ways, and if visitors do not, they can go elsewhere; if they do, they are welcome. Most of them go only to see Napoelon’s house at San Martino. near Portoferraio, and an ugly ironworks.

The Fascist Government has recently begun tidying up Napoelon’s residence, a. modest country house commanding a magnificent view of Porto terra io and the Piombino Channel. An ugly great house of the worst, period of nineteenth century marzipan ai chitectui e which blocked the view is being torn down. Some of Napoicotu's furniture and file silk curtains have been recovered, and the museum which be planned is being put in order.

it is in the little scattered villages however, that one feels the most intimate connection with Napoleon. Soon after lie arrived he tool: stock of his little kingdom, riding over the rough mulepaths which are still in some places the only approach except by sea to the remotest villages. The houses where he stayed were marked in local memory. About a century later pious historians supplemented memories with marble slubs. Their wording varies, but their content isi the same. That on the pink-washed walls of’the milk-shop at Marina, di Campo is typical. It is inscribed: “In this modest house, while visiting the realm which destiny, strongdr than his genius, imposed on him, Napoleon

the Great stayed' three days.” At. the western tip of the island a rocky seat was carved for him on the

side ot a hili from which he could gaze cn his native Corsica. During his nine months in Elba lie reorganised I lie

iron mines that are still the island’s chief asset ; .ind planned the roads that wjnd along Die hillsides. After Waterloo the island reverted to the (-•ram! Duchy of Tuscany, and to its aindent inconspicuousness.