Malmaison.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1579, 4 March 1887, Page 3

Malmaison.

TBS OLD HOME OF BONAPABTE AND JOSEPHINE. Edward King, writing from Paris to the Botton Journal, says: " I went the other day to Malmaison, the old home of Napoleon and Josephine, and the Juiet, old-fashioned mansion in which oeephine died. I had not been there ainee 1867, at which time the Imperial Government had organised a complete Napoleonic museum in the old place. The library, where Napoleon had worked out his campaigns, the boudoirs, the saloons, were all fitted with the furniture which bad done duty in the etrly days of the First Empire, and one eonld almost imagine, while strolling from room to room, that the little corporal would suddenly appear, and in curt tones inquire to what the intrusion wa* duo- The small bedroom in which Napoleon slept on an ordinary camp bedstead was filled with his old clothes and cocked hats; and his favourite books were thrown down as if they had just quitted the impatient Imperial hand, which they sometimes did in a great hurry, as Napoleon would pitch a book even out of a travelling carriage if he happened to findanytbing which was notin harmony with his own notions. During his Austrian and Bussian campaigns he had a light carriage fitted up with a compact library, and it is said that one of the duties of the aide-de-camp who followed this carriage was the leacuing from the mud of the warworn roads of the time the books which Napoleon shied into the air when he disliked them. Malmaison was cut up dreadfully during the Franco-German war y and to-day there is but little left of the old-fashioned country houseSome of the rooms are so unsafe that visitors are requested not to venture on their shaky floors or under their ancient roofs. The library is especially dilapidated. Not a book remains in it, and the concierge who shows visitors over the house dwells with a kind of ferocioas emphasis upon the mischief which the Prussian head quarter's officers did during their long svjourn there. The beautiful park into which Napoleon used to pass from a little drawbridge rigged over a moat directly from his private bedroom is being parcelled out and sold to the rich landlords of the neighbourhood. The magnificent alley of sycamores which leads to the chateau, is now unkempt and somewhat desolate, and there is none of the old-life time or gaiety at Malmaison save when a joyous party of litterateurs or painters penetrate the old domain on their capricious way to Bougival for rowing or driving parties. I went into the little room in which Josephine breathed htr last. It was ss desolate and forlorn as that of some old colonial mansion on the east coast of America. Life and thought had gone away. It seemed impossible to believe that in the suite of rooms adjoining were once assembled the most brilliant collection of French poets that has been known in the last two centuries. Josephine bad a fine frenzy for calling about the court of the future Dictator the literary men of France; and so went to her little country seat men like Bernardin de St Pierre; Ducis, who tortured Shake speare on bis bed; the elder L*gouvey, Joseph Chenier, Talma, Picard, Duual, and Girodtt. In the wake ot these poets, all of whom were men of fine manners and certain distinction in literature, always came a number of pretty women. There were Hortense de Beauharnais, who waa then a dazzling creature of eighteen; the Countess Fanny, her sister and a host of ladies of rank and fortune, who in the intervals of the clashing of swords aid the noise of politics, helped to honour the muses. In these now desolate rooms Arnault declaimed his fables, Bouilly read his fables and Legouvey recited bis poems. When Bonaparte wss pounding up and down Egypt and haranguing his soldiers as to the spectral hosts which contemplated them from the tops of tbe pyramids, Josephine was working with feminine skill and tact to rally about it those spirits which still hesitated. Had it not been for her work at Malmaison, he would never have been able to undertake the 15th of Brumaire, 3r to become First Consul He was «incerely grateful in those days to Josephine for all tbat she had undertaken on bis behalf, and nothing pleased him so much as to visit Malmaison and rest there from his ambitious projects. Josephine tried to make a new Trianon at Malmaison; and in the park, which will soon b* lost to view, she had built all sorts of kiosks, temples of love, shepherds' rendezvous A la Watteau, cottages and labyrinths, where, no doubt, the same intrigues practised long before at Versailles were carried on. There, too, was created a remarkable library and a theatre. To-day the little theatre has disappeared and its site is occupied by a Catholic chapel which has no beanty or space to recommend it. I asked the somewhat frosty guardian of this once Imperial domain why the nation did not keep it in repair.' Her reply was somewhat vague, but the response is easily fouod. The nation has a sovereign dislike for perpetuating souvenirs of the Napoleons. Malmaison, which got its ominous name as far back as the invasion of the Norsemen, iu tip ninth century, when the pirates did so much damage in the neighbourhood that the monks called it mala mmtio, wis in the fourteenth century

a dependency of the Abbey of St Denis. Io the sixteenth century it belonged to one of the old Council ors of the Parliament of Paris, and was then handed down through a long succession of wealthy families until Josephine Beaubarnais, just as she was about to be the wife of Napoleon, bought it for 160,000 francs. It is a curious fact that the sum asked for it to-day, one hundred years after, is identical with that paid by Josephine. Many larger sums hare been paid for it at different times. It was bought in 1826 by a Swedish banker, who bad been attract ad to it by the fact that Napoleon staid there during his tremendous discomfiture after the battle of Waterloo, for several hundred thousand francs, and in 1842 the property, much reduced in size, was purchased by Maria Christina for 500,000 francs. Napoleon 111. was so anxious to get it, and in it to perpetuate the memory of him whom he was pleased to call his immediate relative, that he paid in 1861 one and a half million francs for it. It is now believed that the Second Empire spent quite as much as this large sum in fitting up Malmaisoa, transporting thither all the reminiscences of the First Empire. There were no historical museums in France superior to this. Now the collections are all dispersed, and it is probable that it will shortly become the home of some English or American family, and that the house will be completely rebuilt. Out of the park at least a dozen gardsns and rustic retreats are to be created. There is no monument in the hamlet to perpetuate the memory of Napoleon. Oddly enough, Josephine is most spoken of by all the local guides and the guardians of the quiet church at Bueill in which the divorced Empress lies buried. If .the visitor did not ask for Napoleon I. not one of these guardians would intimate that he had ever existed.