NAPOLEON’S LOVE LETTERS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18194, 15 September 1933, Page 9

NAPOLEON’S LOVE LETTERS

FRENCH OUTBID LORD ROSEBERY’S LIBRARY LONDON, July 26. Eight early love letters that Napoleon wrote to Josephine, from the late Lord Rosebery’s library, were sold at Sotheby’s on Tuesday for £4400 to Mr. Ben Maggs, a London bookseller, after stein competition from Mr. Gabriel Wells, a New Yorker, and a number of eager French bidders. . The stained and faded missives revealed Napoleon’s passionate devotion to ‘•Josephine. No other of Napoleon’s letters shower! him so well as the great lover. The French dealers were manifestly disappointed when outbidden. The longest and best-written letter was dated June 15, 1796. It asks about •Josephine’s illness, reproaches her for not writing, and begs her to come to him. Ho regrets he is not ill instead, and swears if she died he would not survive her. “Sweet, incomparable Josephine, how strangely you stir my heart,” ho wrote. The letters formerly were in the possession of Mr. Charles Tennant, who said lie received them from a Polish confidential agent of Napoleon. The agent is believed to have acquired them from a servant at Malmaison, who took them from a drawer after Josephine’s death. Included in the salo was the original lea ill mask of Nanoleon, made at St. Helena. It broutrht only £4O. The Roseherv Napoleonic library was sold for £13.000. The rest of the library was sold last month for £37.000.

Book dealers saw a. return to pros perity in tbo high prices.