EMPEROR OF FRANCE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 58, Issue 4187, 22 May 1939, Page 7

EMPEROR OF FRANCE

NAPOLEON AT ST. HELENA. In a letter published in the Times on March 11 Mr Lionel Curtis writes: “Your readers may be interested to see a drawing of Napoelon at St. Helena, which I chanced to find in Australia. I was staying at Gilbulla with Miss Macarthur Onslow last October, when she mentioned that there was in a book at Camden Park (the residence of her brother some miles away) a drawing of Napoleon, made by some unknown passenger on a ship which touched at St. Helena. I went over to Camden Park and was showm the drawing stuck into an album. General and Mrs Macarthur Onslow kindly allowed me to unstick it, and we found an inscription written on the back, which runs as follows: “ ‘Napoleon, April 5, 1820. He was leaning over a Turf Wall, an Opera glass in his hand. IBs dressing gown brown (?) nankeen, his Hat Straw with a bladk ribbon.’ “A few days after my visit to Camden Park I told Lord Wakehurst, the Governor of New South Wales, about this sketch, remarking that it Was the only picture of Napoleon I had seen in civilian costume. Lord Wakehurst said he happened to have in Government House the print of another portrait of Napoieon drawn at St. Helena by an artist brought from France for the purpose.” A week later the Times published a letter from Mr Francis H. Meynell, 1 of Hoar Cross, Burton-on-Tr'ent, ac-

companied by a photograph of a drawing of Napoleon at St. Helena, which was drawn in August 1816, by Captain Boys, of the Royal Marines. Mrs K. Barlow, of St. Kitts, Fleet, Hants, writing to the Times a few days later, stated that she had in her possession four sketches of Napoleon which had been drawn by her greatgrandfather, Lieutenant - Colonel Ward, who had been stationed at St. Helena.