People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 March 1895 — The Harsh Treatment of Napoleon at St. Helena, [ARTICLE]

The Harsh Treatment of Napoleon at St. Helena,

[lda M. Tarbell, in McClure’s Magazine for April.] The island of St. Helena is a mass of jagged, gloomy rocks; the nearest land is six hundred miles away. Isolated and inaccessible as it is, the English placed Napoleon on its most sombre and remote part —a place called Longwood, at the summit of a mountain and to the windward. The houses at Longwood were damp and unhealthy. There was no shade. Water had to be carried some three mites. The -governor, Sir Hudson Lowe, was a tactless man, with a propensity for bullying those whom he ruled. He was haunted by the idea that Napoleon was trying to escape, and he adopted a policy which was more like that of a jailer than of an officer. In his first interview with the emperor he so antagonized him that he soon refused to see him. Napoleon’s antipathy was almost superstition. “I never saw such a horrid countenance,” he told O Meara. ‘’He sat on a chair opposite to my sofa, and on a little table between us there was a cup of coffee. His physiognomy made such an unfavorable impression upon me that I thought his evil eye had poisoned the coffee, and I ordered Marchand to throw it out of the window. I could not have swallowed it for the world.” Aggravated by Napoleon’s refusal to see him Sir Hudson Low became more annoying and petty in his regulations. All free communication between Longwood and the inhabitants of the island was cut off. The newspapers which were sent to Napoleon were mutilated; certain books were refused; his letters were opened. A bust of his son, brought to the island by a sailor, was withheld for weeks. There was incessant haggling over the expenses of his establishment. His friends were subjected to constant annoyance. All news of Marie Louise and of his son was kept from him.