Letters to Josephine

This week’s task for Writing as Practice was to find a letter and share it with our course mates. When I was looking for one to choose I found countless articles with excerpts from famous love ones, but none of them really impressed me, until I found a website that collected every letter that Napoleon exchanged with his wife Josephine during the war.

I was fascinated by the idea of peeking in a historical figure’s love life, and see a side of their personality that we don’t get to read about in history books. What I loved about this particular series of letters is the contrast between the romance and the harsh words in the letters he sent when Josephine didn’t answer often enough. It’s funny to see how even Napoleon suffered from love and overreacted over his lovers prolonged silence.

I choose my three favourite ones, the most representatives of their complicated relationship. The first one is undoubitely the most romantic, quoted in many articles and websites, and the second is a transition to a final one in which Napoleon has an uncontrollable burst of anger towards his wife.

I’m won’t say anyhting else not to ruin the surprise, but I’m definitely never going to be able to see Napoleon in the same light.

March 14, 1796.

Josephine,

I wrote you at Chatillon, and sent you a power of attorney to enable you to receive various sums of money in course of remittance to me. Every moment separates me further from you, my beloved, and every moment I have less energy to exist so far from you. You are the constant object of my thoughts; I exhaust my imagination in thinking of what you are doing.

If I see you unhappy, my heart is torn, and my grief grows greater. If you are gay and lively among your friends (male and female), I reproach you with having so soon forgotten the sorrowful separation three days ago; thence you must be fickle, and hence forward stirred by no deep emotions.

So you see I am not easy to satisfy; but, my dear, I have quite different sensations when I fear that your health may be affected, or that you have cause to be annoyed; then I regret the haste with which I was separated from my darling. I feel, in fact, that your natural kindness of heart exists no longer for me, and it is only when I am quite sure you are not vexed that I am satisfied.

If I were asked how I slept, I feel that before replying I should have to get a message to tell me that you had had a good night. The ailments, the passions of men influence me only when I imagine they may reach you, my dear.

May my good genius, which has always preserved me in the midst of great dangers, surround you, enfold you, while I will face my fate unguarded. Ah! be not gay, but a trifle melancholy; and especially may your soul be free from worries, as your body from illness: you know what our good Ossian says on this subject.

Write me, dear, and at full length, and accept the thousand and one kisses of your most devoted and faithful friend.

Napoleon

September 17, 1796.

My Dear,

I write very often and you seldom. You are naughty, and undutiful; very undutiful, as well as thoughtless. It is disloyal to deceive a poor husband, an affectionate lover. Ought he to lose his rights because he is far away, up to the neck in business, worries and anxiety. Without his Josephine, without the assurance of her love, what in the wide world remains for him. What will he do?

Yesterday we had a very sanguinary conflict; the enemy has lost heavily, and been completely beaten. We have taken from him the suburbs of Mantua.

Adieu, charming Josephine; one of these nights the door will be burst open with a bang, as if by a jealous husband, and in a moment I shall be in your arms.

A thousand affectionate kisses.

Napoleon

November 23, 1796.

Josephine,

I don’t love you an atom; on the contrary, I detest you. You are a good for nothing, very ungraceful, very tactless, very tatterdemalion. You never write to me; you don’t care for your husband; you know the pleasure your letters give him, and you write him barely half-a-dozen lines, thrown off any how.

How, then, do you spend the livelong day, madam? What business of such importance robs you of the time to write to your devoted lover? What inclination stifles and alienates love, the affectionate and unvarying love which you promised me? Who may this paragon be, this new lover who engrosses all your time, is master of your days, and prevents you from concerning yourself about your husband? Josephine, be vigilant; one fine night the doors will be broken in, and I shall be before you.

Truly, my dear, I am uneasy at getting no news from you. Write me four pages immediately, and some of those charming remarks which fill my heart with the pleasures of imagination.

I hope that before long I shall clasp you in my arms, and cover you with a million kisses as burning as if under the equator.

Napoleon