“The Emperor’s Last Island: A Journey to St. Helena”, by Julia Blackburn

 

277 pages, Pantheon, ISBN-13: 978-0679411505

Why the hell has it taken me this long to review The Emperor’s Last Island: A Journey to St. Helena by Julia Blackburn? I bought this book when I was a kid and was well into my Napoleon kick, so I’ve owned it…oh, going on four decades now. But I’m just now getting ‘round to it after having checked that it’s nowhere to be found on this blog. Hmmmmm…so, anyway…In short, Blackburn’s book is a history-cum-travelogue about Napoleon’s life on this remote rock in the Atlantic and her own journey to the same to check it out. Overall it is just as The Times of London described it: “a magically idiosyncratic collage of history, biography and travel writing” – and, thus, not all that easy to quantify (although I kinda did).

Blackburn begins with a fascinating natural history overview of St. Helena and the impact of human settlement on the same, but the bulk of the book is given over to her reflections about Napoleon’s sad years in exile. Overall, a foreboding sadness fills the accounts of these empty years, like a heavy fog landing atop a shuffling transient. One can only feel for this once Great Man, ruler of most of Europe, left to rot – emotionally, psychologically and physically – on a tiny corner of an inhospitable island while being watched constantly by British soldiers and their bitter commander. He is left in the end with nothing but his memories and a few imperial trinkets to play with, and Imperial Court Etiquette to insist upon.

Blackburn makes clear that this isn’t a proper history or biography, and there are several factual errors sprinkled throughout (Cardinal Fesch was Napoleon’s uncle, NOT his brother-in-law, is but one example). But it is her portrayal of Napoleon – Boney, The Corsican Fiend, The Ogre – as a fat, pale, short, middle-aged man condemned to live out his life in loneliness, boredom, absurdity and despair – and, in the end, in great physical pain – that makes for compelling reading and humanizes one of history’s most famous (notorious) marble men. Blackburn also weaves personal childhood and travel anecdotes into her story, lending it all a further poignancy and immediacy that stays with you and proves the Romans had it right: Sic transit gloria mundi.