The Black Room at Longwood: Napoleon's Exile on Saint Helena

Rating:
Summary: Likeable narrator transcends the credibilty gap
Review: As a biography, as an autobiography and as a travel book this works very well - yet we learn more about the author's life from the back cover than we do from the 200+ pages that precede it; Napoleon's life is told in a small selection of anecdotes and the author only visited a few places on St Helena during his brief stay. Some of the best writing concerns the battle of Eylau and the author's visit to the battlefield in Eastern Europe, but many St Helena passages are also wonderfully evocative.

Kauffmann has a good eye for island life and a strange, but likeable enthusiasm for his subject. The book opens with these two lines: "I have never had any particular liking for Napoloeon. In fact I sometimes find the fascination he exerts over certain contempories of mine rather suspect." He spends the next 240 pages failing to hide the fact that he not only likes Napoleon but is so fascinated by him that he has become a posthumous Bonaparte stalker, shadowing the emperor from Cuba to Corsica; Lithuania to St Helena.

I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anybody, yet the Napoloeon who fascinates Kauffmann and inspires so much veneration to this day (letters addressed to the emperor were still arriving on the island in the 1990s! ) is a myth created by Bonaparte and perpetuated by those who came after him. There is a gap between Kauffman's Napoleon and the real Bonaparte. There is something faintly absurd & shocking about the French government retaining an honorary diplomatic presence on the remote island in honour of one of the nastiest, most self-glorying rulers in history, a tyrannical dictator whose lust for personal glory cost so many hundreds of thousands of Europeans their lives; a man of no principles, no scruples, a war criminal who created the sort of personality cult that was a model for half of the Eatern European despots of the latter half of the twentieth century. Kauffmann seems to think there is something perfidious about the Allies treatment of the Corsican monster; something tragic about the fact that he wasn't given one more chance to wreak havoc on the continent of his birth. He even seems to think Brits he meets on St Helena ought to feel bad about the way their government dealt with Bonaparte!

The book works because the author is (in complete contrast to the General) a gentle, generous, modest, self-mocking man with a great sense of irony (about himself, his journey and Bonaparte).

Rating:
Summary: The Theme Is Reconciliation
Review: I am not disparaging the earlier reviews of this book. But, I found the theme to be one of reconciliation. Kauffmann used his trip to reconcile the mythical glory of Napoleon's reign with the factual emptiness surrounding his imprisonment. Along the way, he found other aspects that needed reconciliation. The "Saints" enjoy the benefits of their status with the United Kingdom, yet don't appreciate them. The French consul's father had a productive life in France, yet chose to live as a recluse in St. Helena. The consul paints flowers that grow on a desert island. And Napoleon's former tomb is a lush contrast to his living quarters at Longwood. There are also failed attempts at reconciliation, such as Napoleon's frequent attempts to understand how he lost at Waterloo. Behind all these attempts is the almost silent struggle by Kauffmann to reconcile his own experiences as a captive with those that Napoleon endured.

It's a very ambitious project that Kauffmann undertook. Fortunately, he pulled it off with incredible elegance. His descriptions of St. Helena and Longwood give a vivid image of the bleakness of both settings. Addtionally, his reflections on Napoleon's deteriorating condition are very poignant. Non-fiction does not ususally make one reflect on such things as the effect of isolation on a soul and the need for reconciliation in one's life. The fact that Kauffman has made a book that tackles such issues in an intelligent manner makes it one which everyone should read.

Rating:
Summary: The Theme Is Reconciliation
Review: I am not disparaging the earlier reviews of this book. But, I found the theme to be one of reconciliation. Kauffmann used his trip to reconcile the mythical glory of Napoleon's reign with the factual emptiness surrounding his imprisonment. Along the way, he found other aspects that needed reconciliation. The "Saints" enjoy the benefits of their status with the United Kingdom, yet don't appreciate them. The French consul's father had a productive life in France, yet chose to live as a recluse in St. Helena. The consul paints flowers that grow on a desert island. And Napoleon's former tomb is a lush contrast to his living quarters at Longwood. There are also failed attempts at reconciliation, such as Napoleon's frequent attempts to understand how he lost at Waterloo. Behind all these attempts is the almost silent struggle by Kauffmann to reconcile his own experiences as a captive with those that Napoleon endured.

It's a very ambitious project that Kauffmann undertook. Fortunately, he pulled it off with incredible elegance. His descriptions of St. Helena and Longwood give a vivid image of the bleakness of both settings. Addtionally, his reflections on Napoleon's deteriorating condition are very poignant. Non-fiction does not ususally make one reflect on such things as the effect of isolation on a soul and the need for reconciliation in one's life. The fact that Kauffman has made a book that tackles such issues in an intelligent manner makes it one which everyone should read.

Rating:
Summary: Dull, dull, dull
Review: I went searching for a book about Napoleon for a friend. This is that book. If you want to know anything about Napoleon's last years, this isn't the book to read. I found this book dull to the extreme. It reads more like "what I did on my summer vacation.' I kept waiting to get into the informative part of the book but it never came. Kauffmann talks of paintings that aren't shown, quotes that came from other works as he wanders around Longwood.What the English women have to do with this book is a mystery. A complete waste of time and paper. Read something else if you want to know about Napoleon.

Rating:
Summary: Well written but dull....
Review: Kauffman captures the boredom and dullness of Napoleon's life on St' Helena so well that he bores the reader as well. The author's descriptions of Napoleon's last years are well written and thoroughly researched but not of great interest to the average reader.

Rating:
Summary: Sometimes clever, sometimes dull, ALWAYS pretentious
Review: The author has a seemingly great idea : cruise to out-of-the-way St. Helena and combine a historical hunt with a modern day travelogue of his journey.

The premise works well at some points, but lags quite often. The most annoying trait of the book is the author's tendancy to wax poetic for literally PAGES describing paintings or other works of art to be found in Longwood. I don't really understand what Mr. Kauffmann's opinion of "The Last Phase" has to do with Napoleon's exile.

I've finished reading the book and I'm still actually not quite sure what I just read. It was certainly unique and well-written, I'll give Kauffmann that much. But I don't believe that I learned anything about Napoleon's exile that I didn't already absorb from more thorough, historical works. I genuinely expected to hear some unique tales and speculation about Napoleon's last days... but alas, none were to be had. This was a fruitless read if you're looking for fun or irreverant facts about Napoleon's final days.

Bottom line : Not worth your time and money unless you are completely obsessed with Bonaparte, or if you plan to visit St. Helena at some point.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Evocation of Napoleon's Last Years
Review: This book is, on the surface, a history of Napleon's last years in exile on Saint Helena. What it really is, however, is an evocative reliving of those final 6 years by a French writer who truly feels the presence of this chapter from history in the setting of modern Saint Helena. Napoleon, in this view, died as much from melancholy as from disease, and Jean-Paul Kauffman brilliantly invokes that feeling, allowing the reader to relive Napoleon's experience in a unique - and very French - way.

Rating:
Summary: A travellers tale of St Helens, captivity and Napoleon
Review: This is a strange mixture and I have to admit to very much disliking it when I first picked it up. It is a translated version of what was originally a French work and the English to me seemed a bit florid and dramatic. I am not sure if that is the translation or if the French naturally write in that style. I would however recommend people who are interested in Napoleon to persevere - it is a strange sort of book but worth the read.

I say this for two other reasons - firstly because Kauffmann has read just about every primary source about Napoleon's exile on St Helens - a tiny island pretty much in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and secondly because Kauffmann knows first hand about captivity.

After reading this book a little = and not enjoying it I read the author biography - this man spent some years as a captive in Beirut in the 1980's. Returning to the book I started to realise that this is more than just a book about Napoleon, or about a travellogue to the island. This is a story about captivity and its psychological side. Kauffmann is very clearly the right man to write about it. The oppression of captivity overwhelms the writing sometimes. Kauffman clearly found the place oppressive - he keeps talking of the town itself squeezed between two mountains - it is one of his repetitive themes and I get the sense that if he didn't sail out there expecting to dislike the place, his dislike of it coloured his later writings about it.

I think this book could just as easily be named 8 days on St Helens as the book is divided into chapters for each day. So his trip is dealt with chronologically - the information about Napoleon ducks and dives - often with seemingly little logic to it. However if you are looking to learn about Napoleon's last years they are touched on - more so Napoleon as a man is revealed. His impatience (he drove each day on the island in a carriage with two wives of his officers - but went at such high speed as to throw them around - a demonstration of power?) his arrogance.

There are also interesting insights into the man prior to his captivity - for instance I never knew Napoleon couldn't speak perfect French - (he spoke it badly and confusingly at times - muddling his words and pronunciations). However I don't think Kauffman explains anything new to most scholars of Napoleon. He mentions that Napoleon considered going to America before settling for surrendering to the English - why did he change his mind?

So you can read this book on many different levels - a story of St Helens, a mixed bag of Napoleonic history, or a story of captivity. All have different merits in this - but they are all mixed together. I don't know that I would recommend making a special trip to get it - but worth reading if you haven't much else to do.

Rating:
Summary: The Last Laugh
Review: This may well seem to be a confusing review. I did not particularly enjoy the book, but that was because of the person that I am, and not because the book wasn't good. In fact, I consider it to be well written. The Black Room at Longwood is a lyrical work written by an author with a strong sense of environment and the "presence" of historical events. However it is also more of an introspective, personal experience, a mental voyage back into time than a work of history. Since I tend to prefer the cold, dry facts without emotional garnish, I found it a less captivating work than a person who finds ungarnished fact a little dull might well find it. The prose is almost poetry, although how much of this is due to it's translator's talent and how much to the author's I would be unable to say. The psychological character of the environment of St. Helena and of the house of Longwood, that housed Napoleon and his fellow exiles during the last years of his life, is vividly recreated for the reader. One doesn't just learn of the personality and facts of the exile, one lives the experience through the author's words. Basing his description on extensive research into the subject, Kauffmann visits the site and describes it and the events that took place there in such a way that the reader actually travels with him back into the early 19th Century to watch and experience. A vividly written work.