NAPOLEON’S VIOLETS

Shannon News, 28 October 1927, Page 2

NAPOLEON’S VIOLETS

“ Corporal Violette ” —a curious title surely for a world-conqueror, yet one by which Napoleon was known to this adherents, especially during the years of his exil, says a writer in ' T.P.’s and Cassell’s Weekly.’ The association of violets with the great Emperor and his dynasty is no posthumous connection — probably arising from a misconception—like that of primroses with Lord Beaeonslield’s memory. Curiously unresponsive, as a rule, to natural beauty, there is plenty of evidence to show that Napoleon did show a marked preference for the little purple blossoms. One nicmorist notes how he paused beside a bed of violets at Malmaison, bent to in halo the scent, and cried, “ No wondei the Greeks loved them ! ’ At St. Helena his schoolgirl friend, Betsey Balcombe, saw a small glass vase on his table, ‘ holding a few violets/ and there were old people living until quite lately in the Frejus neighbourhood wdio remembered being told as children how 7 their mothers wont out to welcome the Emperor, when ho landed on his return from Elba, carrying bunches of violets and scattering them before him. On that March day of 1814 he truly 'came back with the violets/ and it remained a saying among his adherents for long, long after, even w’hen he was a prisoner in St. Helena and during his last illness. ‘ He will return with the violets, ’ they said, and w 7 roto to each other, and they wore a violet or its purple colour in coat or scarf or ribbon, to prove to each other by this sign that they were faithful Bonapartists. They spoke of their lost leader as ‘ Corporal Violette ’ under a very thin disguise. No Royalist would have been seen displaying either real Or artificial violets.