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Show pavsl Evili Done the Dead by Half-Cocked Writers of History. WHEN Napoleon remarked, "All history is a lie," he launched a mouthful. The Little Corporal must have sensed what he was to suffer at the hands of his biographers, those ink-stained harpies who marked time against the hour his star fell at St. Helena where, on a frail army cot surrounded by a handful of the faithful, lie writhed into the everlasting shadows addressing the mirage of his army. This man of destiny ended his earthly career in a welter of fat, his ankles bulging over patent leather shoes like something spilling into space . . . The jowls of him fell Into a soiled collar, open at the throat, disclosing the ivory pulp of a flabby breast housing a heart that for twenty years had set the tempo for victorious cannonading under the banners of France. Twenty thousand volumes written in every living tongue flowed for more than a hundred years from the impetuous im-petuous pens of biographers, self-consecrated to lay bare the life of the Corsican-born adventurer who lived to shake the world. From the confusion wrought of countless pens, the fearsome fear-some Bonaparte now stalks half monster; mon-ster; half god, an execrated and a deified personality, mythologized with the accumulating years, and all that is germane to his influence upon the Nineteenth century, Is swept into historical his-torical disorder. Biography Written by Ear. Unfortunate, indeed, that history Is not clarified by time. Once an error creeps into the record it remains there, forever, modified at intervals but never wholly corrected for the enlightenment enlighten-ment of posterity. It is quite the vogue with modern biographers, to take one characteristic of the deceased de-ceased and upon that rebuild the personality per-sonality to suit themselves. Memoirs are equally noxious, not for what they present, but for what they withhold. Most biography is written writ-ten in the measure of one grand sweet song whistled by an Idiot who has no ear for music. Eecently in Washington Washing-ton a conscientious attempt was made by a congressman and an artist to contrive a mural decoration that would show just how our colonial statesmen looked when properly garbed in the style of that period ; nothing, y'understand, built along quantity production lines or shot with shoddy, but the crackerjack handmade hand-made breeches, buskin and waistcoat of the James Madison, Ben Franklin and Aaron Burr school, showing George Washington in profile and Alexander Hamilton from the front elevation. Fair enough, and a knockout, so I understood. But has anything been done to clear up some of the exaggerations, exag-gerations, inaccuracies and dirty cracks taken at George and Alex by the gentry who adulterate biography with fiction? Not long ago I picked up a book that dealt in part with that dramatic chapter in the life of Bonnie Prince Charlie, who was rescued from British Brit-ish pursuers in the Isle of Skye. by the heroine Flora MacDonald after the battle of Culloden, which rang down the curtain of Charlie's kingly ambitions. ambi-tions. To quote: Story of Royal Romance. "It seems to have been his (Charlie's) (Char-lie's) thought that if she (Flora) cared for him that the two might well love; and he gave her every chance to show him favor. The youth of twenty-five and the girl of twenty-four roamed together to-gether in the long, tufted grass, or lay in the sunshine and looked out over the sea. But to tne last ne was either too high or too low for her, according to her own modest thought . . ." Well, there it Is, offered as history. Last year I spent a month in the Isle of Skye, snooping Into that affair, variously vari-ously distorted by writers totally ignorant ig-norant of the truth. The facts are these: Following Culloden, Bonnie Charlie took It on the run with a :0.- 000 reward on his curly head. Loyal Highlanders, a mere handful, escorted escort-ed him through the rain-swept barren hills, keeping him concealed under cover cov-er of night. Flora, true blue, unimpeachable unim-peachable and courageous, was selected se-lected by Charlie's escort to get the prince out of his difficulties. She agreed to take the risk and set about her arrangements to get him to a point of safety disguised as her maid. Myth Is Debunked. After ten days of breath-taking adventure, ad-venture, Flora, bossing the entire job, succeeded in her mission, and on the night of July 1, 174G, in the presence of Highland gentlemen, one of them a relative of Flora, the Bonnie I'rince bade her a respectable unemotional good-by in Room 5 of Royal hotel at Portree, climbed out of t lie window and escaped in the boat that her efforts ef-forts had provided. The actual time consumed in the plot for his flight was ten days, during five of which Flora never set eyes upon the prince. During the five remaining days she saw him three times, always in the company com-pany of bis Highland henchmen. Itain 1 and cold weather prevailed. Not nnce was the rescuer of the hapless nobleman noble-man alone in bis society. To lie perfectly per-fectly frank. Charlie on the nccnMun of liis last ten days in Skye was '-Mged, cnld, hungry and lo'isy. |