Authors:
  • Buonaparte is certainly writing, or rather dictating, his memoirs. He walks backwards and forwards with his hands behind him, and dictates so fast that two or three of his suite are obliged to be in attendance, that the one may take down one-half of a sentence, and another the rest; they then literally compare notes, and put the disjointed legs and wings and heads of periods together. This is writing a book as he fought a battle.

    Mary Russell Mitford (1870). “The Life of Mary Russell Mitford ; Related in an Selection from Her Letters to Her Friends. Ed. by A.G. Estrange”, p.7