Waterloo in Fiction: A Tale of Two Sharp(e)s

[patch]

Waterloo in Fiction: A Tale of Two Sharp(e)s

This summer marked the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo and in discussions of memory 200 years is an interesting amount of time. It falls outside the 'saeculum', the span of living memory. According to the historian Alan Forrest, the last British witness of Waterloo died in 1905: in 1815 she had been the five-year-old daughter of a camp follower. Beyond the saeculum lies 'historical time': archives and memorials to be explored by historians. This 'historical time' becomes, simultaneously, 'fabulous time', for novelists and film-makers to plunder for fables, stories and settings, from the historical novels of Sir Walter Scott to Shakespeare in Love. As the events recede further into the past, the 'historical' struggles against the 'fabulous'. Waterloo is just at the cusp of this struggle, poised between the 'historical' and the 'fabulous', though the fictions it inspired tell us a great deal about the memory of the battle today.

 One fabulous – in both senses – occasion was the Duchess of Richmond's Ball, held before the battle and over the past 200 years numerous fictional characters have been added to the extensive guest list. Two of these are currently the most famous fictional characters from Waterloo. Both tell us about how the battle is remembered in 2015: oddly, both have the same-sounding surname. The first is the grim soldier Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Sharpe, from Bernard Cornwell's hugely successful and meticulously researched novels. Played memorably on television by Sean Bean, Sharpe has dark hair (until Cornwell changed it to match Bean's), a sharp eye for combat, a sharp tongue and, before a battle, his ungainly sword is ritually sharpened to a razor-like edge. In Sharpe's Waterloo (1990) he attends the ball dressed in his talismanic combat-worn green Rifleman's jacket, carrying crucial information for the Duke. He also has business of honour with the cavalry officer who has seduced his wife.

The other important fictional guest looks, at first sight, utterly the opposite of Richard Sharpe. Rebecca Sharp is the scheming force of nature at the centre of William Makepeace Thackeray's 'novel without a hero', Vanity Fair, from 1847-48. Becky has a sharp sense of the injustices done to her: she has a sharp wit and sharper financial sense and she uses these to cut her way into society. When she attends the ball, with her black hair in ringlets, her face is 'radiant', 'her dress perfection'. She charms (nearly) everyone in the ballroom and dishonourably dances with another's husband.

 

http://www.historytoday.com/robert-eaglestone/waterloo-fiction-tale-two-sharpes

[galamb]

the first time in spain in history channel was, of course, last 18 th june but I was in Waterloo and I didn't watch it, but it was again in history channel spain last week, and of course, I saw it, you must see this not only because of sean, he's wonderful, I think very nice doing that, something different, I think he really enjoyed it, it's a great programme, two chapters, don't miss it, please, if you can, watch it, wonderful,