1066 - Andrew Bridgeford [14]
The Paris exhibition was a great success. Crowds flocked to see this curious exhibit and it quickly became a topic of conversation in fashionable society. A play was even written about the tapestry, during the course of which the eponymous Queen Matilda is seen busy at work and a fictitious boy called Raymond complains to her that he, too, wants become a soldier-hero and to be depicted in embroidery.8 Whether Napoleon saw this play is not recorded, but the First Consul is said to have brooded over the embroidery itself for some time. Like William the Conqueror, he was making vast and detailed preparations to invade England. His forces were formidable. At this moment Britain stood more gravely exposed to invasion from northern France than at any time since 1066. Napoleon's fleet of 2,000 ships lay assembled between Brest and Antwerp and his grande armée of between 150,000 and 200,000 soldiers was encamped at Boulogne. The historical parallels became even more apposite when, in late November 1803, a comet-like object was seen passing across the skies of northern France and southern England; the parallel with the ominous appearance of Halley's Comet in April 1066, itself vividly depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry [scene 29], did not pass without mention. Was this another portent of the defeat of England? A description of the 1803 'comet' was hastily printed and inserted into the brochure of the Paris exhibition. Yet despite the nicely timed appearance of another passing celestial body, Napoleon Bonaparte was not to repeat the success of William the Conqueror. This time Britain stood prepared; the invasion never came. Napoleon could not risk the Channel crossing without control of the sea, and an indomitable navy stood guarding the southern coast. Napoleon's invasion plans were in due course abandoned in 1805. By this time the tapestry was once more back in Bayeux. Contrary to the fears of many townspeople, the work was duly returned to Bayeux in early 1804, but this time it was passed into the hands of the town's secular, rather than religious, authorities. Never again has it been displayed in the great edifice of Bayeux Cathedral.
With peace restored between Britain and France by 1815, the Bayeux Tapestry ceased to be of interest to propagandists and it returned to the more genial province of international scholars and artists. As people began to appreciate just how narrowly it had escaped destruction, attention turned to the question of the tapestry's continued preservation. There was concern that the contemporary method of exhibition - which involved repeatedly coiling and uncoiling the tapestry with a machine - was itself causing damage, though the authorities were lamentably slow to respond to this concern. It was in this context that the Society of Antiquaries of London commissioned Charles Stothard, an eminent draughtsman, to produce a set of drawings in order to record the complete embroidery. Stothard worked on the project for the two years between 1816 and 1818. His drawings in particular, as well as those of previous artists, have been immensely valuable to researchers in tracking the appearance of the tapestry down the years. Stothard was not only a fine artist. He wrote a short commentary on the tapestry that was learned and perceptive, one of the best that had yet been written.9 Moreover, by closely examining the surviving evidence where the tapestry had deteriorated, Stothard was able, here and there, to reproduce in art what he believed to