Slow Boats Home

by Gavin Young

  We walked out of his office in the toy fort. People said ‘Mornin” as we strolled slowly up the main street, running through a narrow valley with steep sides. Few of its two-storey buildings looked as if they had been built much later than the early 1800s, and when I asked I found that this was indeed more or less the case. The Dickens film set police headquarters, for example, had been built in 1817; the unforbidding prison, an attractive (empty) building of thick stone walls with a pleasant first-floor balcony, in 1827; the Cattle Market in 1865; the offices of Solomons & Co., with arched windows, were housed in what had been known in 1843 as Mr Corker’s House.

  ‘We’re not simply living on Napoleon,’ Massingham said. ‘I do all I can. I’ve dropped the “His Excellency” from my title. I give old islanders lifts. Try to be human. Unstuffy. I’m devoted to the people here, but the Government at home –’ He stopped, frowning, in mid-stride. ‘You’ve no idea. Look.’ He faced Andrew Bell and myself so that we made a little human island in the road. ‘That reservoir we need so much. The Royal Engineers have taken seven months – seven months! – to submit a report on it. It’s intolerable. No civilian contractor would stand for that. I write to the British Government saying, “For God’s sake, let’s get a civilian set-up.” If we were Afghan refugees or from Zimbabwe or somewhere …. But St Helena has no political clout in Britain. I shout and scream on the islanders’ behalf – I may be sent to Outer Mongolia next!’ He laughed.

  ‘Yes, I’m devoted to the people here. Trouble is, the Saints have been used to very pompous governors who made themselves practically unapproachable – wearing dinner jackets at dinner, all that sort of thing. Plantation House is a fine place, but it isolates me. Sir Hudson Lowe lived in it, of course, Napoleon’s Governor. By the way, I should go and see our archives if I were you. The Napoleonic ones, I mean. I wrote in my letter that there was more to St Helena than Bonaparte, but of course you’re interested – anyone is – and there’s the museum and so on at Longwood House.’

  The Duke of Wellington had stayed on St Helena, too, at Mrs Ethel Yon’s Cafe, in Wellington House, and I would not have been astonished to see on its ageless steps a Roman-nosed figure waving a cocked hat. Wellington had come here as Arthur Wellesley, on his way home from India in the late 1700s.

  Brian Bar had given me a pamphlet advertising Mrs Yon’s accommodation – he may have been some relative; many people on the island seem to be related.

  ‘Not being a licensed premises,’ Mrs Yon soberly announced, ‘adds greatly to the quiet and homely atmosphere that prevails.’ She provided a twenty-four-hour electricity service of 230 volts and a ‘good variety of Mineral Waters (Tonic, Soda, Ginger Ale, Bitter Lemon, etc.) are manufactured on the premises’. The heavy drinking was done, I soon discovered, at the Consulate Hotel (‘Patrick G. Joshua, Licensed to sell by retail wine, spirits and beer’) which had a beautiful yellow stone façade and blue wrought-iron railings on its front steps, and graceful iron pillars supporting its balcony. Up Napoleon Street lay such venerable establishments as Darling’s, Truebody’s, Miss Short’s School and two pubs – the Crown and Anchor, and the Victoria.

  *

  The island’s archives were in the fort overlooking the rampart to the Atlantic. ‘Ask for Mr Maggott,’ John Massingham had said.

  ‘I’m Maggott.’ A friendly middle-aged Saint led me into a room under the battlements like an ancient wine cellar, but with racks of heavily bound tomes in place of bottles. ‘Cecil Maggott, archivist.’ He pointed to a spotty young man. ‘And this is my assistant, Hansel Williams. He’s the fast bowler of the Sandy Beach team, is Hansel. Yes. Now, what would you like to see?’

  ‘Anything here from Napoleon’s time, Mr Maggott, please.’

  ‘Hear that, Hansel? Napoleon.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Napoleon Bonaparte, Hansel. Now then.’

  There was a long table and soon a good number of books were on it, smelling dusty and old.

  ‘See this, perhaps,’ recommended Hansel Williams. He opened St James’s Church Burials Registry and I read in old writing:

  May 9th,

  Napoleon Buonaparte, late Emperor of France, he died on the 5th Instant at the old House at Longwood, and was interred on Mr Richard Torbett’s Estate.

  The Emperor’s name lay between ‘Edmond Hawes, Inhabitant’ and ‘Maria Mills, wife of the late Major Mills, St Helena Artillery’.

  John Massingham had mentioned Sir Hudson Lowe, the Governor appointed from his command in Marseilles to St Helena, with a heavily augmented garrison, specifically to keep an eye on the great exile, who, after all, had already escaped from Elba to perpetrate his own second downfall at Waterloo. Lowe was a man whom Napoleon and his entourage swiftly came to hate. Under the eyes of Sandy Bay’s fast bowler, I read the careful instructions to Lowe, signed in London by Lord Bathurst of the War Department in July 1815, concerning the treatment of the prisoner who is referred to merely as ‘the General’:

  He’s to be allowed his plate, furniture, books and wine, but his money, diamonds, and negotiable bills are to be given up, and it is to be explained to the General that it is not the intention of the British Government to confiscate his property, but to prevent their being converted by him into an instrument of escape.

  ‘The General’s’ escape was an English obsession. ‘The General must always be attended by an officer,’ London’s orders stressed. ‘The General must be given to understand that in the event of his attempting to escape, he will be afterwards subject to close custody.’ Any letters, written or received, were to be censored. Ships of every description were to be prevented from touching at the island with the exception of those belonging to HM Service, or to the East India Company.

  Hansel Williams brought me tome after tome. Angry old letters came to life again and began to fly back and forth under my nose as though Napoleon was still at Longwood. General Count de Montholon, of Napoleon’s suite, wrote thus to Lowe:

  This rock … two thousand leagues from Europe, situated in the tropics five hundred leagues from any continent at all, and subject to a consuming heat; covered with clouds and fogs for three quarters of the year; it is at once the driest of countries and the most humid. This climate is most inimical to the health of the Emperor …. It is hate that has determined the choice of this place, just as it has determined the instructions given to the commanding officer here … to call the Emperor Napoleon ‘general’, wishing to oblige us to recognise that he never reigned in France.

  De Montholon’s letter then took wing.

  Are your ministers unaware that the spectacle of a great man trapped by adversity is the most sublime of spectacles? Are they unaware that Napoleon on St Helena, among persecutions of all kinds which he opposes with nothing but serenity, is greater, more holy, more venerable than when he was on the premier throne in the world from which he was the arbiter of kings.

  To this the British Admiral Sir George Cockburn, who had transported Napoleon to St Helena on his flagship Northumberland, gave a reply that must have flown in through the front door at Longwood like a cannonball:

  Sir, You oblige me officially to explain to you that I have no cognisance of an Emperor being actually upon this island, or of any person possessing such Dignity, having come hither with me in the Northumberland ….

  Napoleon had approached St Helena standing, as even I had done, on the bridge of a ship and staring at its cliffs rising from a blue sea. To me it was a charming prospect, and I daresay Admiral Cockburn had been mildly irritated by Napoleon’s quite different view of things. As he peered at Jamestown through the little spyglass with which he had surveyed so many battlefields, including Waterloo, he grumbled, ‘I would have done better to stay in Egypt; I would be today emperor of the whole Orient.’

  ‘Napoleon didn’t like your island, Hansel,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, did he not? Well, it is smaller than France, of course.’

  ‘That’s true.’ A pause. ‘But still, look at this –’ Ha
nsel had dropped another heavy volume in front of me. ‘He wasn’t all that uncomfortable. See this letter to the Governor of the island, Sir Hudson Lowe.’

  Hansel traced the writing with his calloused fast bowler’s forefinger and read in his Devonshire burr: ‘“It is also desired that you should take steps for the providing and shipping of wines, groceries, and other articles necessary for supply of Buonaparte’s table – Particularly French wines [he turned a page] of which there is reason to believe that consumption will be unusually great.”’ Hansel broke off here. ‘I wonder how much they …’ but the answer appeared there before he completed the question: ‘“Wines, clarets, graves, champagnes and madeira … £2445. 10s. 0d. per annum.”’ And soon, searching around with Hansel’s help, I found that that considerable sum formed part of a total annual expenditure on the Emperor of £19,152. 2s. 7d., which sum included food, carpenters, masons, mules, transport, horses, etc. The only things not mentioned were books and Napoleon’s newspaper bill. But in a little while we discovered something about that, too. One of General Bertrand’s letters complained that the exile had been unable to obtain a subscription to the Morning Post or the Morning Chronicle of London, or to any French newspapers. All Napoleon got from time to time was an old copy or two of The Times. Furthermore, Bertrand went on, several books sent by their authors had not been delivered, simply because they were inscribed either to ‘Napoleon the Great’, or to ‘The Emperor Napoleon’. Since when had it been forbidden for prisoners of war to be subscribers to newspapers or to receive books?

  Lowe contented himself with two sharp comments. First, he said that not merely odd copies of The Times but whole series of that newspaper had been sent to Longwood, and if any copies were missing probably members of Napoleon’s entourage had pinched them. Secondly, Lowe said, if you asked him, the title of ‘Napoleon the Great’ had had its coup de grâce at Waterloo.

  I had enjoyed the historical cut and thrust of the archives department. I warmly thanked Cecil Maggott and gladly accepted his offer to arrange for me to rent the only car available and tour the island with Hansel as guide. The car belonged to Mr Yeo – a good West Country name. Meanwhile I reported to John Massingham on the archives. We stood at a tall window in Plantation House, surveying a view once very familiar to Sir Hudson Lowe. A brown lump in the grass opposite like a small outcrop on the move might have been Frieda or even old Jonathan.

  ‘Frankly, the way I look at it,’ he said, ‘Bonaparte was a war criminal. He introduced a new form of warfare to Europe – total war. His picture was on the wall here. It seemed to have no place among the British royal family so I took it down. I’ve been attacked by the Napoleon lobby for doing so, of course.’

  ‘I really must go and see Longwood, anyway.’

  ‘Of course you must. And you must meet Gilbert Martineau, who’s in charge there; honorary consul and curator. Longwood’s a bit of France, you know. We gave it to them in 1858. I have to admit he’s very hospitable.’ He pondered for a moment. ‘Martineau …. Frankly, we don’t really speak much. I forget the reason. Oh, yes, I know why. The trouble between him and me started when I put a lot of chidren’s swings – playground swings – on the green at Longwood. He regards the whole place as a French shrine and protested really quite vigorously. He said, “The French would never stick such things just outside a war cemetery.”’

  He considered the matter again. ‘Yes, Martineau. He really is a most extraordinary chap. It only goes to show how bizarre legends grow up in a small place like this, but he is commonly supposed to have had his dead mother – she died here quite recently – shipped back to France in a barrel of brandy.’

  ‘A barrel of–’

  ‘Oh, yes. To have poured a lot of good brandy into a barrel with her. As a preservative. Well, you see what I mean …’

  *

  In Mr Yeo’s little car I drove to the hamlet of Longwood through green lanes and hedges of spiky flax. It was very seldom that I met another car, but when I did and we squeezed past each other, or when I came upon a man driving donkeys laden with grapes, the Saints always waved or called a greeting. I had a beer in the little pub on the green and then went round it to the huddle of trees on the far side. Gilbert Martineau was waiting at the gate to the garden of Longwood House with an abstracted air.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ he asked me in breezy tones. I had expected a portly, moustachioed mixture of Hercule Poirot and the French actor Jean Gabin – that was what to me the word conservateur seemed to imply. Not at all. What I saw was an elegant, good-looking man, tall, slim and well-dressed in a pale blue seersucker suit and a dark blue knitted tie (he had bought it at Harrods, he told me later): a dandy, in fact.

  ‘You invited me to lunch,’ I said. ‘I’m writing –’

  He interrupted. ‘I’m writing, too. Oh, yes, indeed. In fact I’ve written fifteen books and three more are in progress. I’m working on Byron and preparing something else on Berlioz.’ He waved an elegantly deprecating hand. ‘And Tchaikovsky as well. Apart from that I have written plays and film scripts. And I’ve just won a prize. So?’

  I was glad that he had to stop to draw breath. ‘So. You invited me to lunch. And to see Napoleon, I hope.’

  ‘Of course, of course. Come in.’ He led the way through a well-tended garden into a wing of an attractive single-storey house painted a pleasing, delicate shade of pink. This was Longwood – or rather the part of it Martineau lived in. It was beautifully furnished with things he had brought from France, as elegant as he was. On occasional tables stood framed portraits of de Gaulle, Churchill and Serge Lifar, the ballet dancer.

  ‘Do sit down,’ Martineau said. ‘By the way, if you think my English is very good, it’s because I was with the Royal Navy in the war.’

  A servant appeared carrying a bottle and two glasses on a tray.

  ‘It is very good.’

  ‘Thank you. Champagne?’ He popped a cork, pouring into a fine glass. ‘Salut!’

  I liked Martineau. He was not only a good host, as John Massingham had acknowledged, but also an intelligent and indefatigable talker – a facet of his nature no doubt aggrandized by isolation. Not that he regretted Longwood’s isolation. He said he adored Longwood and hoped to stay for ever – with periodic visits to France, of course. Actually, he had his eye on a flat in Monaco.

  He snowed me his books. Many of them were about Napoleon and the imperial family or about his entourage on St Helena. He talked affectionately of them rather as though he knew them all personally. He had written a bestseller about Madame Mère, Napoleon’s formidable and long-suffering mother. ‘I call her the Corsican Niobe,’ he said. ‘Am I lonely, you will ask? Let me only quote Napoleon. He said of St Helena, “Here, one must socialize with a budgerigar if that’s all the company one has.” I have people out to stay. I have books. The ship brings pilgrims to the shrine.’

  ‘What Napoleon said about the budgerigar was not very complimentary to the people exiled here with him – Montholon and the rest.’

  Martineau laughed. ‘No, not very. People say Napoleon had an affair with Mme de Montholon. But no.’ He seemed to be bringing me up to date on the subject of present gossip about people still living, whom we both knew well. ‘Life here was all too cluttered. Too crowded for that sort of thing. An affair? No, not that. People say so, but I doubt it.’

  Martineau’s exile was self-imposed and a good deal more comfortable than Napoleon’s. His cook was every bit as good as Napoleon’s Cipriani, and his equivalent of Napoleon’s Mameluk servant Ali was an old Saint called George Benjamin who, after lunch, showed me round while Martineau wrote a letter or two for me to post in Europe.

  Longwood House was a pleasant building, surrounded by trim lawns and carefully sculptured hedges. Some of the paths had been sunk into the turf to enable Napoleon to stroll about below the level of prying eyes. By a door in a second wing we entered the part of the house kept as a museum, and more or less as Napoleon knew it.

  We came
first into the billiard room, which had also served as ante-chamber for those who had applied for audiences with the Emperor. ‘See that billiard table, sir,’ said old Mr Benjamin. ‘Made by Thurston & Co. No slate. All wood.’ I crossed the teak floor and looked at the pictures on the walls. There was a print of Napoleon saying farewell to his troops at Fontainebleau, portraits of him by David, Gérard and Delaroche. There was a white marble bust; the room was full of busts.

  ‘Cold, isn’t it?’ Mr Benjamin said. I looked at a print by Steuben of the Emperor and his baby son, the King of Rome.

  ‘I’ve got swollen legs,’ Mr Benjamin remarked.

  ‘I’m in no hurry,’ I said. ‘Please take your time.’

  The salon where Napoleon received his guests was next to the billiard room. Here the Grand Marshal, Bertrand, had announced visitors as if they were all still in the Tuileries, and Napoleon was waiting at the mantelpiece, leaning against it standing up, as he had taken to doing since brusque Admiral Cockburn had one day ignored all the flummery and simply barged in muttering ‘Mornin” and grabbed a chair without so much as a by-your-leave.

  Though there must have been quite a few, the only direct exchange I found between the long-suffering Lowe and his tyrannical prisoner was quoted in one of Martineau’s pamphlets:

  Napoleon: ‘You are our greatest scourge of all the miseries on this infernal rock.’

  Lowe: ‘Sir, you do not know me.’

  Napoleon: ‘Where should I have got to know you? I did not see you on any battlefield.’