Betsy and the Emperor

by Anne Whitehead

  Jane, young Tristan de Montholon and seven-year-old Napoleon Bertrand formed a circle in the reception room, with Marchand and Le Page the chef dragooned as well. They drew lots to see who would be blindfolded first. Betsy drew the paper with the words ‘La Mort’ (death)—‘whether accidentally or by Napoleon’s contrivance’, she wrote—and so was the first victim.

  He tied a cambric handkerchief over her eyes. ‘Can you see, Miss Betsee?’

  ‘No,’ she replied, although she could glimpse him through a corner. He waved his hat in front of her face and she flinched.

  ‘Ah, leetle monkee,’ he said in English. ‘You can see pretty well!’ He tied another handkerchief over the first, excluding all light. She was led into the middle of the room, whirled about, and the game began.

  Someone crept up and gave her nose a sharp tweak. She knew who that was and darted forward, almost succeeding in catching him, but he eluded her grasp. ‘I then groped about, and, advancing again, he this time took hold of my ear and pulled it. I stretched out my hands instantly, and in the exultation of the moment screamed out, “I have got you! I have got you, now you shall be blindfolded!”’

  He ducked out of the way and it was to her sister that she found herself clinging. Napoleon crowed that, as she had named the wrong person, she had to continue blindfolded.47

  ‘Time,’ declared Napoleon, ‘is the only thing of which we have a superfluity.’ He had been renowned for his economic handling of time and now that efficiency was useless. ‘Our days,’ wrote Las Cases, ‘passed as may be imagined, in a great and stupid monotony. Ennui, memories, melancholy, were our dangerous enemies; work was our great, our only refuge. The Emperor followed with great regularity his occupations: English had become an important matter.’48

  Since early in 1816, Napoleon had taken the study of English seriously, working at it for some hours every afternoon; he practised in the bath, but his lessons under Las Cases’ tutelage never advanced far, as a scrap in his own handwriting testifies: ‘Since sixt wek, y learn the english and y do not any progress. Sixt week do fourty and two day. If might have learn fivty word, for day I could know it two thousands and two hundred . . .’49

  However, with the aid of a dictionary he was managing to read English newspapers. Every three or four weeks they received a large bundle of papers and journals from Europe, passed on to them by the admiral. Las Cases said that ‘they were like a prod which aroused us and excited us very much for several days, when we discussed and appraised the news, and then we fell back once more, insensibly, into the morass’.50 Everyone at Longwood was shocked in early February to learn of the death of Marshal Murat, Napoleon’s brother-in-law and the former King of Naples. By order of the reinstalled monarch, Ferdinand IV, he had been executed by firing squad. They heard a rumour of a military revolt against Louis XVIII, but nothing came of it. They were startled and hopeful when unidentified ships in James Bay were fired upon by a cruiser and soldiers in the camp were called to arms. It turned out to be merely a failure of a visiting ship to respond to a signal.

  A mysterious letter, delivered by clandestine means, assured Napoleon that his position would be much improved when Princess Charlotte, the twenty-year-old daughter of the Prince Regent, ascended the British throne.51 Charlotte’s mother, Caroline of Brunswick, was a cousin of Catherine of Württemberg, who had married Napoleon’s youngest brother, Jerome, formerly King of Westphalia. Perhaps because of this family connection, Princess Caroline was said to have a ‘fanatical admiration’ for Bonaparte.52

  Escape plans were whispered and stories circulated of rescue attempts being mounted by Joseph Bonaparte in America; after all, he had the ill-gotten crown jewels of Spain to finance a venture. They heard there was much enthusiasm for Napoleon in the United States and that a group of French émigrés were concocting schemes. The St Helena Archives holds correspondence relating to various ingenious plans foiled by the British, including one that involved a boat that ‘will be in the shape of an old cask but so constructed that by pulling at both ends to be seaworthy and both boat and sails, which will be found inside, will be painted to correspond with the colour of the sea’.53 Gourgaud wrote in his journal: ‘In the morning, while out riding, we discuss our position. We should have been better off in the United States. I consider that the Prince Regent, yielding to public opinion, could get us brought back to England. We are also fortunate in that Princess Charlotte, on her accession to the throne, will wish to have us back.’54

  It would not have been far from their minds that if the elusive rumours about William Balcombe were true, Princess Charlotte could possibly be his half-sister.

  CHAPTER 11

  THE NEW GOVERNOR

  The charabanc tour of the Napoleonic sites ended in the grounds of Plantation House, an elegant Georgian mansion of 35 rooms, the official residence of St Helena’s governors for over two hundred years. Napoleon never went there but always complained that it should have been made available for him and his suite.

  Its front lawn extends as a level green field, a delightful location for garden parties, terminating in an abrupt shelf with a view of the vast grey Atlantic. We saw huddled in the grass five giant tortoises, celebrities for visitors. The most notable of them was the elderly Jonathan. Although it has been said that he is a living link with Bonaparte, that is not the case. He was a gift from the governor of the Seychelles and arrived in 1882 as a mature tortoise aged at least fifty, making him over 180 years old. The Times has claimed that he is the oldest animal in the world.1 I tried to become acquainted with Jonathan but he regarded me blearily—he is blind in one eye and almost so in the other.

  On 14 April 1816, the island’s new governor, General Sir Hudson Lowe, Knight Commander of the Bath (KCB), arrived on the frigate HMS Phaeton. The 46-year-old veteran was accompanied by his wife of three and a half months, her two adolescent daughters, his aide-de-camp, a private secretary, a military secretary, other officials, and the 2nd Battalion of the 66th Regiment of Foot. Lowe had every reason to believe that this appointment as the guardian of England’s greatest enemy would be a high point in his career, although not necessarily the highest; he had been assured that ‘it should not stop there’.2 He could not have imagined that his new position would ultimately cause him to be reviled by many of his own countrymen, including some in positions of power, for the rest of his days.

  Napoleon was inclined to welcome the arrival of the new governor, who would supplant both Sir George Cockburn and Governor Wilks as his chief custodian. The admiral had proved upright, inflexible, difficult to charm—unlike the British commissioner on Elba, Sir Neil Campbell, who had been trusting enough to absent himself from the island, so facilitating Napoleon’s escape. Campbell was an experienced military man, as was Lowe, and Napoleon claimed to understand soldiers. He heard that Lowe had seen action at Champaubert and Montmirail and remarked: ‘We have then probably exchanged a few cannon-balls together, and that is always, in my eyes, a noble relation to stand in.’3 It was hoped by the French party that the new governor was bringing instructions to ‘extend the prison to the entire island’ and so he was ‘awaited with impatience’.4

  The day after landing, Lowe was officially inaugurated as governor and then set about meeting his important charge, sending a message that he would call at Longwood at nine o’clock the following morning. Napoleon was not in the habit of receiving callers until the afternoon and simply ignored the message. He told O’Meara that it was a deliberate insult on Admiral Cockburn’s part, an attempt to embroil him with the new governor, for ‘he well knew that I never had received any persons, nor ever would, at that hour; he did it out of malice’.5 The admiral, he grumbled, was a ‘real shark’. But O’Meara had been in town and learned from someone on the governor’s staff that Lowe brought instructions from the British government infinitely more severe than those the admiral had put into effect. As he left the room, the doctor whispered to Marchand: ‘I wish the shark could remain with us; we will regret hi
m, you can be sure.’6

  When Governor Lowe, the admiral and some of their staff arrived in the pelting rain the following morning they were refused admission. As the officially appointed custodian of the prisoner, Lowe naturally assumed that he could see him when he chose. He strode around the house, attempting to peer in. They were told that ‘the emperor’ was ‘indisposed’ but was prepared to offer an audience the next day at four o’clock.

  When it took place in Longwood’s drawing room on the afternoon of 17 April, the meeting was brief but pleasant enough. However, the admiral was summarily excluded, something he never forgave. ‘He told me,’ Lowe wrote in a despatch, ‘that Bertrand had almost shut the door in his face as he was following me into the room; that a servant had put his arm across him.’7 This slight to Cockburn had not been intended by Napoleon and was soon regretted by him.

  The two men who faced each other in the room were born within a month of each other.8 They were diametrically opposed physical types. Napoleon was short and increasingly rotund, with the famous Roman-coin profile, smooth olive skin and blue-grey eyes known from a thousand portraits and caricatures. His visitor was tall and wiry, with greying reddish hair, sandy tufted eyebrows and the mottled pink complexion of a sun-intolerant Celt who tended to blink through pale eyelashes. At Napoleon’s request they spoke in Italian. He had heard that the new governor had commanded a regiment of Corsicans, although he may not have known that Lowe had requisitioned the Buonaparte house in Ajaccio.9

  Napoleon asked how Lowe had found the Corsicans: ‘They carry the stiletto; are they not a bad people?’

  ‘They do not carry the stiletto, having abandoned that custom in our service,’ the new governor replied. ‘They have always conducted themselves with propriety. I was very well satisfied with them.’

  The encounter passed off tolerably well and Lowe had clearly striven to be diplomatic. However, Napoleon had developed ‘an instinctive antipathy’ towards him.10 He remarked to O’Meara: ‘He is hideous. He has a most villainous countenance. But we must not decide too hastily. The man’s disposition may, perhaps, make amends for the unfavourable impression which his face produces. This is not impossible.’11 He was willing to wait and see.

  Good relations were not advanced when Lowe—carrying out the specific instruction of Lord Bathurst—left a document with Montholon, requiring that all the French sign it. It stated that they were at liberty to leave St Helena and return to Europe; however, if they wished to remain on the island they must declare this in writing and submit to all restrictions imposed on them. Montholon showed a translation of the paper to Napoleon, who promptly tore it up and dictated new words: ‘We, the undersigned, wishing to continue in the service of HM the Emperor Napoleon, consent, horrible as is the abode in St Helena, to remain here. We submit to the restrictions, though unjust and arbitrary, that are imposed upon HM and upon the persons in his service.’12 This version was promptly rejected by the governor. All the French were eventually obliged to sign the original document.

  Lowe had brought directions from Bathurst ‘to supply Buonaparte’s table in the most liberal manner’ instead of just the eight dining places which the admiral, following instructions, had imposed.13 This was good news for Balcombe, whose percentage increased accordingly. He now had 52 people to feed in the Longwood establishment: Napoleon’s companions, their four children, 36 servants (many of them hired locally), the two orderly English officers and O’Meara.

  British newspapers held that Bonaparte’s appetite was voracious, that he drank a pot of port and two bottles of claret at breakfast. Napoleon, actually abstemious, read some of the reports and told O’Meara: ‘Why, I do not know what the English will make of me in the end; they say that I drink so many bottles of wine daily, that I eat so much, that I will produce a famine on this detestable rock. I suppose that they will make me eat a live bull at a meal by-and-bye.’14 Neither Lowe nor his prisoner nor anyone else on the island knew that the doctor’s reports of their conversations were read at the highest level of the Admiralty. Bathurst had been made privy and chose not to tell the governor, so almost two years passed before Lowe learned of the conduit.15 Meanwhile, he himself found O’Meara a useful channel for Longwood gossip.

  Gourgaud and Bertrand visited Plantation House to farewell the retiring governor Colonel Sir Mark Wilks and his wife and daughter, departing in a few days for England. ‘I pay my respects to Madame Wilks and say “Goodbye” to the adorable Laura,’ Gourgaud lamented.16 But Bertrand had another agenda. He took Wilks aside to query if there would be ‘any impropriety’ in asking him ‘to take charge of a communication from the Emperor to your Government, or would you consider such a charge to be troublesome?’

  Wilks was appalled at the attempt to bypass his replacement, who had been on the island just five days. He chose to misunderstand Bertrand’s meaning: ‘Far from troublesome; I shall be very happy to take charge of any communication from General Bonaparte which may be committed to me for that purpose by Sir Hudson Lowe.’

  Bertrand looked confused. ‘And not otherwise?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ Wilks answered. ‘I am sorry you should think it necessary to propose to any person a deviation from the prescribed channel of communication; and very sorry that you should think it proper to make such a proposition to me.’17 Later in the day he informed Lowe of the exchange.

  Nonetheless, Napoleon sent good wishes for Wilks’s health and an agreeable voyage as the former governor took his leave.18 On 23 April, the Balcombes were at the marina as the Wilks family embarked on the barge for the Havannah. As Betsy later recalled: ‘Not a dry eye was to be seen amongst the crowd then collected; that leave-taking of our much loved and respected governor and his family resembled more a funeral than a levée, so sad and solemn was every face.’19 Sir Hudson Lowe must have known that he would never inspire that kind of affection.

  Lowe regarded Bonaparte’s attempt to appeal to the Prince Regent behind his back as little less than a declaration of war. He instituted the new restrictions advised by Bathurst. No stranger was to meet with ‘General Bonaparte’ without the governor’s permission. Certain officers of the 53rd Regiment who had been in the habit of making social calls on the Bertrands were told that their visits were not sanctioned. The number of sentries at Longwood was increased. Captain Poppleton was instructed to sight Bonaparte twice a day. Thomas Brooke, the governing council secretary, and Lowe’s secretary Major Gorrequer visited the town’s shopkeepers and instructed them to refuse credit to the French or risk severe punishment. ‘The tradespeople were forbidden to sell anything to us directly,’ wrote Montholon, ‘and were threatened, in case of disobedience, with the seizure and confiscation of their goods. Everything was now to pass through the medium of the governor or his agents.’20

  Lowe was alarmed when he received a report from Poppleton on 30 April that the prisoner had not been sighted the previous day. He hurried to Longwood and met Montholon at the door, who said that his master was indisposed and suffering. It was after four o’clock in the afternoon and Lowe was agreeably surprised when Napoleon indicated he would see him. The governor was ushered into the bedroom and found his charge reclining in his dressing-gown, breathing heavily.

  It became clear that Napoleon had admitted him having heard that some commissioners were arriving soon, representing the French, Russian and Austrian Allies. He launched into a harangue. The Allies had made a convention declaring him their prisoner, but they had no authority to do so. ‘I wish you to write to your Government and acquaint it I shall protest against it. I gave myself up to England and to no other Power . . . I misunderstood the character of the English people. I should have surrendered myself to the Emperor of Russia who was my friend, or to the Emperor of Austria who was my relation. There is courage in putting a man to death, but it is an act of cowardice to let him languish, and to poison him, in so horrid an island and in so detestable a climate.’

  Lowe protested. St Helena had never been viewed in th
at light; except for necessary security precautions, it was the wish of the British government to render Napoleon’s situation as comfortable as possible; in fact, the components of a new house and furniture were being shipped from England.

  Napoleon listed his grievances: he hated the locality of Longwood, the sparseness of trees, his exclusion from free conversation with the local inhabitants, the fact that he was denied a greater range for exercise unless accompanied by an officer, and the outrage that the governor had presumed to interrogate his servants.21

  This rancorous second meeting proved pivotal. After it, Napoleon characterised himself as ‘a regular porcupine’ on whom the governor ‘does not know where to put his hand’.22 He called for O’Meara to enter his bedroom. He wanted confirmation that he was not being spied upon and asked the doctor how he conceived his position, and whether he had ‘orders to report every trifling occurrence or illness, or what I say to you, to the governor?’

  O’Meara replied that his role was ‘as your surgeon, and to attend upon you and your suite. I have received no other orders than to make an immediate report in case of your being taken seriously ill, in order to have promptly the advice and assistance of other physicians.’ He denied that he was in any capacity a spy for the governor, omitting to mention, of course, that he was now in that capacity for the Admiralty and was playing a double game.

  Napoleon accepted his assurance: ‘I have never had the least occasion to find fault with you, and I have a friendship for you and an esteem for your character.’23

  Napoleon took up riding again within the 12-mile limit with Las Cases and Gourgaud. They frequently visited a favourite glade in Geranium Valley where, at Napoleon’s request, willow cuttings had been planted, reminding him of Josephine’s garden and lake at Malmaison. Occasionally they would see two pretty farmers’ daughters working in the fields and Napoleon would wave or stop and say a few words, although the girls’ answers were always brief and nervous. He had invented names for them—the daughter of Farmer Knipe was ‘Rosebud’, and Miss Marianne Robinson, from a farm across the valley, was ‘The Nymph’.