Napoleon's Poisoned Chalice

by Dr Martin Howard

  It is ironic that O’Meara, a man who was to be remembered as Lowe’s worst enemy, should initially have been identified as the Governor’s stooge. The relationship between O’Meara and Lowe soon deteriorated such that the doctor was pushed irretrievably into the French camp. The reasons for this disastrous falling out between the two are not clear-cut. It is possible to document specific disagreements but the depth of antagonism was disproportionate and suggests a more fundamental clash of personalities and motives. O’Meara’s account of his conflict with the Governor is emotive – at times, such as in his Morning Chronicle letter quoted earlier, melodramatic and self-seeking – whereas Lowe’s version, contained in his correspondence with Bathurst, is more circumspect and contains less self-justification.

  In the summer of 1816, Lowe began to believe that O’Meara was too close to Longwood; in Marchand’s words, ‘…he reproached the doctor for being overly eager to carry out the petty errands of the French in town’. The surgeon’s loyalties were under intense scrutiny from Plantation House. When Lowe heard that Napoleon had referred to him as ‘The Little Tyrant of Italy’, he accusingly asked O’Meara if he had said anything to ‘draw forth such remarks’. The doctor denied it. The first hint of the scale of the trouble to come was a communication from Bathurst to Lowe of 12th July regarding a letter which had been published in a Portsmouth newspaper. This was clearly written by someone on St. Helena and was critical of Napoleon’s treatment by the British. O’Meara was an obvious candidate and although Bathurst acknowledged that he was not necessarily the author, he was sufficiently confident of his involvement to warn the Governor. ‘It appears therefore that it will not be prudent to place any confidence in Dr O’Meara; and unless his explanations are more satisfactory than I expect they will be, it will, I am afraid, be impossible not in prudence to remove him from the island, although I fully enter into the difficulty you may have in supplying his place near General Bonaparte’s person.’

  The Governor already had serious doubts regarding O’Meara’s actions but, as the Secretary of War pointed out, his replacement would be no easy matter and the British Government would surely be censured for leaving Napoleon without medical attendance. Lowe tackled O’Meara over the matter of the newspaper letter but he denied any part in it, suggesting that the offending article may have been written by Warden. In the ensuing conversation, it transpired that O’Meara had held on to an important letter from Montholon detailing Napoleon’s grievances rather than delivering it immediately to Lowe. This disclosure understandably irritated the Governor and O’Meara’s justification of his action, that he wished to make the contents known to the Admiralty, brought his hitherto secret correspondence into the open. It is not easy to feel sorry for Lowe but he deserves some sympathy at this point. He can hardly have expected these revelations and he must have felt undermined by the Cabinet blithely receiving information behind his back. O’Meara comments that he ‘appeared surprised and annoyed’ and that he demanded that any further correspondence should go via him alone. The doctor countered that he had acted with the full approval of the Admiralty and that, under the circumstances, he believed he should resign his position. The Governor now backed off, saying that he ‘was far from desiring’ such a step.14

  The tension between the two men increased at the end of 1816 when Lowe became more suspicious that O’Meara was acting as a Longwood agent. Las Cases was under arrest for his involvement in covert correspondence and was awaiting deportation. O’Meara contended that Las Cases’s son was very ill and that both should therefore be sent directly to England rather than via the Cape as in the standing instructions. Lowe doubted the validity of the medical advice, believing that O’Meara was now a tool in Napoleon’s hands. The physician must have been encouraged to stand up to his protagonist by a letter from Finlaison of 25th February 1817 in which the Admiralty clerk informed him, ‘We did hear that the Governor had determined to send you home. Lord Melville, however, immediately applied to Lord Liverpool to interfere and prevent it.’ He had support at the highest possible level.15

  The disputes continued. Rear-Admiral Sir Pulteney Malcolm, Cockburn’s successor, had employed O’Meara to give Napoleon newspapers without the Governor’s knowledge and against his orders. O’Meara continued to deliver these papers on his own initiative, receiving them from Joseph Cole, the island’s postmaster. In late May 1817, Lowe learnt of this infringement of the regulations and ordered him to stop. When the Governor challenged O’Meara regarding some pamphlets in his possession, the surgeon retorted that he ‘did not consider himself amenable to any tribunal for receiving books from England’. Lowe also believed O’Meara to have misrepresented his motives in the ‘affair of the bust’. In July, a marble bust of Napoleon’s son, the King of Rome, arrived on the island in a rather mysterious manner. The Governor was accused by the French of delaying its delivery to Napoleon and even of considering its destruction, a charge which was likely to cause further damage to his reputation. Whatever the truth of this episode, Lowe perceived that O’Meara did not adequately support him. When O’Meara again offered a verbal resignation, the Governor stated that if it was placed in writing he would consider it – the doctor did not respond.16

  O’Meara perhaps derived vicarious pleasure from the depth of ill feeling between his two employers. He was quick to inform Lowe, in front of Gorrequer, that Napoleon desired the Governor’s recall: ‘He did not think [any] man could have more dislike for another than he [Napoleon] had for the Governor.’ By November 1817, Lowe was writing to Bathurst expressing his dissatisfaction with the surgeon and making it clear that he only hesitated to remove him because of the political capital Napoleon would reap from this. O’Meara now refused to report Napoleon’s conversations and the situation deteriorated, witnessed by Balmain.

  There is a serious misunderstanding between Sir Hudson Lowe and Dr O’Meara. The latter, disgusted with the Governor’s undue sensitiveness and instability, has ceased to see him and informs him no longer of what is happening at Longwood. The Governor asked him the reason and, as is often the case, used threats. The other answered shortly that he was a doctor, not a spy.

  The meetings between the two were now violent clashes. On 28th October, Lowe accused the physician of being ‘a jackal running about in search of news for General Bonaparte’. He again forbade O’Meara to converse with the Emperor on non-medical subjects and when the doctor asked for this order in writing, he flew into a rage and ordered him to leave Plantation House. On 25th November, O’Meara defended himself staunchly, claiming that he had discussed nothing of importance with Napoleon, only for the Governor to cry out, ‘You are no judge, Sir, of the importance of the conversations you may have with General Bonaparte. I might consider several subjects of great importance which you consider as trifling or of no consequence.’ The physician responded that he was not a mouton (stool pigeon) and was brusquely shown the door.17

  In a meeting on 18th December, O’Meara admitted to the Governor that he had pledged to Napoleon in May 1816 only to reveal his private conversations when they might involve a plan of escape – an admission which, we have already noted, did not reflect well on O’Meara and which was seized upon by the Governor as proof of his duplicity. He was betraying Napoleon to Lowe, Lowe to Napoleon, and both to Finlaison. In O’Meara’s account of this confrontation, he claims to have feared for his safety. ‘The Governor followed me out of the room, vociferating after me in a frantic manner, and carried his gestures so far as to menace me with personal violence.’18

  A few days later, O’Meara wrote to Lowe;

  He who, clothed with the specious garb of the physician, insinuates himself into the confidence of his patient and avails himself of the frequent opportunities and frailties … to wring disclosures of his patient’s sentiments and opinions for the purpose of afterwards betraying him, deserves most justly to be branded with the appellation of mouton.

  A statement tinged with hypocrisy in the light of O’Meara’s origina
l willingness to tell all to the Governor. The doctor concluded his letter with a stinging and unprecedented rebuke to his senior for ‘making use of language and treatment [to and of me] unworthy of and degrading to an officer’. In two dispatches of late January 1818, Lowe reiterated to Bathurst his chief complaints against O’Meara and added that there was little hope of restricting Napoleon’s communications and correspondence whilst he remained near him.19

  From late 1817, the rupture with the Governor meant the O’Meara was unequivocally ‘Napoleon’s man’. He now understood that he could not please both parties and he decided to serve the Emperor rather than the irritating Governor. This state of affairs can only have pleased Napoleon; Marchand notes that the Emperor was amused at the verbal clashes between the two ‘Englishmen’ and that he wished that Lowe ‘might one day die of anger’.

  O’Meara’s loyalty to the French was probably cemented by a bribe paid to him in early October 1817. Napoleon discussed the payment with Gourgaud.

  The English have no exalted sentiments, they may all be bought. I should have done well to buy Poppleton [British Orderly Officer]; he would have let me take rides alone on horseback. Do you think that O’Meara is on our side? He looks for a substantial reward. He values his place at £3,000 sterling.

  After money had allegedly changed hands, Gourgaud says that the Emperor was convinced of O’Meara’s devotion to him. ‘The Doctor was not so much on our side until I gave him money. Ah! I am quite sure of that one.’ Marchand confirms that the surgeon was a ‘faithful reporter’ to Longwood and that Napoleon now trusted him. He was, according to the valet, ‘too precious a resource for the Emperor to voluntarily get rid of him’. In his journal, Bertrand details how Napoleon asked him to brief O’Meara regarding his relationship with the Governor. He was to reject Lowe’s attempts to embroil him in ‘politics and government’ and to try to supplant these with considerations of ‘medicine and morality’.20

  There is also British testimony that O’Meara was, by this stage, very much a Longwood agent. Walter Henry recalls that after the death of Cipriani, Napoleon’s maitre d’hôtel, in February 1818 he was approached by a smiling O’Meara who informed him that, as the English doctor who had attended Cipriani, he was to receive a present from the Emperor. Henry was suddenly the potential beneficiary of a breakfast service of silver plate which had already been ordered from London and he was understandably flattered. A few days later, O’Meara returned in more serious mood stating that it had been forbidden by statute to accept any gift from Napoleon or his suite. If Henry was to receive his reward it would have to be done secretly without the knowledge of the Governor. Henry sensed danger and rejected the offer.

  The thing was plain enough – a palpable attempt at a bribe to enlist even so humble an individual as myself, l’homme d’Empereur, and to bind him down to future obedience by making him first commit himself in a wrong action.

  The regimental surgeon had no doubt that O’Meara had allowed himself to be ‘cajoled and fascinated’ by Napoleon with the result that he was his ‘admirer, adherent, agent and tool’. This was almost certainly not an isolated incident as O’Meara tried to enlist a group of British sympathisers on St. Helena. It is difficult to be precise as to their identity but some, such as Lieutenant Reardon of the 66th and Major Poppleton of the 53rd, were later to support him in his legal defence against Lowe.21

  O’Meara derived his confidence to act autonomously beyond the Governor’s authority from his support from the Admiralty at home and also from Napoleon’s approval on St. Helena. His role as the Emperor’s doctor gave him a certain power over Lowe who was terrified of possible accusations that he had deprived Napoleon of proper medical care. O’Meara’s medical bulletins were the only portrayal of the Emperor’s health available to Lowe and the outside world. These reports could be manipulated for political purposes; for instance, Napoleon’s ill health might be exaggerated and his symptoms attributed to the negligent care provided by the British authorities. There are no anecdotes of medical incompetence relating to O’Meara and it is likely that he was of an average professional standard for a Navy doctor of the time. In early October 1817, Napoleon complained for the first time of a pain in his right side with an odd sensation in his right shoulder. O’Meara believed that he could feel an enlarged liver and that his patient had hepatitis. This was a diagnosis with political implications that was unlikely to please Lowe. Hepatitis was prevalent on the island and if Napoleon had contracted the disease it left the British Government and its agents open to the accusation that the Emperor had been consigned to an early grave by his banishment to an unhealthy location.22

  We will return to Napoleon’s illness and death in later pages but the consensus of informed modern medical opinion is that O’Meara’s diagnosis, whilst perhaps not correct, was quite reasonable. On the other hand, O’Meara’s detractors accuse him of playing up Napoleon’s symptoms for personal gain, pointing out that his new diagnosis of hepatitis followed shortly after his receipt of a bribe. Was this all invention? After October 1817, O’Meara reports a gradual deterioration in the Emperor’s health, information bound to cause concern to the British authorities. Shortly before his departure from the island, the doctor wrote to the Admiralty stressing that the symptoms of hepatitis had much increased and that Napoleon would likely die of this unless he was treated more equitably and removed from St. Helena. He pointed out that many men of the 66th Regiment and around one sixth of the crew of the Conqueror had died of hepatitis within the previous six months. This explosive information was also passed to the Foreign Commissioners. In December, Balmain wrote that O’Meara had informed him that Napoleon’s health was ‘seriously affected’, that his condition ‘excited pity’ and that he was unlikely to live another two years.23

  Napoleon’s illness had become another point of contention between O’Meara and Lowe. The Governor was understandably dubious of his adversary’s motives; in Marchand’s words, ‘He [Lowe] came to Longwood, announced himself to the Grand Marshal, and said to him that Dr O’Meara reported in his bulletins that General Bonaparte was sick when this was not the case and that this rumour had spread throughout the town. Everyone was trying to deceive him.’ Despite his doubts, it was awkward for Lowe to entirely ignore the increasingly alarming medical reports emanating from Longwood and they served to heighten his already considerable anxiety. He was convinced enough of O’Meara’s account to later write to Bathurst; ‘Napoleon’s illness seems to have taken a serious turn and his surgeon not to be a little alarmed on his account.’24

  The medical bulletins issued by O’Meara were ammunition in the struggle between Longwood and Plantation House – hardly a dignified way to manage a sick man. Marchand tells us that disagreements over the bulletins ‘renewed the bitterness’ in relations. Napoleon complained to O’Meara that his reports, which were being sent to the courts of Europe, described him as ‘General Bonaparte’ and that unless he was titled ‘The Emperor Napoleon’ he would decline to receive him. He subsequently stated that he would also refuse to see O’Meara unless he was allowed to approve the bulletins prior to these being sent to the Governor. Lowe therefore instructed the surgeon to discontinue the issue of written reports and to restrict himself to verbal communications to Baxter who would be the Governor’s messenger. Napoleon declined to see O’Meara for a few days in mid October and when he consented to be consulted by him again his symptoms were relayed by O’Meara to Baxter, who passed the news on to Lowe.25

  Baxter was placed in an invidious situation. The senior surgeon had no opportunity to see Napoleon as a doctor but had to translate O’Meara’s words into a medical report which would satisfy the Governor. He did express some tentative views regarding the Emperor’s illness – he suggested ‘dropsy’ (heart failure) and questioned the diagnosis of hepatitis – but without proper access to Napoleon he was no more than a medical clerk. The key question is whether Baxter was forced to amend O’Meara’s reports to downplay the seriousness o
f the symptoms and protect the British from charges of mistreatment of the Emperor. In his subsequent writings, O’Meara implies that this was the case, talking of ‘fictitious bulletins’ which were sent to the Commissioners from Plantation House, ‘…it appeared that the surreptitious bulletins were made by a person who never saw Napoleon and who consequently could never be a judge of his complaint’. When these accusations became public in later years, Baxter had to defend himself, stating that he had ‘scrupulously’ attended to O’Meara’s words prior to reporting to Lowe. It is normal to portray Baxter as Lowe’s poodle but there is evidence that the doctor became increasingly indignant at his demeaning role in the reporting of the Emperor’s health.26

  In the spring of 1818, Lowe was in a quandary regarding Napoleon’s troublesome physician. Up to a point, he needed him to provide medical attention to his captive and to maintain a British presence in Longwood, but the degree of estrangement between O’Meara and himself was such that it was inconceivable that the doctor could continue in the post indefinitely. The Governor hesitated to dismiss O’Meara but remained vigilant, seeking any opportunity to embarrass him and undermine his position. This brings us to the ‘snuff box affair’ of April 1818. It is tricky to discover the truth of this incident but the basic facts are as follows. Napoleon wished to give the two clergymen, the Reverends Boys and Vernon, a token of his appreciation to acknowledge their role in the burial of Cipriani. On the 20th of the month, O’Meara handed a silver snuff box to Boys as a present from the Emperor. This date was selected as Boys was about to leave the island and it was hoped that the secret present – against the Governor’s regulations – would not be discovered. Vernon alerted Boys of the severe penalties attached to the acceptance of such a gift and the clergyman nervously returned the snuff box to O’Meara. There is little doubt that the doctor was Napoleon’s gift bearer although he later denied this, insisting that Boys actually received the snuff box from Montholon and that he simply returned it to him. James Vernon claimed that O’Meara had tried to conceal the matter from the Governor, demanding that Boys’ letter to the surgeon rejecting the gift be destroyed. O’Meara is supposed to have said to Vernon, ‘Boys could not have taken a more effective method to ruin me … You have no idea what serious consequences may result from this: I am not a man likely to be frightened at a trifle neither.’27