Napoleon's Poisoned Chalice

by Dr Martin Howard

  In the late nineteenth century it became known that this man with an unrivalled knowledge of events on St. Helena had written a private diary. The documents were stored in the Court of Chancery and were jealously guarded; the judge making the order for the deposition specified that the papers were of such a ‘high political importance’ that it would be better if their contents were not disclosed. In 1958, by an Act of Parliament, the diary was transferred to the Public Record Office (now The National Archives) and a surgeon with a keen Napoleonic interest, James Kemble, retrieved it and published the contents. This was a labour of love as Gorrequer, in an attempt to obscure the identity of the persons to whom he referred, employed a bewildering array of pseudonyms. Before making use of the diary, Kemble had to crack the code. O’Meara, for example, is variously referred to as ‘Magnesia’ or ‘Magnesia Primo’ whilst Baxter is ‘Medico in Capito’, ‘Scottyese’, ‘Primo Fisico’, or ‘Medico Primo’. Lowe is most commonly just ‘Mac’, ‘Mack’ or ‘Mach’. Even with the main characters identified, the diary has a peculiar shorthand style and the references are often cryptic. It is obvious that Gorrequer disliked Lowe (see also Chapter 1). We must take this into account when reading the diary but there is little reason to doubt the truth of the secretary’s words. He probably wrote the journal to let off steam and his elaborate efforts to disguise the individuals to whom he refers suggest that he did not wish to share his private thoughts with others.12

  Gorrequer’s testimony is a mine of information on the St. Helena episode. He is unstinting in the description of the fallibility of his colleagues. When Lady Lowe complains that Lieutenant Colonel Lyster has blown his nose on the bed curtains in Plantation House, Gorrequer records the conversation. More importantly, the diary casts an entirely new light on the Governor’s dealings with the doctors on the island. Gorrequer is no apologist for O’Meara but his account is a damning indictment of Lowe’s treatment of the physician, supporting many of O’Meara’s allegations. It is transparent that the Governor took an immediate dislike to the young Irishman. In the summer of 1817, Gorrequer records a conversation with Lowe.

  He [Lowe] remarked to me on the 1st August that people judge sometimes from little things of the feelings of others. Dr O’Meara asked for champagne. ‘What, himself?’ ‘Yes. Dr O’Meara is taking the liberty of calling for champagne at my house!’ He was raising his head again, and it was time to pull it down again.

  We know that O’Meara could be brash, and the Governor’s irritation may be forgiven, but the last sentence suggests that he was determined to harass O’Meara. This is amply confirmed by subsequent entries in the diary. On 22nd December, 1817;

  He [Lowe] told me after dinner he did not mean to send O’Meara from here in a hurry. He would keep him long enough yet. He would worry him with questions whenever he came to him. He did not care whether he answered them or not. He would rather he did not, for then the conclusion would be the equivalent to an acknowledgment on his side. He would consider it in that light whenever he refused to answer any question he put to him.

  Later, the Governor refers to O’Meara as a fool and rants against him, ‘…he would not get so easily out of his [Lowe’s] hands. He was not aware of all the forms he [O’Meara] would have to go through before he could get away from him.’

  Lowe’s scheming included attempts to isolate O’Meara from other British personnel on the island. On 1st May 1818:

  After his [Lowe] dictating a letter to O’Meara, he began saying what a rascal and scoundrel he was, and, working himself up into a fit of extreme passion, he declared he never would notice or again invite any person to his house who associated, visited, or had any intercourse with him. Such a rascal and villain that fellow is. After a little consideration, at last he added ‘anyone who does it after knowing the circumstance of his conduct.’ Proceeding with a repetition of this, turning around upon me in a gesture of rage, he said ‘I prohibit you, as an officer of my staff, from ever speaking or taking notice of him, whatsoever.’

  Gorrequer, who grew used to these irrational attacks, was forced to point out that he was not in the habit of seeing O’Meara. Indeed, he had hardly met him out of the Governor’s presence. In October, Lowe takes satisfaction in the subtle tactics that he believes he has employed in undermining the doctor. ‘By not using his name [he] had completely defeated all his plans … to ruin his character on the island, he had succeeded in producing the same effect as if his name had really appeared.’

  Lowe pressed on with his campaign of vilification against O’Meara but he also worried endlessly about how his actions might be interpreted by others, both on St. Helena and in England, and also about the possible consequences if he were actually to dismiss Napoleon’s physician. He repeatedly attempts to justify his behaviour to Gorrequer by slandering O’Meara. In July 1818, he agonises over whether to send the doctor from the island. ‘For a long time he cursed over the orders received from home to pack him off. He sometimes determined to do it, at others seemed undecided. No decision took place for one and a half to two hours.’ After more prevarication, Lowe appears to take the decision to remove O’Meara but he feels the need to seek Gorrequer’s approval for his actions. His paroxysms of anxiety were intensified by the Navy’s sympathy for the Emperor and his doctor. In the spring of 1818 he moans to his secretary,

  When Captain Wallis [a naval commander who dined with O’Meara in September 1817] came here he would take the part of O’Meara. The whole Navy do it. Look at the Admiral [Sir Pulteney Malcolm] the other day; he attempted to condemn the conduct of O’Meara but did he pass any remark on these matters after reading the correspondence? It was all owing to this scoundrel and damned Polyphemes [Malcolm] visiting and bowing at Bonaparte … Mr O’Meara has been too much considered.

  Lowe assures Gorrequer that it is his nature to seek appeasement but then he immediately condemns Baxter for dining with O’Meara. In reality, the Governor created acrimony all around him and he was only restrained in his actions when he paused to consider their potentially disastrous outcome. In July 1818, he snaps at Wynyard, his other Military Secretary.

  I have this day signed a death warrant [man of the 66th Regiment to be hanged] and my signing this letter [acquainting Longwood of the removal of O’Meara] may be the signing of another. I know nothing more likely to happen in consequence of my signing it, and it therefore required to be well considered, and it is not a thing to be done in a hurry.

  Lowe was constantly haunted by the prospect of being blamed for the Emperor’s death.13

  Gorrequer also illuminates many of the specific battles in the war between Governor and doctor. For instance, there was the notorious meeting between the two men on 18th December 1817 at Plantation House where O’Meara alleges that Lowe abused and insulted him. In reply to O’Meara’s accusation in his letter of October 1818 to the Admiralty that the Governor made him ‘suffer every indignity short of blows’, Lowe dismissively replied ‘False’. Gorrequer describes

  … his [Lowe’s] furious gusts of passion. He scarcely had breath to articulate at times. How often he repeated: ‘dishonourable, shameful, uncandid conduct’. He afterwards told me that when he ran after Mr O’Meara in the passage, on his repeating of the above expression to him, he retorted that if he had behaved in that manner, he would have been better received.

  As Dr O’Meara retired from the library, speaking indistinctly, he ran after him in a most extraordinary and furious manner calling out loud enough to be heard in all the house: ‘What’s that you say, Sir,’ and followed him into the passage desiring him in a most injurious manner to quit the house. ‘Leave the house, Sir, leave the house, Sir,’ and repeated the words ‘dishonourable’, etc. as above stated. Then having once returned as far as the door of the library from following Dr O’Meara, as the latter’s voice was still heard retiring, he made another sally of the same kind after him. I remained in the library not going beyond the door, shocked at all this.

  Gorrequer had joined the arm
y at sixteen years of age and had seen much active service. His reaction to this argument was unlikely to have been exaggerated.

  Forsyth painstakingly finds fault with O’Meara’s version of the snuff box incident but Gorrequer’s brief account of Lowe’s reaction is more telling: ‘What a damn fool O’Meara was in giving the snuff box; he [Lowe] had never had hold of him before.’ A further allusion suggests that the Governor became aware of the present because Vernon informed Baxter and the doctor ‘ran to Reade’ with the news. Gorrequer also supports O’Meara’s claim that Lowe and Reade plotted to turn the officers of the 66th Regiment against him. On 3rd August 1818, Reade is ‘furnished with everything which could be got up against O’Meara’ and, a few days later, ‘He [Lowe] was resolved to damn him, at all events in the eyes of the officers of the 66th.’

  Whilst there is nothing in the diary to support the creation of entirely false medical bulletins by Lowe and Baxter, there is evidence that O’Meara’s medical reports were tampered with. It may be significant that when O’Meara makes the allegations of falsification of reports in his October 1818 letter, there is no denial from Hudson Lowe recorded by Forsyth and the Governor’s defender has to resort to appending a letter from Baxter to refute the claim. In December 1817, Gorrequer describes Lowe re-reading one of O’Meara’s bulletins several times and having additions made ‘at his own desire’. It is not specified whether this material was added by Lowe himself or by Baxter or Gorrequer but it is obvious that there was at least some editing of O’Meara’s words. Finally, O’Meara’s claim that he was shabbily treated on his departure from the island gains credence. At the time, he received no support from Admiral Plampin and Bingham’s enquiry whitewashed the doctor’s complaints, but Lowe acknowledges to Gorrequer on 30th July 1818 (a week prior to O’Meara’s actual departure) that there had been wrongdoing.

  Lamenting the unfortunate circumstances of Magnesia’s robbery and reverting to the manner of removing him, his [Lowe] saying how much better Nincumpoop [Reade] would have done it than Vignoble [Wynyard] … It was altogether very badly managed.

  Not only did Lowe persecute O’Meara, but he took calculated steps to cover his tracks. In the early days of 1818, he reveals his strategy to his secretary.

  ‘I’ll tell you what, Gorrequer, Lord Bathurst remarks very properly to me in one of his letters that I am a person too generous and open in method towards them by allowing everything to pass through, which they think proper to say, and by this means giving it effect to a certain degree, and assisting their views. I don’t see why I should do it to Mr O’Meara. I am not bound to notice all that I said to him or he to me.’

  After an altercation with O’Meara a few weeks later, the Governor forbids Gorrequer to make any note of it. The Secretary does not explicitly support O’Meara’s case but he is disgusted by Lowe’s conduct. When Lowe later makes a pathetic attempt to justify his harassment of the doctor, Gorrequer is entirely dismissive in his usual cryptic style.

  Mach speaking of his treatment of Magnesia, said as an excuse that he did not think after all he had done anything so very much out of the way, and that when Lord Stair was ambassador in France in a discussion with one of the French ministers he threatened to throw him out of the window. What a comparison. What a similitude of personages and how improbable that they affected it.14

  The depth of hatred between the two adversaries made it inevitable that the feud would continue beyond the shores of St. Helena. This was not a one-sided affair. There is much to support the view that both parties were intent on hounding the other and their supporters by any means possible. As early as August 1818, Lowe, apprehensive of O’Meara’s actions on his return to England, promised Gorrequer that he would surely take vigorous retribution.

  If Magnesia published or made any noise at home on the subject of his ways here, it would not be him he would attack, but those who supported him. Anyone who took his part or spoke in his favour, those would be the people he would pursue. He would ferret them out, he would find some means of ascertaining who they were; it would be them that would suffer. All this spoken in a sort of threatening manner.

  Three years latter, Bertrand notes in his journal, ‘The Governor will never forgive him [O’Meara] and will pay him back some day.’

  Lowe may have believed that a humble Navy surgeon without influential patrons could do him little harm. If so, he underestimated the power of O’Meara’s pen. As alluded to, he wrote a copious St. Helena diary filled with Napoleon’s derogatory opinions of the Governor, as well as the subversive correspondence with the Admiralty. His Exposition of 1819 achieved some success and a few copies of the pamphlet were smuggled back to St. Helena. He was much encouraged by a favourable reception in the Edinburgh Review and, in 1822, he published his more substantial Voice from St. Helena. The physician was not motivated to write this work solely from a desire to get even with Lowe. The amazing success of Warden’s modest book had highlighted the commercial possibilities. O’Meara, much closer to Napoleon than Warden, could expect substantial profit and fame.15

  He was not to be disappointed. The public was already aware of the doctor who had purportedly been hounded out of the Navy for his simple acts of humanity to Napoleon. Outside the publisher’s offices, the crowds were so large as to obstruct the traffic. Fresh editions of The Voice appeared at short intervals and there were several translations including a French reprint. The surgeon had the good sense to devote most of the pages to his conversations with Napoleon and to curtail the story of his disagreements with the Governor. Walter Henry astutely comments that the Exposition was more remarkable for ‘the suppressio veri than the assertio falsi’ and this can equally be applied to The Voice. There was still quite enough to portray Lowe as the arch villain and to make his name ‘a synonym for heartless brutality towards the fallen’. O’Meara left little doubt that Napoleon was not the Governor’s only victim. Of the violent meeting of 18th December 1817, he says,

  Summoned to attend at Plantation House by letter from Major Gorrequer. As the reader must already be disgusted with the details of the manner in which the governor took advantage of his situation to insult and suppress an officer inferior in rank, because the latter refused to be his spy; I shall not fatigue him with any further account of the conduct practised towards me on this day …

  Despite lapses into pomposity, The Voice is a convincing and emotive piece of writing. Lowe was devastated by the impact of O’Meara’s words. He reflected on the damage caused to him in a note to Lord Liverpool.

  Public curiosity flew with eagerness to the repast: nothing was wanting to satisfy the cravings of the more credulous, the most inquisitive, or the most malignant mind. The highest authorities were not spared; but I was destined to be the real victim, upon whom the public indignation was to fall.

  From the outset, informed opinion was divided as to the book’s credibility. The admired historian, Thomas Carlyle, believed it to be a genuine work which increased his respect for Napoleon. Sir Walter Scott was more critical, regarding it as the product of a ‘disappointed man’. Forsyth was predictably antagonistic whilst those nineteenth-century British writers less attached to Lowe were reluctant to view it as a reliable source; Norwood Young thought it tainted by ‘falsehood and malice’ and Lord Roseberry dismissed it as ‘worthless’. A degree of scepticism was understandable as O’Meara was on a crusade, but they might have been less jaundiced had they had access to Gorrequer’s diary.16

  The French historical perspective is more sympathetic to O’Meara. Gilbert Martineau describes The Voice as a ‘proud and aggressive testimony’ and Philippe Gonnard, whose analytical approach to the St. Helena period is unusually free of national prejudice, agreed with Walter Henry that O’Meara’s sins were mostly those of omission. The doctor had carefully excluded the spicy anecdotes and the insinuations about Napoleon and his companions that are to be found in the earlier letters. On the other hand, if the content of The Voice is directly compared with the corresponden
ce to Finlaison and other writings, there is little difference. O’Meara had sent his contemporary notes back to Holmes for safe keeping and he was able to consult these to refresh his memory.

  It was common knowledge at Longwood that O’Meara was writing more than a simple private diary. Montholon noted that the physician began to write as soon as he entered his room. As early as March 1817, Napoleon commented to Gourgaud that he presumed that his doctor, like Warden, would eventually publish his own book. The Emperor was not concerned at the prospect; he knew that O’Meara liked him and that he had little to fear from the doctor’s portrayal of events. He predicted that the work would be ‘interesting’. After O’Meara’s departure, Napoleon had the opportunity to read his diary in manuscript form and he apparently found few faults in it. He did not collaborate in the writing of The Voice any more than he did in Las Cases’ Mémorial but he favoured O’Meara’s work over the other mass circulation Napoleonic gospel.17