Betsy and the Emperor

by Anne Whitehead

  The earliest mention of a house ‘of some size’ called the ‘Bryers’ on 59 acres of land was in 1768. Balcombe bought the property in 1807, changed the spelling and constructed the pavilion. After he left the island, the property fell into the hands of the East India Company; they planted mulberry bushes and attempted to establish a silkworm farm. Like other attempts to create a viable economic mainstay for St Helena—including lacemaking, coffee and flax—the silk industry failed.

  In 1901, The Briars became the headquarters for the cable and wireless station. In 1914, in photographs taken by Graham Balfour, a cousin of Robert Louis Stevenson, it appeared to have been extended into a handsome two-storey villa with at least six upstairs rooms. In 1957, an Australian, William Balcombe’s great-granddaughter, Dame Mabel Brookes from Melbourne, visited St Helena. By then the termites had done their worst: The Briars’ main house had become a crumbling ruin, only the back quarters and cellar remaining.1 Two years later it was demolished to build an ugly concrete-block house for the cable and wireless station manager.2

  However, the Pavilion survived—now capitalised in honour of its important former occupant. Because of her family’s connection with Napoleon, Brookes purchased The Briars Pavilion, and two years later, in a ceremony at Malmaison, outside Paris, she deeded it to the French nation. Since then it has been one of the three French domains of St Helena.

  The prisoner’s habits during the two months he stayed at The Briars proved to be simple and orderly in the extreme. His campaign bed was set up in the pavilion’s one room, and Las Cases and his son would retire each night up the ladder to the two tiny garret spaces, where it was impossible to stand upright. Marchand slept on a mattress guarding the pavilion’s doorway and wrote that his master’s comfort was his chief concern: ‘The table was placed in the middle of the room with a rug over it; it was used as a desk and a dining table, as the room itself was a bedroom, work room and dining room. It was impossible to be more restricted than the Emperor was, but he was free to move about so the rest could be overlooked. A dresser was offered to me with such insistence by Mr Balcombe that I accepted it. I spread out on it the Emperor’s travel case, which, once opened, adorned the room. I sent to town for the silver washbasin from the Elysée-Bourbon palace.’3

  The usual hour for rising was eight o’clock, and Napoleon seldom took anything but a cup of coffee before resuming the dictation of his memoirs. The garden of the pavilion with its view of the waterfall was a delightful place to work. He and Las Cases sat at an iron table in the coolness of a grape arbour while Napoleon relived his military campaigns, the details of his battles and his civil reforms. He aimed for a sequential order, beginning with the Siege of Toulouse, the Italian campaigns, the occupation of Egypt and then the history of the Consulate; however, he kept returning to the subject of Waterloo, which was a constant irritant, a scab he had to pick. He could not conceive how it had ended in defeat; his tactics should have worked! The little count covered reams of paper with his spidery calligraphy, confident that every page was money in his pocket. Back in the pavilion his son worked industriously, making fair copies of the work completed.

  They broke for lunch at one and for dinner at nine. For the first week, meals were delivered by slaves from the boarding house in Jamestown, where, according to Dr O’Meara, there was now ‘a suitable table in the French style provided by Mr Balcombe’.4 However, the food always arrived cold. ‘It was obvious that the Emperor would live very poorly as a result of this arrangement,’ wrote Marchand. ‘Count de Las Cases and his son had to do without table napkins the first day, as the table linen had not yet arrived.’5 Not appreciating the difficulties in importing livestock and vegetables, the French grumbled constantly about the fare, none more stridently than Las Cases on behalf of his master: ‘The bread and wine are not such as we have been accustomed to, and are so bad that we loathe to touch them. Water, coffee, butter, oil, and other articles, are either not to be procured, or are scarcely fit for use.’6

  But Napoleon and Las Cases did not complain directly to Balcombe, thus preserving good relations. One evening Napoleon made a suggestion to Marchand: ‘he said he had a butler and a pantry chef in town; one of the two could be with him and, without disturbing Mrs Balcombe, could take advantage of the room where the slaves cooked their food. In this way he could have a hot dinner.’7 The Balcombes agreed to the arrangement, and two days later, Le Page, the chef, and Pierron, the pantry head, arrived. They were given the use of the slaves’ kitchen and were accommodated in the servants’ quarters. Cipriani the butler remained in town and cooperated with Balcombe to cater for the French people in rented accommodation, while sending up daily provisions for the pavilion.

  At first Le Page failed to understand the limitations island living imposed, and startled the governor’s council secretary, Thomas Brooke, with his extravagance: ‘In a place where fresh beef was so precious as to have occasioned restrictions upon its consumption, it may well be conceived that sensations of no ordinary nature were excited at a demand from the maître-d’hotel of the Ex-Emperor, a few days after his arrival, for four bullocks, in order to make a dish of brains! . . . Sir George Cockburn explained the objections to its being complied with, and the refusal is understood to have been received with perfect good humour.’8

  ‘We understood that the time for self-denial had arrived,’ lamented Marchand. He was relieved when the silver and table linen were brought, so ‘the service for the Emperor’s table took on a regularity it had lacked so far’.9 Napoleon dined in the evening with the count and his son, and then, because space was at a premium, the man accustomed to the luxuries of the Tuileries obligingly vacated the little pavilion so Marchand and the cook could take their meal there.

  Many in the 53rd Regiment were shocked by the deficiencies in their own food supplies, even more limited than before because of the new security arrangements. An officer wrote: ‘This island supplies itself with nothing but vegetables, and depends entirely on imports for subsistence. Cutting off all trade prevents any supply to the inhabitants, but what they are allowed to purchase from the public stores (the same quantity as the ration to the troops), the fishing boats not being allowed to fish at night, which was the best time altogether.’10 A soldier expressed the widely held view that the prisoner was to blame.11

  But for Balcombe, catering for the prisoner was the opportunity of a lifetime. Napoleon’s favourite dish—and therefore that of his retinue—was chicken. Balcombe owned a second property, Ross (or Rose) Cottage, with a few acres of land and soon established a poultry farm with 400 hens, some ducks, geese and guinea fowl. He was now in control, from production to market.

  At The Briars, Napoleon began to relax, even to give the appearance of positively enjoying himself. He had been through the storm of war and the humiliation of defeat, always participating, action followed hard by reaction. Now he had time to analyse that bewildering defeat that had brought him to this, the most remote exile ever suffered by any head of state. He had no intention of adjusting to the situation; he would devise how best to escape from it—and the Balcombe family might just offer an avenue. Meanwhile, surprisingly, there was some pleasure to be had.

  He may have believed he had the measure of his host—a bluff, hearty man alert for his own personal advancement—but Napoleon had not yet divined the full extent of Balcombe’s mysterious influence in London, or the reason for it. The whole family were amiable and he joined them some evenings for games of whist or musical entertainments; the two daughters were attractive, and although Betsy was presumptuous, she made him laugh; the two small boys were lively and playful, clambering over him, fiddling with the toggles of his coat and the gleaming star of his Légion d’Honneur, and four-year-old Alexander reminded him of his own son in a way that was both painful and endearing. He asked Marchand to make a tiny cart for the boys; to their delight it was pulled across the floor by four scurrying mice.

  In an article published in the Quarterly Review the fol
lowing January, Napoleon was portrayed as not nearly so pleasant at these family card games: ‘When Las Casses [sic] put down four gold Napoleons for markers, the youngest of the ladies, who had never seen any of that coin before, took up one, and asked what it was. Buonaparte instantly, with more haste than was consistent with politeness, snatched it out of her hand and exclaimed, with a tone half of vexation and half of triumph, “Ne voyez-vous pas que c’est moi?,” [“Can’t you see that it is me?”] pointing to the impression with his finger.’12

  Betsy made no mention of this in her Recollections, although she did note another card game incident: ‘One day Alexander took up a pack of cards, on which was the usual figure of the Great Mogul. The child held it up to Napoleon, saying, “See Bony, this is you.”’ In her account, Napoleon failed to understand what was meant by calling him ‘Bony’ and asked why the English gave him that name; he knew they called him many things, but why this one? Betsy explained that it was an abbreviation, short for Bonaparte. Las Cases offered a literal translation: ‘It means a thin, bony person—un homme osseux.’ Napoleon laughed and protested, ‘Je ne suis pas osseux’ (‘I am not bony’), which Betsy thought he certainly never could have been, even in his young days: ‘His hand was the fattest and prettiest in the world; his knuckles dimpled like a baby’s.’13 So the Balcombe children were given permission to call him ‘Bony’ if they wished.

  Napoleon’s daily dictation in the grape arbour, involving the recall and justification of complex battle actions—and much creative fiction—was frequently interrupted by the younger girl’s arrival. Her sister Jane rarely intruded except by invitation, but Betsy felt perfectly at liberty to turn up at any time. One day she was accompanied by the admiral’s huge lolloping dog, Tom Pipes. She lured him into the goldfish pond, where he splashed about, plunging vainly after fish. When he scrambled out, he rushed to greet his old shipboard companion, vigorously shaking water all over him and his papers, just as Betsy had planned that he would.

  Las Cases was appalled. What irritated him even more than Betsy’s familiarity was the way that Napoleon, who always insisted on strict formal etiquette from his entourage and staff, seemed endlessly indulgent of her impertinences. On one occasion she deliberately jogged his elbow when he was making an impression of a rare coin and the hot wax spilled and burned his hand; another time she snatched his dictation papers from his desk and danced around the garden flourishing them, calling out: ‘I shall keep these and then I shall find out all your secrets!’14 The count warned the errant girl to have some respect: ‘You need to understand you are talking to the man who governed the world. Once a mere decree from him sufficed to overthrow thrones and create kings. I remember the timidity and embarrassment with which he was approached by ministers and officials; the anxieties and fears of ambassadors, princes and even kings.’15

  But Napoleon was charmed by this mischievous, irreverent sprite of a girl. There had been little laughter since he boarded the Bellerophon, but he laughed often now when she was about. Ever since he had risen to power, he had been surrounded by courtiers and by women who were, on the whole, docile, acquiescent and flattered his ego; he had known graceful adolescent girls such as Laure Permon (the later Madame Junot) and his stepdaughter Hortense—they were the kind of jeune fille of whom he approved. For her part, Josephine could be fiery—she was famous for her tantrums—but had never challenged his ultimate authority. ‘You must submit to all my whims,’ he had told her. ‘I have the right to reply to all your complaints by an eternal moi! I am a being apart.’ His second wife, Marie Louise, young and pliable, also accepted his dictum that ‘I am not a man like other men and the laws of morality or custom cannot be applied to me’.16 He was known to detest outspoken and intellectually brilliant women such as the author Germaine de Staël.

  Betsy Balcombe ‘represented a type which was new to the Emperor’, wrote Lord Rosebery, prime minister of Great Britain for one short term and obsessed with Napoleon Bonaparte for far longer. She was ‘a high-spirited hoyden, who said and did whatever occurred to her on the spur of the moment. The pranks that she played . . . must certainly have been in the nature of a piquant novelty to Napoleon.’17 The girl was honest, blunt in her opinions, a chatterer, loud, bold, giddy, dizzy, positively infuriating much of the time, but she was also enchantingly pretty and full of fun. She simply brightened Napoleon’s day.

  That summer of 1815, the Balcombes found themselves besieged by visitors. People called on the slightest of pretexts and lingered in the garden in the hope of catching a glimpse of the famous guest. A Scottish gentleman from a Company ship in port wrote to his father in Edinburgh that he had visited ‘Mr Balcombe’s country house’ in the hope of seeing Napoleon: ‘He is occupied during the day in writing the history of his life, and the evening is devoted to walking in the garden with his Generals and his society at Mr Balcombe’s. The only chance strangers have of conversing with him, is by getting an introduction to Mr B. and stepping in, as if by chance in the evening. Our Captain and several of our passengers, by this means, have had long conversations with him; he talks upon every subject but those relating to politics, which he seems very desirous to avoid. He behaved with great politeness to the ladies, who have been echoing his praises ever since. We, for I had a companion with me, tied our horses to a tree, and slipt behind a bush, a little way from the walk where he was to pass; he passed several times within a few feet of us: we had a most distinct view of him.’18

  Only on rare occasions—if the visitor was influential with the British government, a naval officer or a pretty female—did Bonaparte allow an actual introduction. But he warned Betsy that he had ‘a peculiar horror of ugly women’.

  Catherine Younghusband, the attractive 35-year-old wife of Captain Robert Younghusband of the 53rd Regiment, had recently arrived on the island. She was charming and accomplished, a competent portrait painter, fluent in Italian and French, and ambitious. She was determined to meet the great Bonaparte and was ‘soon making social calls, with eight-year-old Emily, on the wife and daughters of the merchant William Balcombe . . . a stratagem which shortly brought success. Napoleon, seeing an elegant lady in the garden with a young daughter, could not resist coming out demanding “Qui est cette Dame?”’19 Catherine’s account of the meeting was published in Blackwood’s Magazine: ‘The two young ladies, who were respectively about thirteen and fifteen years of age, and were quite familiar with the Ex-Emperor, ran playfully towards him, dragging me forward by the hand, and saying to him, “This lady is the mother of the little girl who pleased you the other day by singing Italian canzonets.” Upon this he made me a bow, which I returned by a low and reverential curtsy, feeling, at the same time, a little confused at this sudden and unceremonious introduction.’

  Catherine gave this description of the girls to her aunt, Lady Roche, in Ireland: ‘These two unsophisticated young Ladies, who are quite schoolgirls recently arrived from England, are not in the least in awe of him, and call him “Boney” which amuses and astonishes him beyond measure, their behaviour being in curious contrast to the profound respect paid to him by the Generals and Ladies of his suite. He laughs at their fearless vivacity, corrects their bad French & plays at Cards in the evening with the whole Family at the Briars for Sugar Plums.’20

  However, apart from a few favoured visitors, Napoleon found it infuriating to be one of the ‘sights’ of St Helena. One afternoon when he was relaxing in the grape arbour, he once again found himself the object of scrutiny by strangers and escaped in the only direction he could, by leaping into the prickly-pear hedge. He was rescued by Marchand; not only did he suffer the indignity of torn clothing and scratched legs, but Dr O’Meara needed to be called to extract dozens of sharp thorns from the ample imperial buttocks.

  The Leggs, a neighbouring farming family, came to visit the Balcombes, and were entertained in the parlour. Their daughter, a few years younger than Betsy, confided that she was terrified of Boney the bogeyman and begged to be warned if he came n
ear. ‘Let’s see,’ said Betsy, and headed out the door and skipped over to the arbour. She intimated the little girl’s fear to Napoleon and asked him to come to the house. He followed, surprisingly amenable, leaving Las Cases glaring. On the way, ‘the former ruler of half the world’ mussed his hair so it stood up in spikes. He pushed past Betsy into the parlour, contorting his features hideously, roaring like a savage beast (he later said it was his Cossack howl) as he rushed at the little girl. The child screamed so violently that Mrs Balcombe feared she was having a hysterical fit and shepherded her out of the room. Farmer Legg and his wife stared in shock. Napoleon stumbled back to the garden, choking with laughter. Between splutters, Betsy admitted that she used to be afraid of him as well. ‘When I made this confession, he tried to frighten me as he had poor little Miss Legg, by brushing up his hair and distorting his features; but he looked more grotesque than horrible, and I only laughed at him.’21

  Betsy’s good looks, remarked upon in most memoirs produced from the exile (while they have little to say about her less advantaged sister Jane), no doubt allowed more tolerance of her wayward personality. In a plainer girl her behaviour would have been viewed as mere vulgarity—as it was by Las Cases, impervious to her appeal. Indeed, there may have been a sexual element to Napoleon’s attraction. Her youth would not necessarily have forbidden such thoughts—his own mother had married at fourteen years of age.22 But his relationship with Betsy remained chaste.

  She was at that teetering stage of adolescence, her starched pinafore taut, her eyes bright with curiosity and impudence, not yet cautious from setbacks and disappointment, not too knowing from experience. There is just one likeness of her from that time, and it is barely a likeness at all, a French lithograph of her and her sister, almost certainly drawn by Marchand. The girls, in pale flowing dresses with long pantaloons underneath, offer flowers to Napoleon. The face of the shorter one is obscured by a large straw hat trailing ribbons.23