Betsy and the Emperor

by Anne Whitehead

  ‘Never! You revoked! You cheated!’

  At this Napoleon jumped up and, calling her wicked (‘Ah, you are méchante!’), snatched up her ball dress from the sofa. He ran from the room with it and up to the pavilion. She gasped in astonishment. Then she set off up the path in pursuit. But he was too quick, darting through the marquee and locking himself in the inner room. Despite her remonstrances and tears, he called through the door that he was keeping the dress to teach her a lesson.

  The ball was the following evening. There was no sign of Napoleon throughout the day. Betsy sent several begging messages to the pavilion but was told that the emperor was sleeping and could not be disturbed. Neither of her parents was willing to approach him. Because she was not yet of an age to ‘come out’ into society, they had not wanted her to go in the first place; nor would they have wished to engage their distinguished guest on such a frivolous matter—although they must have wondered why he bothered with it.

  The day wore on and at last the hour arrived for their departure. The horses were brought around and the young slave boys loaded the tin cases holding the ladies’ silks and satins—but not Betsy’s beautiful gown. Her mother and sister would be able to change into their evening finery at the castle and she would still be wearing her plain little house dress. By the time they reached the gate she was inclined to return home, but then Napoleon came running across the grass with her gown over his arm. ‘Here, Miss Betsee, I have brought it for you! I hope you are a good girl now and that you will enjoy the ball.’ He walked beside their horses until they came to the end of the bridle track which joined the Sidepath. He asked idly about a farmhouse he noticed far below. As they waved goodbye he called out to Betsy: ‘Make sure that you dance with Gourgaud!’ The emperor was mocking her as usual. She detested Gourgaud.21

  The whitewashed castle walls were lit by flaming torches, reflected in the waters of James Bay. Turbaned black pages in brilliant satin livery greeted the new arrivals in the forecourt, took charge of the horses and directed the ladies to the anteroom where they changed.

  The Balcombes and the French party entered the ballroom together at nine o’clock. Madame Bertrand, in a Parisian gown of heavy brocade, and Madame de Montholon, in a low-cut dress, her breasts sparkling with diamonds and emeralds estimated to be worth £1000, were the sensations of the evening. (Admiral Cockburn was tolerant enough to overlook the fact that he had requested all precious jewellery to be surrendered when they boarded the Northumberland.) The locals had never seen such style and glamour.22 A number of dashing officers, including Colonel Bingham, approached the French ladies, and soon their dance cards were filled. ‘The dress of the French party is so magnificent,’ observed Catherine Younghusband, ‘as to throw all the English and St Helenians into the background.’ However, in her view that was no great challenge: ‘The English ladies born here are called Yam-stocks. They are, many of them, very pretty & blooming, but very ignorant.’23

  A few midshipmen eyed off the local beauties, but were mindful of a lieutenant’s warning that many of the girls viewed these occasions as a ‘Ladder to Matrimony’ and escape from the island: ‘The Governor’s ball gives them an opportunity of setting their caps to the best advantage, and many an unwary bachelor becomes inextricably enthralled by the sirens of St Helena.’24

  Gourgaud was discomforted to be greeted by their host Admiral Cockburn, who requested—with a firmness that sounded like an order—that he should book the first quadrille with Mrs Balcombe, the second with Betsy Balcombe and the third with Miss Knipe, a farmer’s daughter.25 ‘My intention was not to dance with the Balcombes but here I am caught,’ Gourgaud complained to his journal. Betsy would have agreed with him. She failed to write about the ball herself and must have found it a disappointment after all her expectations. It was especially tedious to have to dance with Gourgaud. No doubt she looked delightful in her rose-trimmed gown and attracted some attention, but she was outshone by the French ladies. And by the governor’s daughter.

  Laura Wilks whirled past them in an officer’s arms. It was only the second time Gourgaud had seen her—he was impressed enough the first time to rush home and sketch her—and now he was completely infatuated: ‘She has a charming face; a mixture of sweetness, intelligence and distinction. She salutes me as she dances past. Ah! Why am I a prisoner?’ Poor Gourgaud wanted to get married. He was tormented by erotic fantasies involving various women. He was not mollified when Napoleon told him, ‘When you don’t think about them you don’t need them.’ He did think about them, and his covert and hasty sexual encounters were not enough; he hoped to woo a young lady such as Laura Wilks for a wife. But alas, her dance card was filled and he was instructed by the admiral to escort Madame De Fountain, the dull wife of a councillor, to supper.

  What was worse, he considered that he and his French compatriots were snubbed in the table seating, and the six quadrilles to which he was committed dragged on until five thirty in the morning. There were other annoyances: ‘A rosy young lady made a terrible fart as she was dancing.’26 In the November heat, the energetic, perspiring couples on the floor were observed by some to be ‘not safe to approach . . . literally swimming through the dance’.27

  The sun was rising as the Balcombes came down the castle steps to the courtyard to find a cart blocking the archway and only exit, with a group of carousing midshipmen on top, singing at the top of their voices ‘Lord W’s carriage stops the way’.28

  While the dancing was still in progress that night, the admiral and Governor Wilks had received an alarming message. Bonaparte had slipped past the captain and duty sergeant at The Briars earlier that evening and clambered down the mountain track to Maldivia farmhouse in the valley below. His unexpected visit astounded its occupant, Major Charles Hodson of the St Helena regiment, who did his best to be hospitable, as he later recalled: ‘I, of course, went out to meet him; he came into the house, looked about, and seemed very well pleased with it and the garden, which he walked over, paid Mrs Hodson a great many fine compliments, and took a great deal of notice of the children.’29

  Napoleon joked that his tall and imposing host should be called ‘Hercules’, and was loaned an Arab pony for the ride home. He gave the servants who accompanied him some French coins. He was asleep at the pavilion, exhausted by the adventure, by the time the intelligence reached the castle.

  No harm had been done. This time. But security would need to be stepped up at The Briars.

  CHAPTER 9

  LAST DAYS AT THE PAVILION

  The main street of Jamestown leads up from the waterfront and the archway over the old drawbridge, past the castle and its gardens, the courthouse, church and gaol, the Georgian buildings now housing offices, hotels and stores, to the tourist office at the crossroads. Market Street leads off to the right and Napoleon Street to the left. At this central point, in front of the casement windows of the office, are two gnarled trees with bolts driven into their trunks. These were for the purpose of securing human beings in manacles.

  At the time of Napoleon’s arrival, St Helena was the last outpost of Britain’s empire where slavery was still legal, although the importation of slaves was not. But on the island the practice continued. Every child born of a slave automatically became a slave also, the property of the owner, who could buy, sell and barter them at will. Slave auctions were held under the trees, centre stage for the town, as late as 1829. In the castle archives there are dozens of notices such as this:

  TO BE SOLD & LET BY PUBLIC AUCTION

  THE FOLLOWING SLAVES

  Hannibal, about 30 Years old, an excellent House Servant

  William, about 35 Years old, a Labourer

  Nancy, an excellent House Servant and Nurse

  Philip, an Excellent Fisherman

  Clara, an Excellent Washerwoman

  Fanny, about 14 Years old, House Servant1

  Some horses had arrived from the Cape and Napoleon was given a handsome black stallion called Hope. He liked the name and said
it was a good augury. He rode it around The Briars’ front lawn, cutting up the turf. Soon he was enjoying a daily outing on horseback and frequently led Captain Mackay a merry chase, cantering on the ill-made roads and skirting perilously close to the edge of ravines. He was at his most imposing when mounted, as he was well aware, and people in the little cottages scattered among the hills looked forward to the sight of him in his high boots, green coat and cocked hat. They felt that to wave to him was to insert themselves into a small place in history. Sometimes he would rein in to talk to people on the road, startling a soldier, seaman, Chinese labourer or slave carrying building materials up to Longwood. As Dr O’Meara observed: ‘Every day bodies of two or three hundred seamen were employed in carrying up from Jamestown, timber and other materials . . . so deficient was the island in the means of transport that almost everything, even the very stones for building, were carried up the steep Sidepath on the heads and shoulders of the seamen, occasionally assisted by fatigue parties of the 53rd Regiment.’2

  Napoleon claimed to feel most compassion for the slaves, referring particularly to Toby, the old Malay at The Briars, and he criticised the British government for permitting the continuation of an evil it boasted elsewhere of having abolished. He was appalled when Gourgaud told him he had witnessed ‘a woman slave sold publicly’ in Jamestown.3

  One day he stopped to chat with Mrs Balcombe on the road near The Briars’ front gate and was introduced to her companion, Mrs Stuart, a pretty young Scotswoman from a ship calling in on its home voyage from Bombay.4 He questioned her about the customs of India, Hindu saints and sadhus (holy men), and the difficulties of the sea voyage for women. As they conversed, Las Cases translating, Mrs Balcombe ‘in rather an angry tone’ indicated to a group of sweating slaves, laden with heavy timber beams, that they should detour around them. Napoleon interjected: ‘Consider the burden, Madame,’ and drew his horse aside to let them pass. Las Cases included an account in his Mémorial: ‘Mrs Stuart, who had been taught to regard Napoleon as a monster, was inexpressibly amazed by this touching incident. In a low tone of voice she exclaimed to her friend, “What a countenance and what a character! How different from what I had been led to expect!”’5

  Of course, Napoleon’s own regime had been greatly enriched by the labour of slaves in the French possessions. Although the trade in human beings had been abolished in the colonies during the Revolution, he himself reinstated it.

  A former slave, François-Dominique Toussaint L’Ouverture, had led the slave rebellion of 1791 in Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti), the most valuable sugar colony in the West Indies. After the new French republic abolished slavery, L’Ouverture allied himself with it and established control over the whole island, repelling British attempts to invade (including the 1796 expedition in which Balcombe participated). But in June 1802, the slaves’ revolution was savagely suppressed. Acting on First Consul Bonaparte’s specific orders, French troops seized L’Ouverture and sent him to prison high in the Jura Mountains of France, where he died the following year.6 Dictating his memoirs on St Helena, Napoleon was defiant about the decision: ‘There was no longer room for deliberation; the honor as well as the interest of France called for the annihilation of the negro chiefs, who, in my eyes, were nothing more than ungrateful Africans and rebels, with whom it was impossible to establish any system.’7

  However, on another occasion, keen to burnish his new image as a benefactor to slaves, he admitted that the French brutality on Saint-Domingue was an error: ‘I have to reproach myself for the attempt at the Colony during the Consulate; it was a great mistake to have wanted to subdue it by force; I should have contented myself to govern it through the intermediary of Toussaint.’8 During the ‘Hundred Days’ of his reign in 1815 after his return from Elba, he decreed the abolition of the French slave trade, although some historians suggest that he did so only to win over British public opinion, particularly that of the Whig liberals.9 Once he was exiled to St Helena, French vessels were refitted as slave ships and the traffic from Africa resumed.

  Since 1659, the British East India Company had used the slaves of St Helena for its vegetable gardens, plantations and stock, and for victualling and supplying water for its vessels returning from Asia to Europe. ‘It has been observed,’ wrote a visitor, Francis Duncan, ‘that whites will seldom work in a warm climate when they can get slaves to labour for them.’10 The slaves were primarily imported from Company possessions in the East Indies, the Indian subcontinent and the island of Madagascar, whose people, of mixed Malay, Arabic and East African descent, were prized. By 1676, the Company demanded that every English ship coming from Madagascar ‘was obliged to leave on the island [of St Helena] one Negro, male or female, as the governor chose’.11 As Company employees took up plantations on the island, more slaves were imported, some from West Africa. But whatever the slaves’ racial background—and although most were olive- or copper-skinned—they were usually described as ‘blacks’ or ‘negroes’.

  In St Helena’s early days, the slaves’ treatment was some of the most horrific on record anywhere. In his Isle of St Helena, Oswell Blakeston wrote of the punishment of errant slaves: ‘hot sealing wax was dropped on naked bodies, with ferocious floggings . . . with orders for all slaves to bring one faggot of wood each to a pyre so that a slave could be burnt alive, a screaming example to discourage others’.12 A year after Napoleon’s arrival, a census taken on St Helena indicated that there were 821 white civilian residents, 820 garrison troops and 618 Chinese labourers. These three groups combined were matched in numbers by slaves, a quarter of whom were ‘free blacks’, meaning that at different times, and for various reasons, they had been emancipated by their owners.13 The slaves survived on a meagre diet of rice, yams grown on a Company farm, and whatever fish they caught themselves in their fraction of free time.

  Sometimes when Napoleon had difficulty sleeping he wandered into the darkened garden and beyond to the orchard. Toby, the old Malay slave, was strict about entry to his domain, and according to Betsy none of the Balcombe family disputed his authority, but Toby had a soft spot for the occupant of the pavilion and always brought him the choicest fruit. ‘Our old Malay was so fond of the man Bony, as he designated the emperor, that he always placed the garden key where Napoleon’s fingers could reach it under the wicket. No one else was ever favoured in the like manner, but he had completely fascinated and won the old man’s heart.’14

  Count de Montholon wrote in his memoirs: ‘The eldest daughter of Mr Balcombe one day seeing Toby carrying a heavy burden from the town, having learned the story of his misfortune and the bitter grief he felt at being separated from his children, conceived the idea of obtaining his liberty and sending him back to his home’. Balcombe said he would try to bring this about; he started slowly, by imposing no other labour on the old Malay than the care of the vegetable garden. Betsy applied pressure on Napoleon: ‘The younger of the two, who was very pretty and even more mischievous than beautiful, felt that she could do anything and say anything with impunity, and had all the boldness of a spoiled child. She took advantage of a happy opportunity to ask the Emperor to buy the Malay, and, after her own fashion, related to him one evening the history of her protégé. “I won’t love my father because he doesn’t keep his promise, but I will love you well, if you restore Toby to his children: do you know that he has a girl just of my age, who is very like me?”’

  At this, we are told, Bonaparte softened. ‘He assured her that the next day he would give orders to purchase the slave, and request the admiral to send him back to the Indies by the first opportunity. But then the purchase was not in the power of the Emperor; it was not sufficient to pay the sum demanded by the master of the slave. In order to emancipate a slave, it was necessary to go through a long series of formalities, and our departure from Briars to Longwood surprised us before these formalities could be finished.’15 (The ‘ownership’ of Toby was confusing: he had been ‘purchased’ by a Captain Wrangham who had left the isl
and, so in a sense was ‘on loan’ to Balcombe. But as Wrangham had been gone for years, an executive decision could have been made by the governor to free Toby.)

  The following year there was a new admiral and, more to the point, a new governor, Sir Hudson Lowe. Bonaparte put the request again, through O’Meara. The governor judged, probably correctly, that Bonaparte’s strategy was to win favour as a compassionate figure with the Whigs back in England, in order to encourage their lobbying for a more amenable situation for him. Lowe advised the doctor to ‘let him believe that I will submit his request to the council of the Company’, but in reality he was emphatic that ‘I would not do what you ask for anything in the world’.16

  However, the episode achieved what was no doubt intended: the story spread, adding sentimental lustre to Napoleon’s legend.

  On 28 November 1815, Colonel Bingham hosted a farewell breakfast for Governor Wilks and his family, and those constituting society on the island were invited. Three large marquees were set up, one with a dance floor; there were tables for ninety guests and these were decorated with flowers. Bingham wrote to his wife Emma in England of these preparations: ‘It appeared as if it were all enchantment to the natives of St Helena, who are so slow in their actions that it would have taken them one year to have accomplished what we did in six days.’17

  For weeks Napoleon had observed the fatigue parties of the 53rd Regiment as they wound around the mountains to the beat of fifes and drums, building materials on their shoulders. Now they were no longer heaving stone blocks and timbers, but rather furniture, rugs and pictures. Longwood House would soon be ready for occupation.

  According to Catherine Younghusband, Napoleon was ‘not at all anxious to quit the Briars, or in a hurry to go to Longwood, which is being fitted up for him with all the little elegance St Helena can afford’. Nor did Madame Bertrand welcome the move. She ‘dislikes the idea of leaving James Town and accompanying Buonaparte to what she calls his Country Castle. She prefers the town, wretched and hot as it is, because the French party there are much visited & they hear all the Gossip. The Admiral, however, says he cannot think of making the Government pay 55 guineas a week for Fancies.’18