Betsy’s memoir describes how, as the time drew near for Napoleon’s departure, ‘he would come into the drawing-room oftener, and stay longer. He would, he said, have preferred altogether remaining at the Briars; because he beguiled the hours with us better than he ever thought it possible he could have done on such a horrible rock as St. Helena.’19 He had suggested purchasing their property—apparently with Balcombe’s approval, who would have done handsomely out of the deal—‘but circumstances, probably political, prevented the negotiation from being carried out’.20 However, according to Marchand, ‘the Emperor was beginning to tire of his prolonged stay at the Briars; appearing in short britches and silk stockings for walks in the garden after sunset he had caught a cold and was coughing a lot’. Mrs Balcombe, kind and gracious, ‘offered to make him an infusion of four flowers with honey from her own hives’. Napoleon thanked her and showed her a small candy box containing licorice, the only remedy he said he liked to use.21
Bertrand visited Longwood and reported that the house smelled badly of paint. Betsy would ‘never forget the fury of the emperor. He walked up and down the lawn, gesticulating in the wildest manner. His rage was so great that it almost choked him. He declared that the smell of paint was so obnoxious to him that he would never inhabit a house where it existed.’
They were interrupted by extraordinary news. Montholon arrived, breathless from his climb up the hill, with a Paris Gazette just delivered. He said that the whole of France was in a state of revolution; that an army of 15,000 men had been organised and that everywhere they were shouting for the emperor. Admiral Cockburn had told him that such a state of affairs would be the ruin of England, as they would have to call up the militia. Gourgaud described Napoleon’s distress at his inability to take advantage of the insurgency: ‘The Emperor is so moved by this news of the 15,000 men that he strides along crying “It is now that it is cruel to be a prisoner here. Who will lead this movement? I see nobody capable of doing anything big. Eugene [his stepson by Josephine] has a good headpiece, judgment and good qualities, but not that genius, that resolute character that distinguishes great men . . . It is only I who could succeed!”’22
When Colonel Bingham came to escort his prisoner to Longwood, he found him in his dressing-gown; Napoleon ‘excused himself from going on account of the smell of paint’. But he ‘appeared to be in unusual good spirits, having on the table English papers to the 15th of September’ detailing the political turmoil in France. He had read about the trial and execution of Marshal Ney, who had been one of his bravest commanders at Waterloo and yet was now deemed to be a traitor, and of the rise of the ‘ultra-royalists’, extreme conservatives who aimed to restore the ancien régime and purge the country of those who, in their view, had betrayed it. The papers reported 300 victims of their ‘white terror’ in the south of France, and in the August election the ‘ultras’ had been triumphant in the Chamber of Deputies; as a result, the country was divided and many feared the restored Bourbon monarchy would not survive. Bingham observed Napoleon’s optimism: ‘The greater confusion there is in France, the greater chance he thinks there is of his being allowed to return, as he thinks the English government will be obliged to recall him to compose the confusion that exists in that unhappy country.’23 Catherine Younghusband had the same impression and wrote to her aunt: ‘I am told that he is quite convinced that the French nation will recall him; indeed, he says, it cannot do without him; & he much fears it will not be safe for any English to travel in France through the exasperation of the French at his being kept at St Helena.’24
Las Cases went up to Longwood without Bonaparte and failed to notice a paint odour. Bertrand was chided for an exaggerated report. As dusk fell, Napoleon strolled in The Briars’ garden with Gourgaud and confided his new idea—the English ought to raise an insurrection in Paris as a pretext for burning the city: ‘It would be a great coup for England to destroy our capital. The English could probably sink our Fleet, overwhelm our ports, especially Cherbourg, Brest, Toulon. After this they would have nothing to fear from France for a long time.’25
But they would have much to fear from Napoleon Bonaparte. If he had the chance, the burning of Paris and destruction of the principal French ports and fleets were not too high a price to pay, if he could return to take control.
On the morning of 10 December, ‘that good man Bony’ went out to the orchard to farewell Toby and presented him with twenty Napoleon coins, a fortune for the old slave—but not enough to buy the freedom he craved. Bonaparte then joined his hosts at The Briars’ house for a final luncheon. Marchand noted that although Balcombe would continue to have free access to the emperor in his role as providore, he ‘was urged to come see him with his daughters and wife once we were settled at Longwood’.26
Admiral Cockburn arrived in a carriage with General Bertrand and an escort of guards to accompany the prisoner to his new home. Betsy could not be consoled at the departure of the man she had presumed to regard ‘almost as a brother or companion of my own age’. He saw her weeping and came up to her: ‘“You must not cry, Mademoiselle Betsee; you must come and see me next week, and very often”. I told him that depended on my father. He turned to him and said, “Balcombe, you must bring Missee Jane and Betsee to see me next week eh? When will you ride up to Longwood?” My father promised he would, and kept his word. He asked where mamma was, and I said she desired her kind regards to the emperor, and regretted not being able to see him before his departure, as she was ill in bed. “I will go and see her”; and up the stairs he darted before we had time to tell my mother of his approach. He seated himself on the bed, and expressed his regret at hearing she was unwell.’ He thanked her for her kindness to him and presented her with a gold snuff box, asking that she give it to her husband as a mark of friendship. He gave the tearful Betsy a little good-luck charm she had often admired, joking that she should give it ‘as a gage d’amour [a pledge of love] to le petit Las Cases’.
Marchand had gone ahead to Longwood: ‘I wished to arrive there before the Emperor in order to receive him.’27 Balcombe accompanied the main party on the three-mile ascent, arriving in the late afternoon. On his return his family wanted to know what Napoleon thought of his new residence and were told that ‘he appeared out of spirits, and, retiring to his dressing-room, had shut himself up for the remainder of the day’.28
Napoleon may not have known it then, or perhaps he guessed, but his one period of gaiety—unexpected, incongruous, and principally due to Betsy Balcombe—on the island of St Helena was at an end.
CHAPTER 10
LONGWOOD HOUSE
During the two months that the exiled emperor stayed at The Briars he had gone out of his way to establish warm relations with the Balcombe family: with the irrepressible Betsy, of course; with sweet-natured Jane; with playful Thomas; and with young Alexander, who reminded him of his own son. He could not fail to like the attractive Mrs Balcombe, for she was liked by everyone. But he had made a particular effort to cultivate the gregarious, heavy-drinking and often boastful William Balcombe—hardly his type—and to flatter him that they were friends. It was tactical for him to flatter the protégé of Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, who was close to the royal family and within their ambit of power.
Furthermore, an intriguing rumour was circulating about Balcombe. Montholon had heard it: ‘It was said in the island that he was the natural son of the Prince of Wales.’1 The story had been around for some years, for it was known to Balcombe’s former business partner William Burchell.2 The St Helena Archives holds a copy of Burchell’s ‘St Helena Journal’. On 6 July 1808 he had written: ‘Balcombe dined with me; he mentioned that it had been said to Mr Tyrwhitt that it was reported that B. was a son of the Prince of Wales & that Mr T. desired B. to contradict such a report. By my letters I learn that he is the son of a poor fisherman of Brighton who was drowned & the Prince hearing of the distressed state of the widow desired Tyrwhitt to take care of the two children who were then very young. But it seems B
. encouraged this report if not set it on foot.’3 Burchell clearly doubted the story of royal paternity and suspected his colleague of promoting it. He had reason to be sceptical.
Records show that William Balcombe was born at the seaside village of Rottingdean near Brighton on Christmas Day 1777.4 George Augustus Frederick, the Prince of Wales (later George IV), would not have turned fifteen when—or a very problematic if—he had sired William.5 It is an unlikely scenario, but not altogether impossible. The prince was flagrantly precocious, with at least three known sexual partners by the age of fifteen. His tutor at that time, Bishop Richard Hurd, predicted that he would be ‘either the most polished gentleman or the most accomplished blackguard in Europe—possibly both’.6 The prince followed the pattern of his roistering uncles, the dukes of Gloucester and Cumberland: ‘He was an ardent and unmitigated admirer of their sexual adventures and excesses. He eagerly followed their example, slipping out of the royal house for clandestine escapades when his parents thought he had retired to bed for the night. The King was aghast when he heard the open talk going round the household staff of the fifteen-year-old prince seducing one of the Queen’s maids of honour, who clearly found it impossible to live up to the title of her job. More distressing was the news relayed to him that among his early conquests, George numbered the Duchess of Cumberland—his uncle’s wife.’7
Balcombe’s mother, Mary Vandyke, was from Lewes in Sussex; she was two months pregnant with William when she married Stephen Balcombe of Rottingdean on 27 May 1777. Was the baby his or was he accepting, knowingly or not, a royal ‘by-blow’? But it is difficult to imagine how Mary and the prince could have met, let alone mated. George did not adopt Brighton and the Sussex coast as his playground until 1784.8
Burchell’s journal entry indicates that the rumour of Balcombe as a royal bastard existed at least seven years before Napoleon came to the island to confer reflected celebrity on him. Balcombe did not dispute the story, and may indeed have encouraged it, and his indiscretion had annoyed Tyrwhitt, the prince’s long-term secretary—knighted four years later for loyalty such as this—who requested he contradict it. (Of course, if William really was the biological son of the prince and not of the fisherman Balcombe, he may have compromised an agreed cover story and deserved Tyrwhitt’s rebuke for bragging.)
The Sussex village of Rottingdean was notorious in the late eighteenth century for smuggling (brandy, wine, tobacco and French lace), the contraband brought across the Channel from France and Belgium in little boats. Rottingdean lacked shelter for larger vessels, so serious fishermen worked out of the Steine at Brighton, Stephen Balcombe perhaps among them.9 There are three differing stories concerning his drowning.
William’s great-granddaughter, Dame Mabel Brookes, while not absolutely denying ‘the possibility of a royal father’ for William, proposed in her St Helena Story that his father was ‘captain of a frigate’ who was ‘reputedly . . . lost at sea with his ship’, and that ‘the boys were educated by the King’s Bounty’ as a consequence.10 But there is no Balcombe in Syrett’s definitive lists of Commissioned Sea Officers of the Royal Navy 1660–1815.
A Rottingdean history has suggested that William’s father was a privateer in the Channel during the wars with France and drowned at sea.11 A fisherman with a substantial vessel could become a privateer by obtaining a government licence—a Letter of Marque—to attack enemy shipping and take prizes. If he was killed in action, his family might perhaps be given royal support. There are other examples of the prince’s generosity to victims of misfortune.12
The most likely theory, however, because written to Lord Bathurst by Sir Hudson Lowe, who was about to become St Helena’s next governor, had Balcombe’s father drowned in a boating accident caused by a yacht belonging to the Prince of Wales.13 After the prince moved to Brighton in 1784, advised by his physicians to take up sea bathing, it is known that ‘aquatic excursions’ became ‘his favourite amusement in the summer months’, his vessel negotiating its way through up to a hundred fishing smacks.14 The contemporary Brighton newspapers make no mention of an accident causing a death, but nor were they likely to if it implicated the prince. Newspapers of the period were hamstrung, dependent upon whichever political party supported them. While many publications demonstrated their freedom to lampoon the prince’s lubricious lifestyle, they were restricted in discussing more serious matters affecting the royal family or the state. The government ‘used secret service funds—allotted to prevent “treasonable or other dangerous conspiracies against the state”—to ensure a favourable press’.15
What is certain is that Stephen Balcombe met an untimely death, between 1784, when his youngest son was born (who died in infancy), and December 1788, when Mary, the boys’ mother, married again, to Charles Terry, a tailor.16 The wedding, at St Margaret’s Rottingdean, was held on William’s eleventh birthday.17
A year later, young William went to sea as a ‘captain’s servant’ in the Royal Navy and within two years was officially appointed a midshipman, a much-sought-after position only gained through patronage.18 Whether he was sired by a precocious prince or was merely a beneficiary of his charity after his father’s drowning (and one version does not necessarily exclude the other), it is undeniable that from an early age he enjoyed the protection and assistance of the royal go-between Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt.
Correspondence with the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle has produced acknowledgement of two illegitimate children born to George IV, but no record of a Balcombe in their files.19 Nevertheless, it is intriguing to study images of the prince and the one known portrait of William Balcombe and to perceive a distinct likeness in the wide, genial countenance, tousled curly hair, the straight nose and determined chin, the high-boned meaty cheeks, large frame and tendency to overweight . . .
If the thought occurs that Sir Thomas himself was William’s natural father, it should almost certainly be dismissed. Apart from the fact that there was not the slightest physical resemblance—Tyrwhitt was so florid and diminutive that he was known to the royal family as ‘our little red dwarf ’20—he was exactly the same age as the prince but, the son of a country parson, he was not known then or later to have sexual relations with the opposite sex.21 Tyrwhitt never married and may not even have had the sexual orientation.
Balcombe’s paternity cannot be confirmed now, and never was during the years of Napoleon’s captivity. But the rumour persisted on St Helena. Baron von Stürmer, later the Austrian commissioner based on the island, mentioned it to Prince Metternich: ‘Mr Balcombe, a trader, who is said to be the natural son of the Prince Regent . . .’22 The fact that Balcombe certainly had the otherwise inexplicable patronage of the prince’s friend and former private secretary meant there could be something to the story—so it could not be discounted by Napoleon and his retinue.
If the merchant was in fact the natural child of the prince, then no person on the island, not the governor nor the admiral, had more direct access to the centre of power in Britain. Napoleon believed that his best hope of removal from the hated rock, or at least of more lenient treatment, depended on the Prince Regent, or on the accession to the throne of his daughter Princess Charlotte. It was essential that the merchant’s friendship be nurtured.
Bonaparte was known to always act in a measured way, calculating the odds best suited to achieve his objectives. As Germaine de Staël, the great female intellectual of the era, observed of him quite early in his career: ‘I had the disturbing feeling that no emotion of the heart could ever reach him. He regards a human being like a fact or a thing, never as an equal person like himself. He neither hates nor loves . . . The force of his will resides in the imperturbable calculations of his egotism. He is a chess-master whose opponents happen to be the rest of humanity . . .’23
As rain closed in, our charabanc slewed along the narrow muddy lanes, rounding hairpin bends, climbing higher. The windswept plateau on which Longwood House is built, 520 metres above the sea, is open to the south-east trades blast
ing across the Atlantic. Trees are misshapen and bent from their impact.
The driver directed our attention to the looming mountain called the Barn; its jagged cliffs plunging to the sea are said to be shaped like Napoleon’s profile, and indeed with a little imagination it was possible to discern an aquiline nose, chiselled lips and a severe brow.
The garden at Longwood, with agapanthus and iris in flower and the Tricolore flapping on the flagpole, is attractively wooded now, but was bare and unsheltered when the French were installed in December 1815. Napoleon was partly responsible for the improvement; in 1818, after three years of boredom, he began work, digging and planting out in the sun in loose trousers and a Chinese coolie hat, saying: ‘One day, perhaps one hundred years from now, people will visit this area and admire the garden.’24
Napoleon was five and a half years at Longwood House, longer than he ever spent at any imperial residence, for he used his palaces only between campaigns. Our tour group was guided through the rooms, shrines to the former emperor: the billiard room where he rarely played billiards but spread his old campaign maps on the table; the circular holes in the shutters where he squinted at Governor Lowe and the British guards through a telescope; the huge globe of the world, sepia with age, where the island of St Helena does not appear in the Atlantic, allegedly rubbed out by a furious finger. There is the dimly lit dining room where meals were served with formal pomp, and the emperor’s little bedchamber and sitting room, with his tricorne hat and a copy of the greatcoat he wore at the Battle of Marengo displayed on the pink chaise longue. We peered into the deep timber-clad copper bath in which he soaked for hours, reading and fretting away his life. ‘Boredom,’ wrote Gourgaud in his journal, ‘boredom, boredom, sadness . . .’ Most gloomy is the drawing room and the green-curtained campaign bed where Napoleon breathed his last on 5 May 1821.
Betsy and the Emperor Page 11