Betsy and the Emperor

by Anne Whitehead

  Returning from one of these outings on 5 May, the riders encountered William Balcombe, walking with James Urmston, the English manager of the Company factory in Canton, whose ship was in port. Napoleon invited both men to join him for lunch in Longwood’s garden. In the course of the meal, the French voiced their bitter complaints about Governor Lowe. Gourgaud recorded: ‘We don’t have much to say in favour of the Governor! Balcombe, who was present at the interview, is confident that we shall soon be back again in France. That is the general opinion.’24 According to Bertrand’s journal of the same date, Balcombe said that the admiral was far superior to the governor in rank and ‘played a straight bat’. He added that the governor knew nothing about administration.25

  Balcombe’s remarks would certainly have reached the governor’s ears. It is on record that James Urmston ‘saw a good deal’ of Lowe at Plantation House and maintained a correspondence with him, and that Lowe, ‘who had a genius for systematizing his private intelligences . . . gave Urmston a kind of roving commission as anti-Napoleonic informer for the Far East’.26 This explains Lowe’s early suspicion of Balcombe and his resentment of his intimacy with the people at Longwood. Although he was aware of Balcombe’s influential connections in London and the fact that Admiral Cockburn seemed particularly friendly with him, he thought he should be closely watched. The agent he could rely upon was Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Thomas Reade, his deputy adjutant-general.

  Reade had been his chief of staff at Genoa and afterwards had been ‘employed in the intelligence department’. According to the historian Gilbert Martineau, the short, plump and baby-faced 31-year-old Reade was ‘the most savage and the least scrupulous enemy the French possessed’.27 About this time, Reade became a regular visitor at The Briars. People believed that he was paying court to young Betsy, but almost certainly those attentions provided a convenient cover.

  If Napoleon was not reconciled to his situation, at least he was becoming realistic. He also seemed calmer, but this may have been because in mid-May he was working on an escape plan proposed by Las Cases. The plan is referred to in Montholon’s papers, although without details.28 Lowe’s rigorous security procedures had fuelled Napoleon’s determination to outwit him. If he could manage to escape he would destroy the governor’s career.

  Towards the end of May, the Balcombes came to lunch at Longwood, which would not have endeared them to the governor. Gourgaud had his usual objections to the girls, calling them ‘silly geese’: ‘They refer to His Majesty as the “General”, for which we twit them. They visit Mme Montholon and make grimaces behind her back.’29 (The grimaces no doubt concerned Madame’s advanced pregnancy—the baby was due the following month.)

  Napoleon had a temporary distraction from his annoyance with the governor, a two-wheeled calash or jaunting car, for which he had paid £245.30 Far speedier than Wilks’s old four-wheeled barouche, it had just arrived from the Cape and he proposed taking Betsy and Jane for a ride. Archambault the groom lashed six skittish horses three abreast and they set off at a hard gallop. Napoleon took mischievous pleasure in calling for an increase in pace as they thundered around the yawning chasm known as the Devil’s Punchbowl. He seemed gratified by the terror on Betsy’s face. ‘The party occupying the side nearest the declivity seemed almost hanging over the precipice,’ she wrote, ‘while the others were, apparently, crushed against the gigantic walls formed by the perpendicular rock . . . He added to my fright, by repeatedly assuring me the horses were running away, and that we should be all dashed to pieces.’ She was relieved when they joined her mother at Hutt’s Gate, to take tea with the Bertrands in their cramped cottage.31

  A ship arrived on 29 May from England bringing general supplies, newspapers and mail. Napoleon asked O’Meara ‘to procure the Morning Chronicle, the Globe, or any of the opposition or neutral papers’.32 The doctor returned, bringing also the book-sized conservative Quarterly Review. With Las Cases assisting with translation, Napoleon began leafing through it. It contained eight lengthy articles on ‘Buonaparte’, including accounts of his humiliating ‘unconditional surrender’ on the Bellerophon, the voyage on the Northumberland and his stay at The Briars. Each article made him more infuriated than the last, especially a description of his ‘series of weaknesses and petulances’ at the Balcombes: his alleged bullying of the family at cards, of frightening young Alexander for asking if he was ‘the Great Mogul’, and of challenging Betsy over the question of the burning of Moscow.

  When the mail was delivered, Napoleon received a letter from his mother, 65-year-old Madame Mère, who was living comfortably with his sister Pauline in Rome. Gourgaud watched him read. ‘“I am very old,” she says in her letter to the Emperor, “to undertake a voyage of 2000 leagues. I shall probably die on the way, but what does it matter? I shall die near you.” His Majesty tore the letter up.’33

  CHAPTER 12

  GOLD LACE AND NODDING PLUMES

  In the late afternoon of 17 June 1816, the Newcastle frigate put in at James Bay, bearing the flag of Rear-Admiral Sir Pulteney Malcolm, KCB. He was to succeed Sir George Cockburn as commander of the South Atlantic naval station with its bases at St Helena and the Cape of Good Hope. Also on board were his wife, Lady Clementina, and the three foreign commissioners sent to monitor Bonaparte’s detention, in accordance with the Allies’ convention of August 1815. The Continental powers were determined that there should be no repetition of the escape from Elba. Count Balmain was the representative for Russia, Baron von Stürmer for Austria, accompanied by his wife, and the Marquis de Montchenu for France. Prussia had sent no commissioner, consistent with its position that Bonaparte should have been executed.

  The following day (as it happened, the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo), the dignitaries were welcomed ashore and Sir George Cockburn was farewelled with much ceremony, a military parade and salutes fired from the Ladder Hill battery.1 Many of the leading citizens gathered for the occasion, including the Balcombes. They established an immediate rapport with the new admiral and his wife and invited them to stay at The Briars until a house was prepared for them.

  Sir Pulteney Malcolm, in the prime of his career at 48, had entered the navy at the age of ten and seen action in the Caribbean, Mediterranean, North Sea, East Indies and China; he had served as third in command behind then Rear-Admiral Cockburn during the Anglo-American War of 1812–14. He was exceedingly well connected: three of his brothers were also knighted, one of them a vice-admiral; and his wife Clementina was the eldest daughter of the Honourable William Fullarton Elphinstone, a director of the East India Company. Significantly, she was also the niece of Admiral Lord Keith, who had informed Napoleon of his final destination.2 Malcolm was on good terms with the Duke of Wellington, having commanded the squadron that cooperated with him during the Waterloo campaign.

  At Longwood House, someone mentioned the Waterloo anniversary and ‘a shade of anguish passed over the features of the emperor. In slow and solemn tones he said, “Incomprehensible day! Concurrence of unheard-of fatalities!”’3

  Also on that day, Madame de Montholon gave birth to a daughter. Dr O’Meara, always spiteful about the Frenchwoman, sent a note to Major Gorrequer: ‘I don’t imagine there was half so much anxiety over the birth of the King of Rome. You would have thought it the case of a girl of fifteen, newly married, instead of the wrinkled, middle-aged woman who has three husbands, all living, and eight or nine children.’4 Madame presented the baby to ‘His Majesty’, who permitted her to call the child ‘Hélène Napoleone’.5

  Keen to assess the new admiral, Napoleon agreed to the governor presenting him. Lowe was able to report to Lord Bathurst of the meeting on 20 June that Bonaparte’s ‘questions were of no significant import; but they indicated quite a different disposition to that with which he had received me on the occasion of my last conference with him, and had to Sir Pulteney Malcolm the appearance of a very marked overture’.6 The charm was intended for the new admiral, whose person and rumoured connections had impressed
Napoleon.

  The presence of the commissioners disturbed Lowe. The British government had not welcomed their appointment or their purpose—to make clear that Bonaparte was ‘a prisoner of Europe’. The Newcastle brought an official despatch from Bathurst and also his private letter to Lowe suggesting that the commissioners would ‘have too little to do where they are going not to be tempted to do a little mischief ’, such as forming a ‘cabal’—a conspiratorial group—with the French. He thought they should be encouraged ‘to amuse themselves by going to the Cape by way of a change of scene,’ and Lowe could engage to furnish them and their Court with a regular account of the state of the prisoner.7 Napoleon actually agreed. ‘What folly it is,’ he exclaimed to O’Meara, ‘to send those commissioners out here. Without charge or responsibility, they will have nothing to do but to walk about the streets and creep up the rocks. The Prussian government has displayed more judgment and saved its money.’8

  Catherine Younghusband informed her aunt, Lady Roche in Ireland, that important personages seemed to be everywhere on the few streets: ‘There is nothing now to be seen in St Helena but Generals, Admirals, Staff officers & Military & Naval heroes of all ages. You cannot walk through the streets of James Town without knocking against Knights or Knights Companions. My Eyes are dazzled by Gold Lace & Nodding Plumes & my Ears confused by the Sir Georges, Sir Thomases, etc.’ 9

  Alexandre Antonovich, Comte de Balmain, capable, urbane, multilingual and literate, with a Scottish and Russian background, represented the Czar and was to send his reports through the Russian foreign minister, Count Nesselrode. Balmain was asked to make a daily record of what he observed and any conversations of interest. His astute despatches were soon eagerly anticipated and read with pleasure at the Russian court. 10

  The Austrian commissioner, Baron Barthelemy von Stürmer, an elegant young man of 29, came with instructions from Prince Metternich and a sense of self-importance. Another trained diplomat, he brought with him to St Helena a beautiful young French wife.11 Betsy Balcombe left an account of how, soon after her arrival, Madame von Stürmer visited The Briars to see the pavilion formerly occupied by her hero, and burst into tears at its tiny size.12

  The French commissioner came from an ancient and distinguished family. The Marquis Claude Marin Henri de Montchenu, aged 59, had escaped France early in the Revolution and been an émigré, living in Prussia, for over twenty years. A devout royalist, on the return of Louis XVIII he had pestered him for a position. It was Talleyrand who suggested appointing him commissioner to St Helena: ‘He will bore the prisoner to death.’13 With his social ineptitude, portly build and old-fashioned pigtail tied with a ribbon, Montchenu was soon regarded on the island as a figure of fun, a buffoon.14 Napoleon commented: ‘When you have seen Montchenu you have seen all the old nobility of France before the revolution.’15

  The commissioners were accommodated at the Porteous lodgings in town and took most of their evening meals with the governor and his wife at Plantation House. Montchenu spoke no English but performed excessive gallantries towards the attractive Lady Lowe, while his prodigious appetite soon earned him the nickname ‘Old Munchenough’.

  A parcel of books and journals, unloaded from the Newcastle, was delivered to Longwood. Napoleon was so eager he unpacked them himself. O’Meara found him in his bedchamber the next day, ‘surrounded with heaps of books: his countenance was smiling and he was in perfect good humour. He had been occupied in reading nearly all the night.’16

  Also included in the official despatch from Lord Bathurst to Lowe (which emphasised that the expense of Bonaparte’s household should not exceed £8000 a year and hoped a number of the French would accept an offer to leave) was a confidential letter from Sir Henry Bunbury, Under-Secretary of State, giving Lowe cause to keep a close watch on all correspondence to and from Longwood: ‘By an intercepted letter to Bonaparte which Sir George Cockburn sent home, it is clear that the ex-Emperor has large sums of money in different parts; and that his agents have lodged money on his account in the principal towns of America as well as in England, with the hope of his being able to get at some one or other of their deposits. We have been unable hitherto to obtain any clue to this matter: it is very desirable to discover both the treasure and the agents.’17

  Napoleon looked forward to his next meeting with Sir Pulteney and Lady Malcolm. He was now aware that she was the niece of Admiral Lord Keith, Commander-in-Chief of the English Channel Fleet, whom he had met at Plymouth and through whom the decisions of the British government were conveyed. She was also friendly with the liberals Lord Holland and John Cam Hobhouse, who had protested in the press and Parliament against the severity of his incarceration. It was at this meeting that he was to learn from Lady Clementina Malcolm of an extraordinary, quite unprecedented circumstance concerning her first cousin, Admiral Keith’s daughter.

  The time came for the Malcolms’ visit to Longwood on 25 June. Napoleon made a special effort to be hospitable. Lady Malcolm described for her cousin how he sent his four-wheeled ‘German barouche drawn by six little Cape horses’ for herself and Madame Bertrand while the admiral and grand marshal rode beside them. The visitors arrived and were ceremoniously shown into the drawing room, darkened with green venetian blinds. Lady Malcolm was invited to sit on the sofa beside the former emperor, a rare privilege.

  When discussion turned to the East India Company, Napoleon hinted at a conflict between Lady Malcolm’s father being a slave company’s director and her own liberal sentiments. He expressed surprise, ‘with a satirical expression of countenance, at finding slaves on an island so long in possession of the English, and belonging to so rich a Company’. She admitted that she could not reply, ‘feeling it was a disgrace’.

  It was from Lady Malcolm that Napoleon then heard a fascinating story. It was the talk of society circles in England. One of Napoleon’s trusted aides-de-camp, Comte Auguste Charles de Flahaut, who had been with him during the Russian campaign and at Waterloo, had escaped to England after the final defeat. He was widely believed to be the natural son of the wily and brilliant Count Talleyrand, with whom his mother had lived openly for a decade. Talleyrand’s care in furthering the boy’s career virtually confirmed the assumption.18

  In adulthood, as we have already seen, the dashing young Flahaut became the lover of Queen Hortense of Holland, stepdaughter of Napoleon and estranged wife of his brother Louis. After Waterloo, Hortense sent her lover anxious letters, beseeching him to join her in Switzerland. Instead, Flahaut stayed in England. In danger of arrest as a Bonaparte accomplice, he was given refuge at Holland House. At a Christmas dinner with the Hollands he met the attractive Margaret Mercer Elphinstone, the only child of Admiral Lord Keith. Lord Byron was present and fancied her himself, but she and the Frenchman had eyes only for each other. Hortense was left to languish in Switzerland.19

  Beneath the careful orchestration of Regency society courtship, with its balls, house parties, whist drives, assembly rooms and spas, was the ruthless marriage market depicted by Jane Austen, where high social status and wealth were the trading stocks, followed by beauty and youth. Margaret Mercer Elphinstone, possessing all four, was a grand prize. A graceful 28-year-old, the daughter of a viscount who was a much-respected admiral, she was independently wealthy, heiress to her mother’s fortune. She was also the best friend and confidante of Princess Charlotte, the Prince Regent’s daughter.

  Margaret had declined numerous marriage proposals from rich and powerful men. Notably, she knocked back William Cavendish, the fifth Duke of Devonshire, owner of the magnificent Chatsworth in Derbyshire, Devonshire House in London and other great estates. Four months after the Holland House dinner, Byron sent her a message from Dover, ‘that he would not have had to go into exile if he had married her’.20 But she was smitten with the Count de Flahaut, former aide and personal friend of Britain’s greatest enemy. On hearing of this, Admiral Lord Keith was apoplectic. He emphatically refused permission for his daughter to marry the Frenchm
an; when she persisted, he disinherited her. Margaret confided her distress to her cousin and close friend, Lady Malcolm.

  London society was avid for details of the unlikely match (the wedding was to occur in June 1817, without Lord Keith’s blessing). Gossip thrived in the newspapers. The story was naturally of riveting interest to the people at Longwood.

  Lady Malcolm had actually arrived on the island with a letter from Flahaut for his good friend Fanny Bertrand; she had been asked by her cousin to deliver it secretly, but she replied from The Briars, where she and her husband were staying with the Balcombes, that she felt constrained from giving Fanny the letter from Flahaut. Governor Lowe had told her he objected to it being delivered as it had not come through the ‘proper channels’ and he was annoyed by the volume of mail that was reaching the Bertrands, ‘sent in parcels and in various clandestine ways’.21

  O’Meara reported that his patient was ‘much pleased’ with Sir Pulteney Malcolm and his wife.22 Of course he was. Napoleon was bound to cultivate the Malcolms, given their connections. As fond as he was of his stepdaughter Hortense, now abandoned by her lover, he would have been delighted to hear of his former aidede-camp moving in such influential circles in London, of his new romance and of Miss Margaret Elphinstone’s close friendship with the Princess of Wales.23