Betsy and the Emperor

by Anne Whitehead

  Sir Pulteney and Lady Malcolm hosted a reception for Lord Amherst on the Newcastle; it was also their farewell to friends on the island, such as the Binghams and Balcombes, and they observed protocol by inviting Sir Hudson Lowe and his wife. Presumably Admiral Plampin was there too, but he would have found it wise not to bring his female companion. He had recently been preached at from the pulpit of St Paul’s: the Reverend Mr Richard Boys, on a mission to root out evil where he found it, had begun to make ‘thinly veiled allusions in his sermons to wickedness in high places’.7

  At the reception, Betsy spent much of the time with Major Oliver Fehrzen, whose 53rd Regiment was about to depart; people wondered if they would become officially betrothed before he left. It may have been during the Malcolms’ shipboard party that her sister Jane also acquired an admirer, the Conqueror’s surgeon, Dr John Stokoe. But Betsy disgraced herself that day, teasing a pretty young woman referred to as ‘Miss P’, who perhaps drew away some of the male attention Betsy regarded as her due. At the end of the party, as the other ladies were being lowered over the side of the ship to a barge, Betsy lured ‘Miss P’ into a cabin, slammed the door and locked it. It was not until the barge was near the shore that the absence was noted—infuriating Lady Lowe—and an officer had to row back to rescue the terrified girl.8

  When Betsy next visited Longwood with her father, ‘I was surprised and vexed to find that the emperor had heard an account of the party from other lips than mine, as I was anxious to forestall the narration of the exploits of a certain hoydenish young lady, namely, myself; but he had received a faithful detail of them from Dr. O’Meara. He pretended to scold and take me to task for being such a petite folle, and said he hoped the account were not true.’ Balcombe assured Napoleon that Betsy would repent by doing more French lessons. She protested that she had been sufficiently punished and mentioned ‘the scolding I had received from Lady Lowe, who kept desiring me to use my reason, and “not to be so childish”’. Napoleon said that ‘he wondered at her ladyship’s want of perception in giving me credit for what I never possessed’.9

  Gourgaud remarked to Napoleon: ‘It is fortunate for Fehrzen that he is to leave, otherwise he would have been foolish enough to marry Betsy Balcombe.’ Napoleon ridiculed this: ‘Betsy is a girl like any other. Moreover, life is short, and provided a woman produces children, what more does a man want?’10

  On 4 July, the Malcolms sailed for England on the Newcastle frigate. Despite Admiral Malcolm’s fractious encounters with Lowe, his time at St Helena was to add lustre to his already distinguished career. He was appointed vice-admiral in 1821 and for many years was commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean.

  His successor in the South Atlantic, Admiral Plampin, moved into The Briars’ pavilion with his mistress, creating a socially awkward situation for the Balcombes. While the rent must have suited William, his wife would not have appreciated the couple creating such an indelicate example for their daughters. We are told that thereafter The Briars ‘was shunned by Lady Lowe and other dames who formed the high St Helena society’.11

  The Reverend Mr Boys, in his zeal for the spiritual welfare of the community, became even more outspoken. From his pulpit he inveighed against moral lapses and ‘did not hesitate to single out prominent examples of evil living . . . The case of Rear-Admiral Plampin was one which excited his righteous anger to a considerable degree.’12 This created a dilemma for Lowe, who appreciated Plampin’s endorsement of his firm policy towards the French. His despatches to Bathurst indicated that while he had ‘no sympathy with the moral obliquities of Plampin’, he valued the admiral’s unqualified support, unlike his naval predecessors. He also dreaded St Helena becoming a scandal in England because of ‘the uncurbed tongue of Mr Boys’.13 He therefore warned the senior chaplain that further personal attacks would jeopardise his position on the island. The provocative sermons ceased. Plampin was grateful and, for the duration of his command, proved to be Lowe’s unswerving ally. The tacit understanding between the two men compromised any hope Napoleon may have had of greater freedom and made more perilous the position of those who sympathised with him.

  Gourgaud was walking back to Longwood one July day when he met up with Marchand and his mistress Esther Vesey. ‘I cannot see much of her baby, but Madame Bertrand, who has seen it, says that it has blue eyes and an enormous head. It does not resemble its father. The Emperor sends for me in the reception room. He is very cool and rather embarrassed.’14 Gourgaud failed to explain the embarrassment—but Napoleon had just heard a description of Esther’s baby, so his discomfort may well have related to his own blue-grey eyes and disproportionately large head. In the best-known portrait of Marchand, his dark brown eyes are his dominant feature, and as Esther was described as a ‘mulatto’, presumably her eyes were also brown.

  The time had come to farewell the 2nd Battalion of the 53rd Regiment, departing for England. Napoleon received Major Fehrzen—soon to be promoted to lieutenant-colonel—and his officers. Although he resented the governor and the ever-increasing guard around Longwood, he felt sympathy for the ‘poor devils’ obliged to keep watch from dusk to dawn.

  Napoleon was again contemplating the feasibility of escape. On 14 July, he discussed with his companions the few possible landing places along the island’s coastline. Lowe was in a state of permanent suspicion. By now he knew that two of Bonaparte’s servants deported from the island were in America and would have taken maps and information. They were in the employ of Joseph Bonaparte, who was fabulously rich and willing to finance a rescue attempt for his brother. Other transactions were in progress. Balcombe was given 7000 francs to distribute to the officers of the 53rd (it seemed principally to Fehrzen, who had agreed to a certain undertaking) and £300 for the gunner who had brought the bust of Napoleon’s son—‘a fortune for him’, remarked Bertrand.15

  O’Meara was called to Plantation House and engaged in a rancorous discussion with the governor lasting almost three hours. Lowe accused him of conveying clandestine messages. ‘How can you think the French are not our enemies?’ he demanded. Those at Longwood, he said, had become altogether too arrogant: ‘It is the fault of Admiral Cockburn, who organised everything so badly here.’16

  A ball was held at Deadwood Camp to farewell the departing regiment and welcome their replacement, the 1st Battalion of the 66th. It was followed by another party, at The Briars. That night, Major Fehrzen and Betsy announced their intention to marry. Fehrzen had also agreed to undertake a secret errand for Napoleon: with Balcombe as the intermediary, he was ‘taking some of the Emperor’s hair to Rome’, to deliver to his mother, Madame Mère. She would give strands to her brother, Cardinal Fesch, and send some to Napoleon’s wife, Marie Louise.17 On the day of the 53rd Regiment’s departure, Bertrand noted that ‘Mr Balcombe, who accompanied Major Fehrzen to the sea, ensured that the Major undertakes to carry, perhaps to deliver personally, the Emperor’s hair’.18

  At this time, O’Meara was translating pamphlets for publication, protesting against the treatment of the French. But Napoleon had become wary of his physician, suspecting that he had revealed too much in conversations with the governor. He decided: ‘If I see what the doctor says can become dangerous, I will distort confidences to him.’19 Gourgaud was emphatic about the danger: ‘O’Meara is completely compromised. We risk imprisonment, and he the rope. It seems he is out to make money by printing the pamphlets he has translated for the Emperor. His Majesty makes a mistake writing so many.’20 But Napoleon objected: ‘To be sure, the doctor does everything for our good. He listens to my complaints, but he would not betray his country. Even if we wanted to escape, O’Meara would not have a finger in it.’21

  At that time, another despatch from Hyde de Neuville, the French ambassador in Washington, was on its way to Paris. It stated that the French exiles surrounding Joseph Bonaparte had a plan afoot, acting on information brought by the two servants from St Helena: ‘even if the exact nature of the danger is obscure, everything goes to prov
e that it exists. I do not yet know the situation of the fire but the heat proves there is one, and if it is not put out it will become a conflagration’.22

  Bathurst warned Lowe that now more than ever he had to be on his mettle and wary of Bonaparte’s ‘peculiar talent for cajolery’ which could ‘seduce very intelligent men’ from a strict line of conduct: ‘The turbulent and seditious in this, as well as in every other country, look to the escape of General Bonaparte as that which would at once give life and activity to the Revolutionary spirit, which has been so long formidable to the best interests of Europe, and which they have all a common object in endeavouring to revive.’23

  Among the French sympathisers in contact with Joseph Bonaparte was an ex-major in the imperial army called Persat; in his memoirs, he described various plans in 1817 to rescue Napoleon from St Helena. Joseph had declared that he was ‘ready to give his life and fortune to deliver the Emperor, but that he had been obliged to give up this plan because of definite information from London about the barbarous orders issued by the British government. These were to put the Emperor to death, if any serious attack was made on the 4000 gaolers who kept watch on him.’24

  Napoleon’s forty-eighth birthday was celebrated quietly on 15 August. He sat down to lunch with his companions and their children. Gourgaud detested his hero’s attentions to Albine de Montholon. Earlier he had complained: ‘She is always scratching her neck and spitting her food into her plate. The woman has no manners. I never thought that Your Majesty would like her for—that! But she does her best to make people think you do.’ Napoleon attempted to placate him: ‘Don’t imagine that I like her. I have been accustomed to living with too many charming women not to be aware of Madame de Montholon’s ridiculous aspects and her bad manners. But after all, if one had nothing else, here one would have to find one’s company in a green parrot. We have no choice . . . If the woman were prettier, I would take advantage of her for—that too.’25

  If Napoleon felt weighed down by sorrows, his most recent was that his wife Marie Louise had given birth to another child by her lover General von Neipperg. Napoleon was determined that the Austrian court would hear no scandal concerning himself. He forbade Marchand’s mistress Esther Vesey to come near the house with her baby in case he was accused of siring it.26 He was morose, and a few days later told O’Meara: ‘Had I died in Moscow, I should have left behind a reputation as a conqueror without a parallel in history.’27

  In the third week of September, horse races were held at Deadwood once again and Betsy Balcombe became the centre of attention. As punishment for being lax with her French lessons, her father had refused to allow her to compete in the ladies’ race. To ensure that she stayed at home, he lent her pony to a friend for the day. Betsy recalled: ‘My vexation was very great at not knowing where to get a horse, and I happened to mention my difficulty to Dr. O’Meara, who told Napoleon; and my delight may be conceived when, a short time after all our party had left the Briars for Deadwood, I perceived the doctor winding down the mountain path which led to our house, followed by a slave leading a superb grey horse called “Mameluke” with a lady’s side-saddle and housings of crimson velvet embroidered with gold.’

  When Napoleon had heard of her disappointment, he had requested that the quietest horse in his stable be prepared for her use. He then witnessed the races from Longwood’s latticed porch with his ‘battlefield spyglass’. According to Marchand, ‘the Emperor eyed Baroness Stürmer, whom he found attractive and well seated on her horse’.28 But he was delighted when Betsy, galloping side saddle on the richly caparisoned Mameluke, was first past the winning post in the ladies’ race.

  While the event was still in progress, O’Meara was interrogated by the governor: ‘Sir Hudson Lowe sent for me and asked if “some of General Bonaparte’s horses were not on the race-ground.” I replied in the affirmative. His Excellency asked how they came there? I replied that I had borrowed the horses from General Gourgaud, one of which I had lent to Miss Eliza Balcombe, and the other to the surgeon of the Conqueror. Sir Hudson immediately broke out into not the most moderate expressions, and his gestures attracted many of the spectators. He characterised my having dared to lend any of General Bonaparte’s horses without his (the Governor’s) permission as the greatest piece of presumption he had ever witnessed. I observed that I had come to St Helena to learn that it was a crime to borrow a horse for the use of a young lady.’29 After O’Meara left him, Lowe remarked to his secretary Gorrequer: ‘I’ll lay that fellow sprawling yet before I have done with him.’30

  Betsy’s triumph was short-lived. Her father was rebuked by Lowe for having ‘committed a breach of discipline in permitting one of his family to ride a horse belonging to the Longwood establishment’.31 But the commissioners had been distracted from the races by watching the portly figure at Longwood ‘standing at a veranda outside his door’.

  Fanny Bertrand invited the Balcombe women to stay for the night of the races ball. They could dine with the emperor and show off their gowns before riding in his carriage to Deadwood Camp. Madame de Montholon sent her maid Josephine to arrange Betsy’s hair, and she piled it up high in the current French fashion. ‘She combed and strained it off my face,’ Betsy recalled, ‘making me look Chinese. It was the first time I had seen such a coiffure, and I thought I had never beheld anything so hideous in my life, and would gladly have pulled it down, but there was no time, and I was obliged to make my appearance before Napoleon, whose laugh I dreaded, with my eyes literally starting from my head.’ To her surprise he liked her hair and said it was the only time he had seen it neat. While her new coiffure made her seem elegant from the neck up, her childish frock did not pass muster: ‘he declared it was frightful, from its extreme shortness, and desired me to have it lengthened’. Betsy protested, but Napoleon twitched the skirt about, and the obliging Josephine managed to lengthen it by letting out three tucks.

  After dinner, Napoleon accompanied the women and Gourgaud to the carriage; Achille Archambault the groom cracked his whip and they took off, the spirited Cape horses galloping on one side of the track, then the other, until they crashed into a gumwood tree. The members of the party were obliged to scramble out and plod nearly a mile through mud, Madame Bertrand carrying her squalling infant, who would not be pacified by the nurse. They had to scrape mud from their shoes when they arrived. In spite of the setbacks, Betsy remembered it as ‘a very merry ball’; she was thrilled to be compared to the prettiest woman on the island, Baroness von Stürmer, the wife of the Austrian commissioner. The party did not end until long after the booming guns from the forts announced the break of day.32

  Four days later, on 25 September, the normally calm and temperate General Bertrand rushed to Longwood, crying: ‘Great news!’ He had heard that the royalists had been massacred at Guadeloupe and Martinique. He waited for everyone’s attention before announcing something more momentous: ‘In France, everybody wants the Emperor back again. Montholon has learned all this from Balcombe, who was requested by the Governor to deliver the news to the Emperor tomorrow, and after that, to go and dine at Plantation House.’

  Gourgaud was sceptical: ‘I discredit this—but we shall see!’

  Bertrand’s exuberance would not be dampened. ‘Let’s go and pack our bags.’33

  Balcombe and O’Meara were the main channels for news. In their absence, those at Longwood received garbled accounts from Jamestown brought by servants and soldiers. It is curious that on this occasion they believed that the governor had entrusted Balcombe, of all people, as his emissary. But the next day Napoleon was swept up in the excitement; from the billiard room he trained his field glass on the guardhouse. ‘You’ve heard the news?’ he exclaimed to Gourgaud. ‘It must be very good news for the Governor to send Balcombe to us.’ He thought the stir could mean that there had been a regime change in France and the Bonapartist forces had triumphed and were demanding his release.

  At two o’clock, Napoleon saw the purveyor enter Bertrand’s hous
e. The delay tormented him. An hour passed. They must be discussing something of great moment, he thought. It could even be possible that his six-year-old son had been placed on the French throne. At last Bertrand came across the road, very downcast. Gourgaud recorded: ‘It appears that Balcombe has no news! He merely has a paper, reporting the riots at Martinique. His Majesty’s countenance changes. He rages. He asks to see Balcombe.’34

  When the purveyor arrived, Napoleon confronted him in a fury: ‘My legs are swollen, I have the beginning of scurvy in the mouth. My appearance shocks everyone. My doctor whose duty is to tell the truth, does not dare. I am abused, without having the law to defend me. I hope one day to be avenged by the people of London who will seize the governor or throw stones at him passing in the street! I don’t have enough wood to warm myself or the food I like, pasta, because there is none in this country. I charge you to tell the governor all of this—but do you dare?’

  ‘I will say,’ said Balcombe, ‘you have swollen legs and you are being killed by the restrictions.’

  That was clearly not enough. What Napoleon said next amounted to an order: ‘You will also write to the secretary of the Prince Regent.’ Bertrand noted: ‘The Emperor was extremely worked up, Mr Balcombe very pale and agitated.’35 In his extremity of disappointment Napoleon was at last attempting to gain advantage from Balcombe’s close connection with Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt.36 Bertrand considered he had ‘never seen the Emperor as angry as he was today. Balcombe was completely disconcerted by it. None of the news was true—not a single word of it!’37