Betsy and the Emperor

by Anne Whitehead

  The newspapers published an alarming story in early June: a British sailor at St Helena, one of the original crew of the Northumberland, the ship that took Napoleon into exile, had swum around the island at night from an Indiaman at anchor, scaled the sheer cliffs below Longwood and slipped past the sentries unseen. The next evening he did it again, taking a comrade, and they strolled into the Longwood garden and actually spoke with Bonaparte. Apparently the sailors intended it as a prank and meant no harm but were found out when they boasted about their escapade, and were ‘put in irons and sent home’.25 But if they could do it, so could the French or Americans. Or Lord Cochrane. Lowe sent a brief account of the incident and built more fortifications.

  It concerned Bathurst that, as Gourgaud had revealed, Bonaparte looked forward to the period when the Allied armies were withdrawn from France as that most favourable for his return. Despite the Duke of Wellington’s demands for more men, Bathurst had experienced difficulties finding 30,000 soldiers to remain as an occupation force in France. The Whig opposition complained of the unnecessary expense.26 But Earl Stanhope had given Parliament a grim warning earlier that year. Addressing the Prince Regent and the combined Houses, he had deplored the size of the Allied troops’ withdrawal. He argued that the Bourbons could only be kept in power by the presence of foreign bayonets. Many in France were still working for Bonaparte’s return and there was the active possibility that he could escape from St Helena. There was always the danger of being plunged into another war.27

  William Balcombe was becoming increasingly anxious about money, as few remittances were coming through from his trading business and brewery to Wm Burnie & Co., his London agents; Admiral Plampin, occupying The Briars, continued to be recalcitrant about paying rent. If Balcombe still had the generous bill of exchange we are told Napoleon had given him (and hadn’t ripped it up as his granddaughter claimed), it could only be drawn at Lafitte’s Bank in Paris. Aware that his movements might be watched, he would not have dared to make the journey.

  On 24 June, he called, not for the first time, on O’Meara’s naval agent William Holmes at 3 Lyons Inn, the Strand. From there he penned a letter to the doctor on St Helena which would later form the basis for a major scandal—indeed a national scandal.

  CHAPTER 21

  THE EMBATTLED SURGEON

  After the long years of war with France, the lives of the poor were desperate. Grain crops failed, returned soldiers and the thousands thrown out of work by the new factory machines were unemployed; they listened to speakers urging rebellion. But the Regency period of 1811–20—when the prince assumed the powers of the monarch in the place of his mentally ill father—was defined by elegance and fashion for the privileged classes. The Prince Regent saw himself as setting the style. His Royal Pavilion at Brighton was the most extravagant display of all, an oriental fantasy, derided by the press as ‘a pot-bellied mad-house’, ‘a minaret mushroom’.

  Betsy and Jane Balcombe, with the encouragement of their family, set out to enjoy London’s delights, possible for those with means and suitable connections. The social ‘Season’, which ran from April to August and coincided with the sitting of Parliament, was in full swing. The aristocratic and gentry families came down from their country houses to socialise, engage in politics, and launch their children of marriageable age into society at debutante balls, dinner parties and charity events. It was essentially the courting season, and the two attractive Balcombe sisters, like eligible young women in a Jane Austen novel, were staying at the comfortable London home of a kind and wealthy aunt. They had entrée, through their friends the Malcolms, the Cockburns and Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, to upper levels of society. They had maintained a correspondence with Lady Malcolm from St Helena, and now, in London, she was no doubt happy to introduce them to her friends, including her cousin Margaret, now the Countess de Flahaut.1 Margaret’s husband, Napoleon’s former aide, would have been eager to hear all they could tell him about his former emperor and friend.

  The two sisters possibly took for granted the trouble older women relatives and friends went to for them, dressing up and going out of an evening to act as chaperones: it was the expected thing, noblesse oblige, to see them make a good match; whereas it was the duty of Jane and Betsy to appear demure, charming and graceful in order to attract those gentlemen who might become reliable husbands, able to support them well.

  But the young women—and their relatives and friends—would have realised their serious handicap. Despite their aristocratic connections, they were not high-born themselves and nor did they have money. The possibility of either of them being considered by an aristocrat was out of the question, and in any case there was too much competition. A British officer of the period described how the rich Duke of Devonshire ‘was hunted down by mothers and daughters with an activity, zeal and perseverance—and, I am sorry to say, a vulgarity—which those only can conceive who have beheld the British huntress in full cry after a duke’.2

  The £100 each that Betsy and Jane expected from their late uncle’s will was a great deal of money—constituting up to four years’ wages for some labourers—but they could not access it until it was probated and they came of age.3 Perhaps they borrowed against it from their uncle Thomas Hornsby, as there were many expenses involved in joining society. There was the purchase of gowns, corsets, petticoats, dancing slippers, bonnets and ribbons, feathers and jewellery, and the hire of carriages, in order to show themselves at their best. It was an investment in their future. But their father was already fretting about his financial difficulties and was in no position to make a marriage settlement on them, should that happy possibility arise.

  The diversions of the London season were various and delightful, some cultured, most frivolous: concerts and breakfast parties in mansions, garden parties, picnics at Vauxhall Gardens, horse riding in Rotten Row and strolls in Hyde Park, still a semi-rural place where cows and deer grazed. Almack’s Assembly Rooms was one of the most select venues, its entrance vetted by ‘ladies of distinction’, such as the ladies Castlereagh, Jersey and Cowper, Princess Esterhazy and the Countess Lieven. Even the Duke of Wellington, before he became the hero of Waterloo, had been rejected for wearing trousers rather than the approved knee breeches.4

  With the Balcombe sisters’ connections they would have been acceptable to the ladies ‘who controlled the entrée to Almack’s and the balls and routs of high society’. A typical party was ‘a concourse of nodding feathers and stars under chandeliers . . . seldom any room to sit, no conversation, cards or music, nothing but glittering clothes and jewels and lights, shouting, elbowing, turning and winding from room to room, vacant, famous, smiling or evasive faces, and, at the end of an interval, a slow descent to the hall where the departing guests, waiting in their orders and diamonds for their carriages, spent more time among the footmen than they had spent above with their hosts’.5 It was all about ‘cutting a dash’ and showing style. It was said that Lady Londonderry went to a ball ‘so covered with jewels that she could not stand and had to be followed round with a chair’.6 People who could afford it rebuilt and improved their houses, added porticoes, loggias and circular driveways, hired landscapers to create vistas of sweeping grasslands, terraces, ponds and fountains, prospects of artificial lakes, marble temples and follies.

  Perhaps during that London season Betsy hoped to encounter Edward Abell, the dashing former Indian army officer whom she had almost certainly met on St Helena the previous year when his ship had been in port for a week. But as it happened, Abell, a resident of St Gregory’s parish when he was in London, had the previous month, on 22 May, sailed for India. He had just been appointed the civil agent of the Government of Ceylon to the East India Company Presidency of Madras.7 It would have been as well for Betsy if he had stayed in India.

  The Balcombes were able to learn much of what was happening on St Helena from the newspapers, especially from the Whig-leaning Morning Chronicle. Napoleon was still a subject of great interest and there was
no shortage of information. They read that ‘General Bonaparte’ still remained closeted.8 Six of his servants had left, including Le Page, his valued chef. It was reported that a paper in Antwerp had published a stock of anecdotes by Count de Las Cases from his forthcoming memoir of the Emperor Napoleon; an English edition was anticipated.9

  Back on St Helena, Dr O’Meara still believed he had special protection and that, if he left the island, it would be when he chose. He wrote to his friend Finlaison that if the governor made life too difficult, it worried him to abandon Napoleon without a physician; he had raised with his patient ‘in as delicate a manner’ as he could the idea that other medical men should be consulted, and proposed Baxter or Stokoe. The former had been a military surgeon with Lowe on Corsica and Napoleon said he had repugnance for him, ‘but after some time he consented to see Mr Stokoe (the surgeon of the Conqueror), to whom I wrote directly and sent the letter through the channel of the Governor’.

  But Stokoe ‘did not like to take any responsibility upon himself or to run any risk of getting himself into a scrape with such a vindictive character’ as Lowe, so he feared attending Napoleon, ‘unless Mr. Baxter or someone else chosen by the Governor was present and begged leave to decline seeing him’.10 In a letter to Admiral Plampin, Stokoe explained that he was unwilling to visit ‘the General’ alone as it ‘would place me in an extremely delicate situation . . . but that I should be happy to share it with any other medical man’.11 Events would prove Stokoe’s caution well founded.

  Some time before, the Reverend Mr Boys was preparing to leave the island, his departure encouraged by Lowe, who had had enough of his thunderous sermons.12 Napoleon asked O’Meara to give the parson a silver snuff box in appreciation of the respectful funeral service he had conducted for Cipriani. O’Meara handed the gift to Boys, who returned it on his departure day, nervous that people would hear of it; severe penalties applied for accepting anything from Bonaparte. Soon enough, Lowe learned of the transaction. On 10 April 1818, he issued an order that O’Meara should be confined to Longwood, unless given permission otherwise by himself or Admiral Plampin. O’Meara immediately fired off a letter of resignation, requesting to return to England. He also wrote to Bertrand, explaining his reasons: ‘it is impossible for me to sacrifice my character and my rights as a British Subject’.13 Lowe accepted his resignation, but advised that he was restricted to Longwood until instructions were received from London and another physician found.

  O’Meara’s response went to Plantation House on 19 April. He arranged for copies to be smuggled onto ships and delivered to the three principal London newspapers. He would not accept Lowe’s treatment quietly. It was now a matter of preparing his defence. In an open cover note to the editors he stated that publication of his letter was ‘essential’ to demonstrate that no ‘improper or dishonourable conduct on my part’ had caused his departure from a situation ‘to which history affords no parallel’.14

  The Morning Chronicle published his letter to Lowe on 18 July. It was reprinted two days later in both The Times and the Morning Post: ‘For some months your Excellency has several times manifested to me instructions to subject me to the same restrictions as the French prisoners, to which I have always refused to consent . . . I will never agree to it, as it would be signing the dishonour of the Naval uniform.’ He reminded the governor that Admiral Lord Keith, then commander of the Channel Fleet, had authorised his attachment to Napoleon as surgeon, assuring him that the government would be obliged, for ‘it is a situation which may, with propriety and honour, be held by an Englishman’. O’Meara could but follow the advice of such a distinguished officer, who had stipulated that he was at liberty to resign if he wished, and that he would remain on the navy list in his rank as surgeon, ‘with my time going on’, paid as a British officer and ‘not subject to any restrictions inflicted upon French prisoners’. When he had received instructions from Lowe ‘contrary to my natural rights, the stipulations I had made, and the protestations which I frequently made to yourself . . . I immediately comprehended that it was merely a way of obliging me to quit Longwood . . . For some months I have been made to lead a most wretched life by your Excellency’s obliging me to proceed to your house twice a week, reviling me, turning me out of doors in a most ignominious manner, once, indeed, having experienced everything except personal violence, menaced by words and looks, because I did not choose to comply with verbal instructions.’15 The published letter gained O’Meara enormous sympathy, even among the conservative readers of The Times. It added to Sir Hudson Lowe’s poor reputation, which had been deteriorating for years.

  Meanwhile, mail ships to and from the island crossed in the Atlantic. The embattled surgeon was surprised to receive an encouraging letter from his friend at the Admiralty office:

  My dear O’Meara

  Your last letters up to the 14th November have all come safe and I am specially commanded by my Lord Melville to express his Lordship’s approbation of your correspondence, especially of the minute attention you have paid to details, and to add his wish that you continue to be equally full, candid and explicit in the future.

  Sir Pulteney Malcolm who is now beside me, begs I should express to you his particular wish that in every future discussion or report, you will as much as possible avoid bringing up his name, as he is of opinion it can do no good. He sends his compliments and wishes you well through your arduous employment, which he thinks no one could ever be found to fill so well.

  Believe me, my dear O’Meara, yours always

  John Finlaison.16

  The good wishes of the respected Admiral Malcolm must have greatly buoyed O’Meara’s confidence, suggesting hopeful prospects for his future naval career.

  In the interim, however, Gourgaud’s ‘revelations’ that Napoleon’s health was excellent had caused Bathurst to change his mind about the doctor, and he had convinced the prime minister and First Sea Lord Melville. He wrote to Lowe on 18 May that although he had formerly withheld his consent to the proposition that O’Meara should be removed, the information provided by Gourgaud had altered the case: ‘I have now no longer any difficulty in giving you the instruction to withdraw him from a situation for which he has shown himself to be unfit.’17 Admiral Plampin received a similar message from the Admiralty. No one there was prepared to save O’Meara a second time.

  As usual, the despatches still took up to three months to arrive. Meanwhile, the surgeon continued his attack on Lowe. He sent the Morning Chronicle and Morning Post the sharp note he had received from Sir Thomas Reade which said that his resignation was accepted, ‘without prejudice’ to the law’s decision regarding ‘any breach of law or regulation committed by you’. The governor had advised that if Bonaparte was willing to receive any other medical person on the island, O’Meara could quit Longwood immediately. Otherwise he must remain in his present restricted situation until instructions were received from England and another doctor took over his duties.18 Napoleon refused to accept O’Meara’s medical attendance under such conditions. What made Reade’s letter particularly interesting for the British newspapers was that their nation’s prisoner had inserted margin comments, which O’Meara assured were authentic: ‘This fresh outrage only dishonours this coxcomb. This crafty proceeding has one object—to prevent your exposing the criminal plot they have been contriving against my life for these two years past . . . Desire this note to be sent to Lord Liverpool and also your letter of yesterday, with those of the 13th and 24th April, that the Prince Regent may know who my ________ is and be able to publicly punish him.’19 The word ‘murderer’ was deleted in the newspapers—but understood by most readers.

  The Morning Chronicle and other papers published Napoleon’s margin notes with an article under the heading ‘SEVERE TREATMENT OF BONAPARTE’: ‘Serious differences still exist at St Helena between Bonaparte’s establishment and the chief authority of the island . . . Altho’ it may be considered requisite for the peace of Europe that the person of the Ex-Emperor s
hould be detained, we shall be extremely sorry to find the boasted magnanimity of this country tarnished by the exercise of unnecessary rigour towards a fallen foe.’20

  Bathurst lost no time in sending an alarmed despatch to Lowe: ‘You will see that General Bonaparte’s Notes and Mr O’Meara’s letter to you of the 19th April in which he refers to his letter to General Bertrand, are published in the Morning Chronicle.’ The articles themselves were of no great concern, he wrote, but the clandestine means by which O’Meara sent them were, and ‘as communications of a more serious nature, tending to further General Bonaparte’s escape (attempt at which there is reason to believe are in contemplation) may be carried on by the same channel, it is on that ground necessary to call your attention to this publication.’ He asked Lowe to remain extra vigilant and circumscribe the liberty of ‘General Bonaparte’s’ followers. However, ‘the situation of General Bonaparte is different’ and the strict regulations applying to his followers ‘need not be extended to him’, especially concerning his exercise.21

  In his remaining time on the island, O’Meara prepared for his dismissal by escalating his publicity campaign. By his secret means he sent off a barrage of correspondence to the newspapers, principally the Morning Post and The Times, syndicated to other publications, documenting a history of outrage with copies of Lowe’s and Reade’s letters to him and his own righteous, indignant replies. The heading ‘St Helena: Further Correspondence’ became a familiar one. The St Helena dispute had become a cause célèbre, its details reprinted in provincial papers. The Balcombes were certain to be avid readers, knowing intimately the various characters involved. More than that, William knew he himself was a figure in the mosaic, and must have feared to see his name mentioned.