Betsy and the Emperor

by Anne Whitehead

  As Balcombe was permanently blocked from returning to St Helena and needed to settle various debts, he at last made the decision and mortgaged The Briars, including the Union brewery for £9000, to his agents, William and James Burnie. Balcombe was now in possession of a considerable amount of money, but it had to last for an unforeseeable length of time. He had lost his career and his businesses and was out of official favour. Tyrwhitt, as always, wanted to help him, but was unable to use his influence with government. Bathurst had turned decisively against Balcombe, who was fortunate so far to have escaped legal action and possible imprisonment.

  Many people in Balcombe’s situation would have fallen into a state of depression, but his natural ebullience must have helped him through this difficult period. His prospects had collapsed, his affluent life had disappeared, his good name had gone. All he could look forward to was a job obtaining food supplies, with immense logistical difficulty, for a prison in the bleakest place in England. Tyrwhitt still had great hopes that a use would be found for his Dartmoor prison, and a position for Balcombe, now that the railroad was laboriously snaking, one granite sleeper after another, towards Sutton Pool. But most of the time Tyrwhitt was with the new King, trying to dissuade him from his plan to put the Queen Consort on public trial for adultery.

  However, at the end of February 1820, Sir Thomas was in a state of shock, as were all members of Parliament. On the twenty-third, a plot was exposed, just before it was enacted, to murder Prime Minister Lord Liverpool, Lord Bathurst, Lord Sidmouth and all the Cabinet ministers. The conspirators, a revolutionary group spurred to action by the Peterloo massacre and the old King’s death, held their meetings at Cato Street, off Edgware Road (near Dr O’Meara’s dental practice, although he of course had nothing to do with it). The conspirators were infiltrated by a government spy, who exposed their plan to use pistols and grenades to kill all the Cabinet members while they were at a dinner, seize key government buildings, and invite all workers, war veterans, farm labourers and the unemployed to join them in revolution. Five members of the ‘Cato Street conspiracy’ were hanged and five others transported to Australia.12

  Princess Caroline, the King’s wife returned from her expatriate life in Italy, landing at Dover on 5 June to enjoy her time of glory as the Queen Consort of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Ireland and Hanover. Although few regarded her as saintly, she was seen as being a great deal more so than her rakish, libidinous, grossly overweight husband. The rumour had spread, even among the common people, that George IV had taken some strands of pubic hair from every woman with whom he had had sexual congress and there was said to be enough to stuff a mattress.13

  Caroline’s route to London was greeted by welcoming crowds. With public opinion so much on her side, the King’s ministers and Tyrwhitt advised that his insistence on a marriage annulment would rebound. George opposed them and demanded that the House of Lords introduce a ‘Bill of Pains and Penalties’; if passed, it would deprive Caroline of her royal title and her privileges, and if proved that she had been unfaithful, the marriage would be annulled.14 The King postponed his coronation until the case was resolved.15

  The preamble to ‘the Trial’ began on 5 July. The evening before it commenced, Tyrwhitt was deputed to present the Queen with the House of Lords Bill. Several newspapers reported what followed: ‘Her Majesty received the Bill with great calmness. The words which she used were not distinctly understood. They were in substance or sound like the following: “I am sorry that it comes so late, as 25 years ago it might have been of some use to His Majesty.” What followed was more audible: “But as we shall not meet in this world, I hope we shall in the next,” (pointing her hand towards Heaven, and then adding with great emphasis) “where justice will be rendered me”. She requested Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, if he had an opportunity, to convey these sentiments to His Majesty. Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt is said to have been much affected on delivering the message to the Queen. He had not seen Her Majesty since she was living in the King’s house.’16

  Sir Thomas was obliged to vacate his cottage and other officers of the House of Lords their apartments to make ‘safe houses’ for the foreign witnesses, some of whom had already been threatened by angry mobs after landing in England. ‘On Friday evening,’ it was reported, ‘eleven foreigners were landed out of a boat at Parliament-stairs, and immediately conducted into the apartments. They appeared to be young men, and some of them had a military air. Most of the windows which overlooked the yard are fastened down and the apartments to which they belong kept locked.’17 Some of the men would have been very anxious; by the Act of Edward III, it was ‘high treason to violate the wife of the King of England, even with her own consent, provided the offence be committed either within the territories of the King or by one of his liege subjects’.18

  The trial began in mid-August. Within the House of Lords, Tyrwhitt was responsible for all the arrangements. Lady Granville wrote to a friend: ‘The Queen said to Sir Tommy as he led her into the House, “I am sure you would have much greater pleasure in leading me to my coronation.”’19 Caroline attended the trial every day, but sometimes stayed in an adjacent room, playing backgammon, especially when prurient statements from her Italian butler and valets regarding bed stains and alleged intimate relations with her chamberlain Pergami were too demeaning to suffer. The evidence of the prosecution witnesses was damaging for her, but later not one of them was credible under cross-examination by the Queen’s counsel, the Whig politicians Henry Brougham and Thomas Denman.20

  The action brought by the dissolute, extravagant, widely hated King against his wife became a focal point for cartoons, broadsides, gross caricatures, petitions, radical demonstrations, and demands for parliamentary reform and even for women’s rights. Petitions with close to a million signatures were sent in from around the country. The Times, which had chosen to support the Queen, doubled its circulation.21 The stability of the throne and indeed of the government seemed threatened; the ‘Cato Street conspiracy’ had been foiled only six months earlier.22

  The trial in the House of Lords continued until November, the greatest show in the country, exhibiting the grubby royal linen to the eager press. (As Tyrwhitt controlled who entered as spectators, it is quite possible that he found places for some of the Balcombe family.) There were daily revelations and scandals, but the general public remained steadfastly devoted to Caroline and hostile to the King. In the end the Bill passed in the House of Lords by the narrow margin of just nine votes, which meant it was certain of defeat in the House of Commons. The government withdrew the Bill. The Queen was effectively acquitted: ‘The government, if not the King himself, was throwing in the towel.’ The King reacted with petulance and spite and threatened to ‘retire’ to his Kingdom of Hanover.23

  The crowds went wild. Cannon and muskets were fired, bells rang, fireworks exploded and London was illuminated for three days.24 At the height of the celebrations, the poet Coleridge ‘said to a friend he met on the street, “I hope you are a Queenite”. “No,” replied the friend, “only an anti-Kingite.” “Aye,” replied Coleridge, “that’s all I mean”.’25

  Patrick O’Reilly, the purser on the Northumberland, was in England in July 1820 and followed up on a bill for £50 made out to him from the firm Balcombe, Cole & Fowler. He wrote to Denzil Ibbetson, the purveyor for Longwood, that he found Balcombe ‘living at Plymouth with his family at an expense which I hope his revenue is adequate to’ and the bill was settled. He had then visited the naval agent Holmes on another matter and asked after Dr O’Meara, as he had heard that he was working on a new translation of Bonaparte’s memoirs. ‘All I could learn was that the latter is at present with Bony’s mother, I believe at Rome, and affects to get from her either a pension or a sum of money. It is very easy to conjecture on what grounds he makes the application—he being out of England is I believe not generally known, at least I should suppose so from the manner in which it was told me.’ Ibbetson passed this information to Lowe, who sent it
to Bathurst.26 O’Meara was indeed working on a memoir of Napoleon’s exile on the island of St Helena and his persecution by the governor. No doubt Madame Mère was happy to provide funding for it.

  There were rumours about Balcombe travelling abroad. His great-granddaughter Dame Mabel Brookes claimed to have found ‘considerable correspondence’ in the Lowe papers ‘in reference to his actual whereabouts’ at this time: ‘Had he gone to France? It was feared he carried messages to the Bonaparte family on the Continent.’27 However, without evidence, this must remain conjecture.

  Many pamphlets and broadsides had circulated in England during the Queen’s trial. One declared that Bonaparte had escaped from St Helena in a hot-air balloon.28 Many people actually believed it. Bathurst knew it was satire, but feared that more practical attempts might be under way. He wrote to Lowe on 30 September: ‘The reports which you have recently made of the conduct of General Buonaparte and of his followers make me suspect that he is beginning to entertain serious thoughts of escaping from St Helena, and the accounts which he will have since received of what is passing in Europe will not fail to encourage him in this project . . . You will therefore exert all your attention in watching his proceedings, and call upon the Admiral to use his utmost vigilance.’29

  Bathurst need not have feared. In fact, Napoleon had abandoned all thoughts of escape, and explained why in a secret letter he dictated to Montholon on 1 November: ‘I would not survive six months in America before being assassinated by the comte d’Artois’s contract killers. In America I would be either assassinated or forgotten. I’m better off in St Helena.’30 Napoleon had lost his energy, the old fighting spirit had gone. Nearly all his companions had left, one way or another—Las Cases, Cipriani, Madame de Montholon, O’Meara, the Balcombes, Le Page the chef and Santini. Apart from a few servants, only his faithful remained: Marchand, Montholon and General and Madame Bertrand.

  He had made his last visit outside the boundary of Longwood, his last anywhere. Sir William Doveton, a member of the governing council, had extended an invitation and made it known to Lowe that General Bonaparte was welcome to call at his home, ‘Mt Pleasant’ at Sandy Bay, if he wished.31 On 4 October, Napoleon paid a surprise visit with Bertrand and Montholon, suffering to be followed by British officers. They brought a picnic with them and proposed having it on the lawn, with its spectacular view of the ridge and the volcanic pinnacles of Lot, his Wife and Daughters. Sir William and his daughter-in-law joined them for cold pie, potted meat, cold turkey, curried fowl, ham, ‘coffee, dates, almonds, oranges and a very fine salad’. They drank champagne and Doveton’s homemade liqueur, orange shrub. Napoleon asked his host if he ever got drunk and seemed disappointed with the response that he occasionally liked ‘a glass of wine’.

  Reporting on the meeting to the governor, Sir William said that he thought General Bonaparte seemed in good health and ‘looked as fat and as round as a China pig’.32 Napoleon was in fact in appalling health, with constant and acute pains in the stomach and frequent vomiting. He found some relief by taking saltwater baths, and his Italian physician, Dr Antommarchi, was in attendance.33 In late November, Lowe had an unexpected sighting of ‘General Bonaparte’, who was riding in his phaeton with Count de Montholon, and reported to Bathurst: ‘He appeared much paler than when I had last seen him, but not fallen away.’34

  His lordship admitted to some concern: ‘As the General obstinately persists in refusing the admittance of an English physician, it is very difficult to form a right judgment of the reports which you receive, since they come almost exclusively from persons whom you know to have every disposition to deceive you . . . Still, however, there are many circumstances which now tend to confirm the reports which you have transmitted—not to the extent of apprehending immediate danger, but to the belief of his health really beginning to decline.’ He requested that Bonaparte be told that ‘we are concerned at accounts of his declining health—they have not been received with indifference’.35

  On 1 April 1821, the new Italian physician, Dr Antommarchi, asked the English Dr Arnott to see his patient. Arnott reported: ‘I went with him & was walked into a dark room, where General Bonaparte was abed. The room was so dark that I could not see him, but I felt him, or someone there. I examined his pulse & state of skin. I perceived there was considerable debility, but nothing that indicated immediate danger . . .’36 Lowe wrote to Bathurst that he tended to agree with Arnott that much of the prisoner’s illness seemed to be play-acting: ‘Notwithstanding all that Dr Arnott has said to me respecting General Bonaparte’s state being Hypochondria, I have thus refrained from asking anything in the form of a regular Bulletin from him . . .’37

  This report was sent just a fortnight before Napoleon’s death.

  The patient himself was in the process of dictating his lengthy last will and testament to Count de Montholon. He left 97 legacies, and even remembered the men who had laboured with him in Longwood’s garden: ‘see that those poor Chinese get something’. He especially asked that 10,000 francs should go to Subaltern Officer Cantillon, who had been convicted of attempting to assassinate the Duke of Wellington: ‘Cantillon had as much right to assassinate that oligarch as the latter had to send me to perish upon the rock of St Helena.’

  He wrote ‘I have always had reason to be pleased with my dearest wife, Maria Louisa. I retain for her, to my last moment, the most tender sentiments—I beseech her to watch, in order to preserve, my son from the snares which yet environ his infancy.’

  His most personal possessions and fondest messages were for his son: ‘I recommend to my son never to forget that he was born a French prince, and never to allow himself to become an instrument in the hands of the triumvirs who oppress the nations of Europe: he ought never to fight against France, or to injure her in any manner; he ought to adopt my motto: “Everything for the French people”.’38

  On 5 May, Napoleon breathed his last, surrounded by his remaining loyal companions. Madame Bertrand, for so long the most reluctant of the little company, had sat through long nights with him and was with him at the end. The following day, Lowe wrote to Bathurst: ‘It falls to my duty to inform your Lordship that Napoleon Bonaparte expired at about ten minutes before six o’clock in the evening of the 5th May 1821 . . .’39

  When, some weeks later, reports of the death reached an influential gathering in Paris, one of those present exclaimed: ‘Napoleon dead! What an event!’

  ‘It is not an event anymore,’ murmured the cynical diplomat Talleyrand. ‘It is only an item of news.’40

  At about the same time, a courtier brought the information to King George IV: ‘It is my duty to inform your Majesty that your greatest enemy is dead.’

  ‘Is she, by God!’ exclaimed the King.41

  CHAPTER 26

  THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY

  Count Talleyrand might have pretended that Napoleon’s death was only an item of news, but it was of enormous symbolic significance for two generations. As general and emperor, Napoleon had stalked through the nightmares of children, inspired young men to lug cannon to the Caribbean and Egypt and Moscow, rattled thrones, excited the hopes of revolutionaries, and become the muse—until disillusionment set in—for poets, painters and composers.

  The Napoleonic legend in France had been building for years and now it gained added lustre. It was said that a comet had been seen above Ajaccio in Corsica at the time of Napoleon’s birth; now it was claimed that a few days after his death, a comet crossed high in the heavens over the island of St Helena.1 It all confirmed the story of ‘a man of Destiny’. In Britain, as all over Europe, the obituaries, whether for or against, were vehement and passionate. Each aimed to capture the man for posterity. It was, after all, a History War.

  A published letter from St Helena informed that ‘Buonaparte was buried beneath the willow trees, in the spot he had pointed out, about a mile and a half from Longwood House. A procession of the military staff and all the naval officers followed the corpse, which was laid on a bl
ack car, in a plain mahogany coffin (laid wood and tin within), and was received, on emerging from the grounds, by a line of 2000 troops, including artillery and a party of marines, with four bands drawn up by the roadside.’2

  Although Lowe had acquiesced to Napoleon’s request to be buried in his favourite little valley under the willows, and the funeral service was conducted with all due ceremony, on another matter he was characteristically difficult. He and the French could not agree on the wording for a plaque on the coffin. Knowing that no mention of an ‘Emperor’ would be permitted, the French had asked for the simple inscription: Napoleon—né à Ajaccio 15 Août 1769—Mort à St Helena 5 Mai 1821. Lowe had refused, unless the surname ‘Bonaparte’ was added. Montholon and Bertrand rejected this. It detracted from the elegance and dignity.3 The coffin remained bare, no inscription at all.

  At his club in London, the Duke of Wellington publicly expressed his great admiration for Napoleon. He privately told his friend Mrs Arbuthnot: ‘Now I think I may say I am the most successful General alive.’4 He slept in a bed that had belonged to Bonaparte, and although his admiration was somewhat tempered on learning that the Frenchman who had tried to assassinate him was rewarded in Bonaparte’s will, it was not erased. He had recently acquired a statue, an unwanted item sent by Louis XVIII to the British government and presented to the victor of Waterloo. Wellington erected it on a plinth outside his London mansion, Apsley House on Hyde Park Corner. Sculpted by Canova, it was a towering figure 12 feet high (the little Corsican would have been happy with half of that), presenting the young Napoleon quite nude but for ‘a Republican fig leaf ’.5

  Napoleon’s death would have been devastating for eighteen-year-old Betsy. Apart from her immediate family, he had been the most important figure in her young life. The newspaper accounts, offering such grandiloquent descriptions of his rise to power and historic achievements, must have astonished her and placed in an almost unrecognisable perspective the man she had known. It would have made her marvel that this heroic or ruthless man, this designer of a just system of laws or else a savage murderer, had been her friend, often her playmate, and had tolerated her impudence.