Betsy and the Emperor

by Anne Whitehead

  Mr Fraser said that the Balcombes had a son-in-law with them—a man called Abell ‘who had known William in Nypaul’.10 This was to Jane a remarkable coincidence: not just one connection between the Balcombe family and theirs through her sons Edward and Aleck, but also a second connection through the Balcombes’ son-in-law having known William. She was most anxious to meet this Mr Abell, to hear his description of William, to learn anything at all about her second son who had set off for India twenty years earlier and who rarely wrote home. She and her husband fretted about him and wished he could find a good Scottish wife.

  She immediately wrote a letter to William in Delhi: ‘We have lately had a very interesting acquaintance come to St Omer in the family of a Mr Balcombe formerly of St Helena & in whose house your Beloved Brothers lived when it pleased God to spare them & received much kindness & attention. Their very name was sacred and interesting to us & yr Father waited on Mr B as soon as we heard of their arrival—he & his Lady remembered our Dear Boys with the fondest affection—indeed to know must have been to love them—they have been in England some years & have lately married their youngest Daughter (a favourite of Buonaparte as a girl on his first arrival) to an Indian [army man] of the name of “Abel” who knew you in Nypaul! Mrs B is in bad health & they seem to have changed climate on her account. Their acquaintance is extremely interesting to us & you may believe we shall endeavour to show them every attention in our Power.’11

  Jane Fraser’s letter to William was more informative than her diary. If Balcombe had said that his daughter Betsy was with their family at Saint-Omer, Jane’s letter does not mention it, only that Abell was. Her diary entries are brief and circumspect. However, without my fortunate access to them, I would have no information at all about the Balcombes’ time in France, nor about what was happening concerning Betsy and her husband. Jane Fraser’s diary entries, as well as being concise, seem to be incredibly discreet, as if she did not trust even her journal with gossip. So I must read the entries as faint clues along a mystery trail; a code written in onion juice, which, brought to the light, reveals more than was at first apparent.

  What does emerge clearly is that Betsy and Edward Abell had arrived in France with her parents; otherwise there would be absolutely no reason for Abell to be there without her, especially as it is probable that her parents actively disliked him. But where was Betsy?

  The explanation could be that while the Balcombes might always have planned that Betsy and Abell would come with them to France for her to give birth there, both enabling her mother to be with her and avoiding English gossip, she may have gone into labour just at the time of their arrival. It took another seven days for Balcombe to respond to Mr Fraser’s invitation to visit, despite their remarkable St Helena connection. They were being offered entrée to British society in the town but did not immediately take it up.

  On the eighth day, a curious Mr Fraser called at their lodgings himself, but he found the household unprepared and the son-in-law and both daughters absent. A newborn baby in the house would have been worthy of note but was not noted. He told his wife that Mrs Balcombe had seemed ‘very interesting but extremely “scatty”’ (which I take to mean ‘distracted’).12 That certainly seems unlike the calm, hospitable woman of St Helena who, with no prior warning, received without fuss the just-exiled former emperor of the French at whose command thousands of British soldiers had been slaughtered.

  It is likely that Betsy’s baby girl, Elizabeth Jane (Bessie), was delivered at a ‘lying-in’ hospital or convent at Saint-Omer and that her sister Jane, with whom she had always been close, was with her for much of the time. Betsy must have given birth in 1822, for the daughter was ‘a little girl’, not a newborn, when they sailed for Australia the following year. (Furthermore, in 1832, a friend described Bessie as being aged ‘about ten’.) Betsy was unlikely to have given birth without her mother present, and this first fortnight at Saint-Omer is when Mrs Balcombe tended to be absent, either physically or else distracted, ‘scatty’. Unless the baby was premature, a September birth places her conception at the end of December 1821, soon after Betsy met the ‘man-about-town’, and would mean she was five months pregnant at the wedding.13

  If Jane Fraser was aware during this period of Betsy and the birth of a baby, she did not mention it. The startling thing is that she did not even note the existence of Betsy anywhere in her Saint-Omer diary, although she referred to her in her letter to William. But Betsy does appear in Jane’s diary a year later, after the Frasers had left France.

  Despite the charm of the little town with its medieval precinct and the beauty of the surrounding marshlands with their rich birdlife, the Balcombes’ year-long sojourn in Saint-Omer was miserable, relieved only by their friendship with the Frasers.

  When Jane Fraser at last met Mrs Balcombe on 7 September, she found her ‘a mild & interesting woman but in very indifferent health’. She thought the elder daughter ‘a good looking girl about 20’ and promptly invited Jane and her brothers to come to visit in the afternoon.14 (This does suggest that she may have been giving Mrs Balcombe time with her younger daughter.) Around 8 and 9 September, Jane Fraser seemed to be minding the three Balcombe boys—William, fourteen, Thomas, twelve, and Alexander, eleven—at her house for much of the time. This could well have been the period when Betsy was still ‘lying in’ (recovering from the birth) and wanted the company of her mother and sister.

  The two families became extremely friendly, despite the difference in age between the parents: William Balcombe was 44 in 1822 and his wife 49, whereas Edward Satchwell Fraser was 71 and Jane in her mid-sixties. The Frasers were of course predisposed to like the Balcombes from the beginning, and introduced them to their circle of friends. The days continued, when health allowed, in a series of house calls on each other and walks along the ramparts, the remaining medieval walls of the town.

  Balcombe had explained his wife’s need for a change of climate as the reason they had come to Saint-Omer, although the damp atmosphere and recurring fogs could hardly have been helpful for her persistent hepatitis condition. While the two couples frequently called on each other for an hour or so, there were numerous days when Jane Fraser noted in her diary ‘Mrs Balcombe is unwell’, and others when she observed that ‘Mrs Balcombe is in a very distressed state’.15 Jane Balcombe must have experienced great anxiety about the relationship between Betsy and Abell and about the wellbeing of her new little granddaughter, who was no longer in France. The ‘son-in-law’ never appears again in Mrs Fraser’s Saint-Omer diary and Betsy never, so the young couple must have returned to Abell’s home in London. The Balcombes’ elder daughter was often mentioned (adding to the surfeit of ‘Janes’ in this story) and Jane Fraser became very fond of the three boys, although they must have reminded her painfully of her own lost sons.

  As the Frasers waited for mail from their son James on his perilous journey overland, William Balcombe hoped for word from Lord Bathurst, or inside information from Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt concerning a colonial preferment. Sometime during their stay the Balcombes tried to get in touch with their old French friends from St Helena. General Bertrand’s military rank had been restored to him and he and Fanny had retired to their estate in the Berri, making only occasional visits to Paris to stay at their splendid house in the Rue Chantereine, purchased with Napoleon’s bequest. Montholon, according to Gilbert Martineau, ‘went off to his chateau at Frémigny, where he lived in lavish style, making frequent excursions to the capital’.16 Contact was clearly made with the Montholons, who sent a wedding gift for Betsy, a beautiful sewing and writing box made of tortoiseshell veneer with silver inlay and blue silk lining.17 Given her hasty wedding in Devon, it must have been sent to Saint-Omer.

  The Balcombes were dissatisfied with their lodgings, and on 13 September William, on horseback, called by the Frasers at Rue de Dunkerque to tell them that he had found a better house. Although the two younger boys were enrolled at the local école, Balcombe worried about his son Wil
liam’s education. He consulted the Frasers, who recommended an English boarding school in Boulogne. He took William to enrol there and was absent for three days while Thomas and Alexander stayed with the Frasers, as their mother continued to be ill.18 While Balcombe was at Boulogne, he may have just missed seeing a young friend from St Helena, Emmanuel, son of Count de Las Cases. It was at about this time that 22-year-old Emmanuel boarded a packet boat for England, to confront an old enemy.

  When Balcombe returned to Saint-Omer he called at the bureau de poste, always hoping for news of an appointment. He was surprised to find that he had a letter from Sir Hudson Lowe, seeking his support. Lowe was outraged at the huge popularity of O’Meara’s book and at its portrayal of him as a vicious persecutor of a stoic prisoner and his caring physician. He was collecting evidence from former St Helena residents for his defamation case, ‘to refute the calumnies contained in the book’ and to win recompense for the insults to himself. (He did not mention that Bathurst had counselled against this action.19) There was no mistaking the obligation. Balcombe had sought a favour from Lowe and was now being asked for one in return. It concerned Bonaparte’s application to free the slave Toby, as O’Meara had stated that the governor had rejected it out of spite. Balcombe replied, confirming that the final decision against Toby’s purchase had been made by the sitting magistrate. His response was about as muted a show of support as was possible.20

  In London on 22 October, Lowe received a much more direct affront resulting from O’Meara’s book. Emmanuel de Las Cases had arrived in the city and booked into Dog Tavern, near the doctor’s lodgings. He laid in wait outside Lowe’s new address at 21 Paddington Green.

  Lowe had ordered a hackney coach and, unsuspecting, was walking towards it, when the young man dashed across the street and charged into him, challenging him to a duel. Lowe staggered back, not recognising his attacker. He described what happened next in a letter sent the following day to Bathurst: ‘I turned round to him to express my surprise at his behaviour, when he accosted me with a foreign accent by the following expression: “What do you mean Sir by insulting me!” or “Do you mean Sir to insult me?” “Insult you!” I replied, “Why it was you who ran up against me!” He persisted however in repeating that I had insulted him, and spoke in such a strange manner that it really struck me he must be insane, and finding it of no use to argue with him, I was getting into the carriage when he struck at me with a small whip, and then immediately drew away. Having an umbrella in my hand, and feeling myself thus provoked, I desisted from entering the carriage and followed him with the intention of giving him a blow with the end of the umbrella, when a person, apparently an Englishman who had been coming up behind him, instantly interfered and forcibly prevented me from striking him. Finding myself thus situated, and still under an impression the rencontre had been one of mere accident, I got into the carriage and was driving off when the young person who had first ran against me, came up with an impudent air to offer me his card, and finding I took no notice of him, he threw it into the carriage, and I threw it immediately out again, without even looking at it.’21 According to passers-by, the youth had shouted: ‘This man insulted my father!’ When Lowe returned home later that day he found that the maid had picked up two cards from the road, with the inscription ‘Baron E. de Las Cases, Dog Tavern, Holywell-street’. Lowe insisted that he had not recognised him: ‘the young man had left St Helena, a mere boy, between five and six years before’ and he ‘could not conceive him to be a gentleman’.22

  The newspapers loved the story. ‘SIR HUDSON LOWE HORSEWHIPPED!’ reported The Examiner. The episode was soon news around the country. The Morning Chronicle published Baron de Las Cases’ own account and reported that the young Frenchman with ‘great manliness’ avowed ‘that “the sole object of his visit to England was to compel Sir H. Lowe to afford satisfaction for his wrongs”. The Baron concludes, by remarking, “that a son who vindicates the cause of an aged, sick and honoured father, only fulfils a most sacred duty imposed upon him, and in so acting pursues the path of honour and of rectitude”. And who will not agree with him?’23

  A few days later, Lowe wrote to Bathurst from Tunbridge Wells that the young Las Cases, ‘having braved the Government and Laws of this country, has fled to his own, where he has dared to make a public boast of the Insult he offered to me’. He requested ‘Your Lordship’s consideration and that of His Majesty’s Government, as to the means of my obtaining due redress’.24 The letter was marked ‘Never sent’, so Lowe had thought better of it, but a week later he posted another protest, this time about a new French translation of O’Meara’s book, and asked if an injunction could not be taken out against it.25 His Majesty’s Government remained obdurately silent.

  CHAPTER 29

  THE CLEARING FOG

  Winter was closing in at Saint-Omer. A network of waterways and marshland around the town regularly produced a fog, le brouillard, which usually cleared by midday; fires were lit each morning and evening. In late October, Jane Fraser made almost daily visits to assist her friend Mrs Harrison who was in much pain in advanced pregnancy. Jane sat with her for three nights and was devastated when she died on 2 November. Jane’s distress continued and she could rarely sleep without laudanum. She noted in her diary that on some afternoons Miss Balcombe came and sat with her.1

  For the last week of November and the first two weeks of December, William Balcombe appeared to absent himself from Saint-Omer, and Mrs Balcombe’s brother from London stayed with her for some of the time at least.2 Jane’s diary, discreet as always, does not mention why Balcombe was away or where he was, although it is most probable that he had gone to London and in his absence Mrs Balcombe’s brother had arrived as a protector for the family. It must be conjecture as to what matter caused Balcombe’s absence, but it could have been trouble between Betsy and Abell, or else a meeting at the Colonial Office to discuss the possibility of a position. In either case, there was apparently no immediate outcome. Balcombe was away for almost three weeks. It cannot be proved that he came back by way of Paris, his one opportunity to make a withdrawal at Lafitte’s Bank—the final gift to him from Napoleon—but, without bank records, it cannot be disproved either.

  He returned to Saint-Omer on 12 December to find that his wife was critically ill. Jane Fraser was very concerned for her. Mrs Balcombe was to remain unwell right up until the beginning of January 1823, a period of almost three weeks. Again it sounds like a bout of depression, as if whatever matter had caused her husband’s absence had impacted badly on her.

  Meanwhile, Edward Satchwell Fraser had found an absorbing distraction. He had been lent O’Meara’s Napoleon in Exile and could not wait to get into it. He devoured the first volume of the enormous work—with its numerous mentions of the Balcombes—in three afternoons, then started on the second.

  And so the two families endured a hard winter at Saint-Omer, while Mrs Balcombe remained unwell, and nothing at all was mentioned in Jane Fraser’s diary or her correspondence about Betsy and her husband. William junior came home on vacation from school in Boulogne, and the boys were around at the Frasers’ for much of the time; Balcombe joined them there for celebrations on New Year’s Eve. They were all glad to see the end of 1822. ‘The last morning of this tedious year that we have been entirely in Saint-Omer,’ Jane wrote. ‘God grant our residence here may be soon over . . .’

  Her wish was answered. On the bright morning of 19 January they received a long letter from James; the doughty traveller had arrived in Paris. She read with ‘sorrow & surprise’ that he had not calculated on their accompanying him to Scotland but saw them as ‘remaining quietly at St Omer till he returned from the North’. She knew that before he left for India he had been courting a cousin, Jeanie Tytler, and apparently was now anxious, after a reunion with them, to head to Scotland to see her. But if he imagined that his parents would languish in Saint-Omer while he played the gallant, he had not bargained on his mother. Jane persuaded Mr Fraser that they could
wait for James in England, visiting friends in Bath and Tunbridge Wells. She started packing and was so elated that she made few diary notes from that time.

  Just after dawn on Saturday 25 January, James arrived at their door in the Rue de Dunkerque. There was much jubilation, so much to discuss, so many questions about his epic journey, his future plans, that they did not stop for breakfast until three hours later. After this there were bills to pay, passports to arrange, and dear friends to farewell. Mr Fraser visited the Balcombes to introduce James.

  On the Frasers’ last morning in Saint-Omer, 28 January, Jane ‘made a hurried call at the Balcombes . . . saw both Mr & Mrs B. Mrs B gave me a little Golden Locket as a remembrance.’ Just after 1 pm the coach came for the Frasers. The Balcombes had lost their good friends and the chronicler of their days in Saint-Omer, but they would stay on there for another ten months.

  William Balcombe and his family lingered in France because he had not yet received word of any appointment. But nor had Lowe. Despite Bathurst’s advice against doing so, Lowe was proceeding with his attempt to prosecute O’Meara; he was paying an expensive barrister and had a conference with him and the Solicitor General.3 However, because Lowe had delayed so long with his defamation application, and his legal counsel, Mr Tindal, procrastinated, the Trinity legal term passed by, and with it the prescribed period for an application expired.