Betsy was surprised when a calling card was left, followed shortly afterwards by the caller. He was a tall man of thirty, according to one biographer, with a prominent nose, slightly bulging eyes and thinning hair; his long torso was out of proportion to his legs.7 At the end of the third edition of her mother’s Recollections, Betsy’s daughter gave a description of the encounter. Disappointingly, their visitor did not resemble Napoleon, whereas Betsy had been startled by Joseph Bonaparte’s likeness to his brother, despite being older and of a more solid build. Betsy was now 36 and Bessie an attractive sixteen-year-old. Louis, an inveterate womaniser, probably took an immediate interest in the daughter.
It was to be the first of a number of visits in late 1838. ‘In one topic,’ Bessie wrote, ‘Prince Louis was engrossed even more than in the repetition of the tiniest and most trivial incidents which marked the sojourn at St Helena. This was the personal appearance of his great illustrious uncle. Did he resemble him in any point? Was not his general style the same—if not his features, at least the mould of them?’ Betsy’s responses were not satisfactory. Her daughter observed: ‘All who knew my mother will remember that she spoke out resolutely what she thought honestly, never sparing herself, and only grieved when compelled to disappoint others.’ The prince was unhappy that Betsy was ‘telling him plainly that in no respect did he resemble his illustrious uncle. He always seemed to be disappointed, yet always recurred to the subject after a short time.’ At last she found something encouraging to say, even if it was not strictly true. ‘Your hair is very like his,’ she said. That pleased him.8
Louis Napoleon escorted Betsy to at least one evening hosted by Lady Blessington at Gore House in Kensington. Lady Blessington, an Irishwoman, was clever, witty and beautiful, but not considered quite acceptable in society herself, being the author of Conversations with Lord Byron (widely considered a most scandalous man), and most of all for openly cohabiting with the Count d’Orsay, who was the former husband of her stepdaughter. But at Gore House she ran a virtual salon, where leading intellectuals of the day, writers, politicians, artists and scientists, were always welcome and generously hosted. Betsy enjoyed a chat with an ambitious politician, the future prime minister Benjamin Disraeli.
All the while, Louis Napoleon was taking long walks in Hyde Park, turning over his ideas. He and his supporters were plotting another coup to win government in France. His old friend Montholon was helping him to hatch the plans.
Alexander Balcombe had been living and working with his brother William at the Molonglo Plains property, but in 1838 he joined a neighbour in an expedition of several months, taking livestock overland down to Port Phillip (the area surrounding present-day Melbourne), then just opening up for exploration and development. Alexander immediately liked the fertile green country, so different from William’s arid land. He resolved to return to Bungonia to propose to the young woman he wished to join him in this new life.9
In 1841, when Alexander was 30, he married Emma Juanna (Joanna) Reid, the seventeen-year-old daughter of the respected Reid family of Inverary Park, firm friends of the Balcombes. Dr David Reid had been a military surgeon during the long Peninsular War (which perhaps explains why his daughter was given a Spanish middle name). He had tended the wounded and dying attacked by Bonaparte’s forces. In the early days he must have wondered about his new Bungonia neighbours who seemed to have such fond memories of Napoleon, but those days were long past. He would have considered Alexander a worthy son-in-law, who had waited patiently for Emma to be old enough to marry. Alexander and Emma became notable pioneering figures on the Mornington Peninsula near Melbourne and had a large family; later there were many distinguished descendants, including Dame Mabel Brookes.
The story of Alexander’s brother Thomas Tyrwhitt Balcombe, older by a year and also born on St Helena, was by no means as happy. He had been courting a young woman, Lydia Stuckey, who had accepted his marriage proposal. But returning to Sydney in late March 1840 from a visit to William, his two-horse gig overturned and Thomas pitched out onto his head. The Sydney Herald reported that it was ‘an accident which was very near being attended with loss of life’.10 Thomas recovered sufficiently to marry Lydia three months later, and they settled into a house in the Sydney suburb of Paddington that he named ‘Napoleon Cottage’. A year or two afterwards, a baby girl was born, named Jane Elizabeth after her two aunts. She remained her father’s favourite when two other children followed.
Thomas pursued his interest in art while working as a field surveyor with Robert Hoddle. The earliest examples of his artworks are landscape sketches and images of an Aboriginal man, made in field notebooks during survey trips to the Hunter and Goulburn river valleys in 1834 and 1835. Over the ensuing years he became noted for his paintings of horses and horse races, genre studies of town and country life, sympathetic representations of Aboriginal tribal life (although his caricatures of town Aborigines sold better) and lively portraits, suggestive of a decidedly playful imagination. Commissions began to be a profitable source of earnings. Thomas Tyrwhitt Balcombe remains an important but underrated figure in Australian art history; he left a vivid and singular collection of paintings, sketches and sculptures. But Thomas seemed unable to enjoy companionable family life; the brain damage from his accident was perhaps responsible for his increasingly disturbing mood swings.
In May 1840, the French King, Louis Philippe, bowed to overwhelming public sentiment and agreed that Napoleon’s remains could come back to Paris, to fulfil the emperor’s final wish that he could rest ‘on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people whom I have loved so well’. After the British government gave its formal permission, a special law was passed that Napoleon’s body should be returned from St Helena and taken to Les Invalides, a former military veterans’ hospital by the Seine. The expedition would be led by the King’s son, the Prince de Joinville. There was a squabble over who should accompany the body on its homecoming, but preference was given to Napoleon’s former companions in exile.
The old grand marshal, Count Bertrand, now a widower, requested to take his son Arthur, born on St Helena. Count de Las Cases was blind and ill, with only two more years to live, but his son Emmanuel, former scribe to Napoleon and famed for horsewhipping Sir Hudson Lowe, was proud to take his place. General Gaspard Gourgaud, stout, bewhiskered and rich (somehow having escaped reprisals for his ‘confessions’), insisted on going, and claimed to be the first to have demanded Napoleon’s return. Dr O’Meara, who had married a wealthy old widow, was dead or he would have been invited; the faithful valets, Louis Marchand and ‘Ali’ (Saint-Denis), elected to go; and the confectioner Pierron, footman Noverraz and Archambault were there ‘to represent the imperial household’.
While the French people waited for the return of their former hero, Louis Napoleon chose this time to launch himself as the successor. On 5 August, he and his supporters arrived at Boulogne in a chartered pleasure boat, a tame vulture tethered at the prow (not having located an eagle). They planned to capture the Boulogne garrison, but the colonel had been forewarned and was expecting them. The bold conquerors were captured instead. Louis Napoleon and Count de Montholon were thrown into the fortress of Ham in Picardy, imprisoned for over five years for their trouble.
On 15 December, the frigate La Belle Poule, bedecked with flags for the occasion, arrived with the immense casket at Cherbourg in drenching rain. As the great sarcophagus was borne by a funeral carriage with gilded wheels drawn by sixteen caparisoned horses along the way to Les Invalides, there were huge crowds of spectators. People clung to rooftops. The Emperor Napoleon had come home.
The 1841 census, the first to be taken in England and Wales, listed Mrs Abell as ‘Independent’ and living with her daughter ‘Elizabeth’ at a good London address, Dukes Street, near Grosvenor Square, Westminster, St James. It also indicated that she had a boarder, Joseph Green, aged 45, on army half-pay; as Betsy’s mother’s maiden name was Green, he was probably a cousin.11
&nb
sp; Betsy wished to launch nineteen-year-old Bessie into society during the winter Season. She would accompany her as chaperone. Outfitting the two of them was costly, but it would be a worthwhile investment if Bessie were to meet a gentleman who would become the steady protector that she had never had.
Brighton was no longer the dizzy sparkling place it was during the Prince Regent’s time, but it now had more social cachet, especially when Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert were in residence at the Royal Pavilion. On 19 January 1842, Betsy and her daughter attended a fancy dress ball at the Old Ship Hotel at Brighton. They were both mentioned in a London paper, the Morning Post, and the ‘beautiful Miss Abell, in a rich Persian costume’ was the only one of the assembly singled out for her own beauty, not that of her dress.12
The two women were still in Brighton a month later, obviously at considerable expense, but the next occasion took them to the height of society. The Morning Post of 22 February published an article headed ‘FASHIONABLE WORLD, HER MAJESTY & BRIGHTON’. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were staying at ‘the Palace’—the fanciful Royal Pavilion built at vast national expense by the Prince Regent. In the morning they set out for an airing, ‘but in consequence of wet weather Her Majesty did not leave the Palace’. Others of the royal family were staying with them and in the evening there was a grand dinner party, which a few dignitaries attended. But during the day, Her Majesty and His Royal Highness received calls at the Palace from ‘Sir Thomas, Lady and Miss de Trafford, Mrs Colonel H. Streatfield, Lieut. R. Colegrave, Captain Green, Mrs and Miss Abell . . .’13 It is likely that the Captain Green mentioned was the same officer, probably a relative, listed as living with them in the previous year’s census.
While the month of mixing in society at Brighton had been a delight, there was usually an ulterior motive for mothers of daughters of marriageable age, and that particular aim had not borne fruit. Bessie had danced with any number of charming gentlemen, but then Betsy would hear from friends that certain gentlemen had made discreet enquiries as to the financial position of Bessie’s family, and those charming gentlemen would drift away.
Betsy was desperate to find a way to improve their circumstances. And then the thought would have occurred. Napoleon! Everyone was curious about him; whenever she mentioned that she had lived on St Helena, people’s questions were always about Bonaparte. Well, she would tell them; she would write a book. And with so many people interested in him, even more so since his body’s return to France with such pageantry, the book should make money. She had one half-written already, all the stories she had told to Edward John Eyre ten years before, and he had written them down and given her the notes. So many more memories had come back to her since, with the questions of Joseph Bonaparte and Louis Napoleon. She began work on it immediately, fired with enthusiasm and optimism.
When she had a few stories together but not yet a book, she found she could earn money in the meantime. She sent some chapters to the New Monthly Magazine.14 The editor was delighted, published them immediately and asked for more.
Occasionally ideas came to her that could have, might have, should have happened, they were such good stories, she would have thought, why not put them in? So she dreamed up a story about how she got up to some mischief, committed some prank or other that provoked Napoleon, and her father had locked her up all night in the old slave cellar (as if he would!) and the rats came at her and wanted to gnaw her feet, so she threw her father’s best bottles of wine at them to keep them away. She came up with another tale about how one evening her mother and father, her sister Jane and herself were visiting the Bertrands at their place over the road from Longwood House and forgot the nine o’clock curfew. The governor had ordered them to be locked in the sentry box for the whole night!
A gentleman from the publishing house of John Murray came to visit her and offered an advance for her book. She was overwhelmed—John Murray published Jane Austen, Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron. The gentleman said that she could build up her sales if she had friends who would take out a subscription to buy the book. So she wrote to Lady Blessington requesting ‘that you will permit me the honor of adding your name to my list of friends who have promised to take copies’. Lady Blessington proved most obliging, and Betsy was very busy herself, for over five hundred subscriptions came in for the book. They were from members of the aristocracy, from bishops and admirals, and even from the writers Robert Southey and Captain Marryat.15
In January 1844, Sir Hudson Lowe, who was ‘poor, ill and forsaken’, died at the age of 74. He had died with his life in ruins, just as Betsy, the girl who had so often annoyed him, was becoming a celebrity. In the same year that Joseph Bonaparte died in Italy, Recollections of the Emperor Napoleon was launched by John Murray, and Mrs Abell was suddenly famous. The Victorian artist Alfred Tidey asked to paint her. In The Music Party he portrayed Betsy, tall and slim with long blonde hair, leaning over Bessie at the piano, while a harpist and another student look on.
Betsy had written the book to improve their financial situation and in the hope that it would also help Bessie’s prospects. Her royalties would never make her a fortune, but what the book did achieve was to raise them to a higher rank in society, and that fulfilled her aim. It was through the publication of Recollections that Bessie met her future husband. On the list of subscribers was the name Charles Johnstone Esquire. He was just seventeen, the eldest son of George Johnstone Esquire of 53 Tavistock Square in London and of Broncroft Castle in Shropshire, and he came from a distinguished line of baronets. Maybe young Charles Johnstone met Bessie at a celebration for the launching of the book, perhaps hosted by Lady Blessington. At that gathering, the author’s 22-year-old daughter, a budding operatic soprano, would have been invited to sing. Young Charles Johnstone must have been smitten with her.
So why, one wonders, did they not marry for another four years, until 1848? The answer becomes obvious. In four years’ time, Charles, the heir to Broncroft Castle and considerable estates, would turn 21 and could marry without his parents’ permission. They clearly did not approve of Bessie: she was five years older than their son, she had no money, and she was a singer, almost an actress and therefore fast. But worst of all, her family had been friends of Bonaparte’s! So Charles and Bessie had to bide their time, while his parents hoped that he would lose interest and find a more suitable partner.
After the revolution of September 1848 in France, the monarchy was overthrown and the Second Republic established. In an amazing turn of events, Louis Napoleon was elected by the French as their new president. The mass of the people had voted overwhelmingly for him because they recognised his name—the greatest name in France—and they knew nothing else about him.16
In England, the Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post announced that a wedding had taken place on 23 November 1848 at Stoke Damerel church of ‘Charles Edward, eldest son of George Johnstone Esq of Tavistock Square London and Broncroft Castle, Shropshire, to Jane Elizabeth Balcombe, only child of Edward Abell Esq and granddaughter of William Balcombe Esq., late Colonial Treasurer of New South Wales’.17 Charles had turned 21 and was free to marry the bride of his choice. There was no mention of the groom’s parents attending. Bessie now had a good protector.
And so did Betsy. She moved in with the young couple at a lodging house at 7 Upper Spring Street in Marylebone parish, London. She still had a desire to maintain a connection with the Bonaparte family, especially now that Louis Napoleon was President of France, so she wrote to him in 1849 and was overly effusive in her gratitude when he sent ‘several most interesting autograph notes, not the usual signature, but charming little comments upon men and things’.18 Betsy also wrote to her brothers to inform them of the happy development of Bessie’s marriage to the eldest son of a notable family. She heard back from Alexander in 1851.
After his marriage to Emma Reid, Alexander had bought livestock and settled at Merri Creek, north of Melbourne. Then in 1843, he moved to Schnapper Point on the Mornington Peninsul
a, where he took over the lease of the 1000-acre run that his brother-in-law Captain Reid had established three years earlier. Alexander named it ‘The Briars’, in memory of his childhood home. He built a comfortable homestead and held the property under pastoral licence until 1854, when he bought the land.
In 1843, his eldest brother, William, had started selling his land on the Molonglo Plains; within a year he had moved to Krawarree, further inland, and bought two substantial properties there. But after two years he sold the farms and lived in the town of Braidwood. He was restless and found it difficult to settle into town life.
Alexander wrote to Betsy that William had gone with Thomas to the goldfields near Bathurst on the Turon River (today called Hill End). A new gold rush was on there and they hoped to make their fortunes. The goldfields adventure ended in tragedy. In January 1852, William became ill. He died on 29 January, the local paper reported, ‘of dysentery’. Thomas buried his brother, then made a poignant sketch of his grave and that of two other men, just cairns of stones under a tree. He asked for a copy to be sent to his sister Mrs Abell at 43 Park Street, Grosvenor Square, London.
William’s death shattered Thomas, who began exhibiting more frequent episodes of rage, affecting Lydia and the family. Neighbours in Paddington reported hearing shouting and what sounded like violence and a woman’s cries from within the house.19 Worse was to come. On Boxing Day 1858, Thomas’s first and favourite child, eighteen-year-old Jane, died of typhus. This almost completely unhinged him.
In the mid-1850s, even Alexander had briefly joined the search for gold (in the Bendigo area, with Emma’s brother David), without success. He returned from the diggings disillusioned and settled down to pastoral pursuits and the life of a country squire. He was appointed a magistrate in 1855 and became a prominent citizen of Melbourne and of the Mornington area. He and his wife Emma kept in touch, by the occasional letter, with Betsy and Bessie in England, but never saw them again.
Betsy and the Emperor Page 46