Betsy and the Emperor
Page 52
6 Holmes to Stokoe, 26 August 1818, Lowe Papers, BL MS Add 20123 f.329.
7 Chaplin, Napoleon’s Captivity on St Helena, 233–4; St Helena Council Minutes for 24 August 1818, St Helena Archives.
8 EIC Court of Directors to Lowe, 21 April 1819, quoted in Forsyth, History of the Captivity of Napoleon at St Helena, Vol. III, 55.
9 Morning Post, The Times, (both with headline ‘Slave Abolition on St Helena’), 12 November 1818.
10 Morning Chronicle, 5 September 1818. Las Cases’ Memoirs were only a precursor to his massive eight-volume Mémorial de Saint-Hélène, not written until after his papers were returned by the Colonial Office after Napoleon’s death in 1821.
11 The Times, 15 September 1818.
12 Edinburgh Review, Vol. 30, September 1818, 444–62.
13 Lowe to Bathurst, 15 May 1819, Bathurst Private Papers, BL 57/44 f.286.
14 William Holmes from Lyons Inn to ‘James Forbes’, St Helena, 30 August 1818, BL Add. 20123 f.331.
15 Lowe despatch to Bathurst, 29 September 1818, BL Add. 20123 ff.399–406, containing letter from ‘James’ [William] Balcombe to O’Meara, 24 June 1818.
CHAPTER 23
1 O’Meara to John Wilson Croker, 28 October 1818, quoted in Forsyth, History of the Captivity of Napoleon at St Helena, Vol. III, Appendix No. 150, 432–3.
2 John Wilson Croker to O’Meara, 2 November 1818, quoted in Benhamou, Inside Longwood, 201.
3 The Times, 10 November 1818.
4 The Times, 10 November 1818.
5 ‘Minute of what passed at the Colonial Office, Sunday 8 November 1818, Earl Bathurst, Viscount Sidmouth and Viscount Melville present. Mr. Balcombe attending’, BL MS Add. 20201 f. 193–4.
6 William Balcombe to Earl Bathurst, 9 November 1818, BL MS Add. 20201 ff.195–6.
7 William Fowler on St Helena to William Balcombe c/- Messrs W&J Burnie, 29 September 1818, BL MS Add. 20201 f.191.
8 William Balcombe to Earl Bathurst, 10 November 1818, BL MS Add. 20201 ff.197–8.
9 Morning Post, 17 November 1818.
10 The Times, 10 November 1818.
11 Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt proposal for horse-drawn railroad presented to the Plymouth Chamber of Commerce, 3 November 1818
12 William Balcombe from Chester Place, Kennington, to cousin Miss Cheal, 14 November 1818. Letter transcribed by author, courtesy of the late Richard a’Beckett and family from their collection of Balcombe family letters. Copies at The Briars, Mt Martha.
13 Gourgaud to Madame Mère and Prince Eugene, October 1818; to Emperor of Russia, 2 October 1818; to Emperor of Austria, 25 October 1818; to Marie Louise, 25 August 1818, in St Helena Journal of General Baron Gourgaud, Vol. II, Appendix II, 348–53.
14 Courier, 25 November 1818, reprinted in Aberdeen Journal, 25 November 1818; also The Asiatic Journal, 14 November 1818.
15 Henry Goulburn to Lowe, 16 November 1818, BL MS 20201 f.187.
16 Henry Goulburn to Lowe, 16 November 1818, BL MS 20201 f.187.
17 Bathurst to Lowe, 16 November 1818, BL MS 20201 f. 183.
18 Bury & Norwich Post, 18 November 1818. Queen Charlotte died on 17 November 1818.
19 Morning Chronicle, Bury & Norwich Post, 18 November 1818.
20 Bathurst to Lowe, 20 November 1818, BL MS Add. 2021 ff. 201–2.
21 Morning Post, 25 November 1818.
22 Cardinal Fesch in Rome was Madame Mère’s brother and uncle to Napoleon.
23 Morning Chronicle, 2 December 1818.
24 Morning Post, 2 December 1818.
25 Lowe to Goulburn, 10 October 1818, BL MS 20137 f. 23, letter which arrived in London around late November to early December.
26 Lowe to Bathurst, 23 December 1818, BL MS 20124, ff. 473–6.
27 George Gordon Lord Byron, The Age of Bronze, London, John Murray, 1823.
CHAPTER 24
1 Reported in the Salisbury & Winchester Journal of 20 December 1819: ‘At a meeting of the Bath and West of England Society for the Encouragement of Agriculture, Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, in the presence of Lord Arundel, the Marquis of Lansdowne and various admirals, a paper by Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt was read, who had successfully grown nine acres of flax on Dartmoor and believed much of the moor could be brought into cultivation for flax. It caused “great excitement”.’
2 Les Landon, ‘Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt: His life and times’, Dartmoor Magazine, No. 15, n.d.
3 Elaine Sylvester, ‘Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt of Princetown’, Margins Literary Magazine, No. 3, ‘Dartmoor’, 2008, 44; Landon, ‘Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt’, 5.
4 See Abell, Prisoners of War in Britain 1756 to 1815, 238: ‘By the foreign prisoners of war Dartmoor was regarded, and not without reason, as the most hateful of all the British prisons.’
5 John Hirst, Freedom on the Fatal Shore: Australia’s first colony, Melbourne, Black Inc., 2008, 80: ‘The large influx of convicts after 1816 with 2000 arriving each year.’
6 Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt met with Plymouth Chamber of Commerce, 3 November 1818, Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post or Plymouth and Cornish Advertiser, 5 November 1818.
7 Landon, ‘Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt’, 5.
8 ‘Prospectus of the Plymouth & Dartmoor Rail-Road’, Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post or Plymouth and Cornish Advertiser, 11 February 1819.
9 Sir George Magrath MD, quoted in S. Baring-Gould, A Book of Dartmoor, London, Wildwood House, (1900) 1982, 259–60.
10 St Helena Archives, 1819–1820 Index of Court of Directors’ Minutes: 762, 24 February 1819, ‘Mr William Balcombe requests permission to return to St Helena’.
11 Hubert O’Connor, The Emperor and the Irishman: Napoleon and Dr Barry O’Meara on St Helena, Dublin, A.A. Farmar, 2008.
12 Barry E. O’Meara, An Exposition of some of the Transactions at St Helena since the Appointment of Sir Hudson Lowe as Governor of the Island; with an authentic account of the past and present Treatment of Napoleon, corroborated by various Official Documents, printed for James Ridgway, Piccadilly, price 8s in Boards. The book was advertised as ‘Published this day’ in the Morning Chronicle, 26 May 1819. It had been advertised as ‘forthcoming’ on 11 March 1819.
13 The Times, 5 April 1819.
14 The Times, 8 April 1819.
15 Lowe to Bathurst, 16 May 1819, Bathurst Private Papers, BL 57/44 f.292.
16 Lowe to Goulburn, 29 June 1819, Bathurst Private Papers, BL 57/44 f.304.
17 Françoise de Candé-Montholon (ed.), Journal Secret d’Albine de Montholon, maîtresse de Napoléon à Sainte-Hélène (The Secret Journal of Albine de Montholon, mistress of Napoleon on St Helena), Paris, Albin Michel, 2002. The journal is generally considered unreliable and gives Albine too central a role, but certainly declares her role as Napoleon’s mistress.
18 Forsyth, History of the Captivity of Napoleon at St Helena, Vol. III, 168.
19 Bathurst to Lowe, Despatch No. 162, 12 July 1819, quoted in Forsyth, History of the Captivity of Napoleon at St Helena, Vol. III, 484.
20 Lowe to Bathurst, 26 July 1819, Bathurst Private Papers, BL 57/44 f.320.
21 G. and J. Hearder, ‘Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt’, The South Devon Monthly Museum, Plymouth, March 1836, Vol. VII, 97–9; ‘Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt’, Encyclopaedia of Plymouth History, Plymouth, n.d.: ‘The iron rails were on granite sleepers, with an unusual gauge of 4 feet, 6 inches, soon known as the “Dartmoor gauge”.’
22 Exeter Museum, The Regency in Devon, Exeter, Exeter Museum Publication No. 94, 1978, 4; David R. Fisher, The History of Parliament Online, 1790–1820, ‘Masseh or Manasseh Lopes (1755–1831)’. See
23 E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, [1963] 1984, 752.
24 R.J. White, Waterloo to Peterloo, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1957, 192–3.
25 Samuel Bamford, quoted in Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, 754. (The number killed and wounded was not established with certainty—it may have been many more.)
CHAPTER 25
&
nbsp; 1 Morning Post, 14 August 1819.
2 The Times, 3 November 1819, reprinted from the Morning Chronicle.
3 The Times, 29 November and 6 December 1819.
4 St Helena Archives, 1819–1820 Index of Court of Directors’ Minutes: 762, 10 November 1819, Balcombe’s request noted.
5 St Helena Archives, 1819–1820 Index of Court of Directors’ Minutes: 897, 17 December 1819, ‘Request of Mr William Balcombe to return to St Helena discussed in relation to letter from Henry Goulburn.’
6 See Lowe to Bathurst, 16 May 1819, Bathurst Private Papers, BL 57/44 f.292,.
7 Priestley, The Prince of Pleasure, 14.
8 The future Queen Victoria was born on 24 May 1819.
9 Wellington quoted in Priestley, The Prince of Pleasure, 15.
10 Lowe to Bathurst, 1 December 1819, Bathurst Private Papers, BL 57/44 f.351.
11 St Helena Archives, Longwood Orderly officer noted: ‘Napoleon sighted in garden in a dressing-gown, 26 December 1819’. Napoleon’s gardening attire also reported in Caledonian Mercury, 17 April 1820.
12 John Stanhope, The Cato Street Conspiracy, London, Jonathan Cape, 1962; Malcolm Chase, ‘Arthur Thistlewood (1774–1820)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004.
13 The story was thought to be apocryphal until the death of George IV. Then that respectable medical journal The Lancet reported that the physicians attending the late king had found 10,000 labelled envelopes in the former monarch’s bedside cupboard, each containing a few strands of hair.
14 See Steven Parissien, George IV: Inspiration of the Regency, London, John Murray, 2001, 219.
15 The coronation was postponed until 19 July 1821.
16 The Times, Bristol Mercury, Glasgow Herald, 10 July 1820; Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post, 13 July 1820.
17 Morning Chronicle, 14 August 1820; Newcastle Courant, 19 August 1820.
18 Bristol Mercury, 19 July 1820.
19 Lady Granville to Lady Morpeth, 18 August 1820, quoted in E.A. Smith, A Queen on Trial: The affair of Queen Caroline, Phoenix Mill, Sutton Publishing, (1993) 2005, 102.
20 Jane Robins, Rebel Queen: The trial of Queen Caroline, London, Simon & Schuster, 2006, 223–7.
21 Robins, Rebel Queen, 237, 242.
22 See Smith, A Queen on Trial, viii.
23 Parissien, George IV, 222.
24 Robins, Rebel Queen, 289.
25 R.K. Webb, Modern England: From the 18th century to the present, London, George Allen & Unwin, 1969, 163, quoting Crabb Robinson’s Diary, 1 December 1820, London, Dr William’s Library.
26 P.L. O’Reilly to Denzil Ibettson, 11 July 1820, BL Add. 20220 ff. 144–5; Denzil Ibbetson to Major Gorrequer, n.d., BL 20220 ff. 146.
27 Brookes, St Helena Story, 239.
28 Broadside by London pamphleteer James Catnach, 1820, BL Add. 38565, intended as satire but taken seriously by some.
29 Bathurst to Lowe, 30 September 1820, quoted in Forsyth, History of the Captivity of Napoleon at St Helena, Vol. III, 250–1.
30 Quoted in Frank McLynn, Napoleon, London, Jonathan Cape, 1997, 653.
31 Sir William Doveton to Sir Hudson Lowe, 18 January 1820, Lowe Papers, BL Add. 20233, f.109.
32 Forsyth, History of the Captivity of Napoleon at St Helena, Vol. III, 242–5.
33 Forsyth, History of the Captivity of Napoleon at St Helena, Vol. III, 247.
34 Forsyth, History of the Captivity of Napoleon at St Helena, Vol. III, 248.
35 Despatch No. 170, Bathurst to Lowe, 16 February 1821, quoted in Forsyth, History of the Captivity of Napoleon at St Helena, Vol. III, 493.
36 Dr Arnott report of 1 April enclosed with letter from Lowe to Bathurst, 10 April 1821, Bathurst Private Papers, BL 57/46, f.467.
37 Lowe to Bathurst, 24 April 1821, Bathurst Private Papers, BL 57/46, f.479.
38 Napoleon I, ‘Napoleon’s Last Will and Testament’, The Fondation Napoléon,
39 Despatch No. 174, Lowe to Bathurst, 6 May 1821, quoted in Forsyth, History of the Captivity of Napoleon at St Helena, Vol. III, 498.
40 Philip Henry Stanhope, Notes of Conversations with the Duke of Wellington 1831–1851, Oxford University Press, 1947, quoted in Elizabeth Longford, Wellington: Pillar of State, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1972, 77.
41 Sir William Fraser, Words on Wellington, London, John C. Nimmo, 1889, 228.
CHAPTER 26
1 Edwin Emerson, Comet Lore: Halley’s comet in history and astronomy, New York, Schilling Press, 1910.
2 John Bull, 9 July 1821, 53–6; Maik Meyer, ‘Charles Messier, Napoleon and Comet C/1769’, International Comet Quarterly, January 2007, 3–6.
3 Lowe to Bathurst, 20 July 1822, Bathurst Private Papers, BL 57/47 f.545, in which Lowe himself confirmed the argument over the wording of the inscription for the coffin.
4 Wellington at his club, quoted in Gilbert Martineau, Napoleon’s Last Journey, translated from the French by Frances Partridge, London, John Murray, 1976, 3; Elizabeth Longford, Wellington, 78, quoting The Journal of Mrs Arbuthnot, Francis Bamford and Duke of Wellington (ed.), London, Macmillan & Co., 1950, Vol. I, 105.
5 See Jill Hamilton, Marengo: The myth of Napoleon’s horse, London, Fourth Estate, 2000, 201.
6 The French companions departed on the Camel on 27 May 1821.
7 Lowe to Bathurst, 26 May 1821, Bathurst Private Papers, BL 57/46 f.492.
8 Lowe to Bathurst, 25 March 1820, Bathurst Private Papers, BL 57/46 f.367; Lowe to Bathurst, 30 April 1820, Bathurst Private Papers, BL 57/46 f.375.
9 Kemble (ed.), St Helena: Gorrequer’s diary, 154, entry for ‘1819 end of year’.
10 Lowe to Bathurst, 14 July 1821, Bathurst Private Papers, BL 57/46 f.500.
11 ‘Secret and Confidential’ from EIC Court of Directors to Sir Hudson Lowe, 2 May 1821, BL Add. 20,237, ff.288–301.
12 Address by British residents of St Helena to Sir Hudson Lowe, 25 July 1821, quoted in Forsyth, History of the Captivity of Napoleon at St Helena, Vol. III, 313–14.
13 ‘Plymouth and Dartmoor Railway’, Brian Moseley, Encyclopaedia of Plymouth History, Plymouth, Devon Record Office publication, 2002.
14 Sidmouth is 22.4 miles from Chudleigh.
15 ‘The Knowle, Sidmouth, England, Record Id: 4362’, Devon Record Office.
16 R.N. Worth, A History of Devonshire with Sketches of its Leading Worthies, London, Elliot Stock, 1886, 74–5: ‘The west window of the church is a memorial to the Duke of Kent, father of Queen Victoria, who died at Sidmouth in 1820.’
17 Sidmouth’s population had risen to 2747 in 1821: D.M. Stirling, The Beauties of the Shore; Or, a Guide to the Watering-places on the South Devon Coast, Exeter, Roberts, 1838, 111.
18 Auction listing: Morning Post, 15 August 1820; Salisbury & Winchester Journal, 19 March 1821. T.L. Fish bought Knowle Cottage, the property of the late Mrs Drax.
19 John Mockett, Mockett’s Journal: A collection of interesting matters relating to Devonshire, Canterbury, Kentish Observer Printing Office, 1836, 262; Stirling, The Beauties of the Shore, 120.
20 Mockett, Mockett’s Journal, 262.
21 The Western Times, 13 October 1828.
22 Anon., Guide to Illustrations and Views of Knowle Cottage, Sidmouth; the Elegant Marine Villa Ornée of Thos. Fish Esq., Sidmouth, J. Harvey, 1834, 11–19; republished by Devon County Council, 2004.
23 Woolmer’s Exeter & Plymouth Gazette, 11 July 1846, notes of The Knowle: ‘Great additions have been made to the numerous objects of interest. A few days since, a large number of valuable animals were received, and also several waggon-loads of curiosities’; on 19 July 1851, announced ‘a valuable acquisition of articles . . . many of which were intended for the Crystal Palace’.
24 Morning Chronicle, 25 March 1861.
CHAPTER 27
1 Parissien, George IV, 304.
2 Robins, Rebel Queen, 309.
3 Longford, Wellington, 70.
4 Henry Brougham, quoted in Thomas Creevey Papers, Harmondsworth, Pen
guin Books, 1985, 205.
5 Parissien, George IV, 311.
6 Quoted in E.A. Smith, George IV, New Haven & London, Yale University Press, 1999, 190.
7 Smith, George IV, 193.
8 John Bull, 6 August 1821.
9 Quoted in Smith, George IV, 194.
10 Martineau, Napoleon’s Last Journey, 3.
11 Lowe (on board the Dunira East Indiaman) to Goulburn, 8 September 1821, Bathurst Private Papers, BL 57/46 f.501, re furniture from Longwood; Martineau, Napoleon’s Last Journey, 23.
12 Forsyth, History of the Captivity of Napoleon at St Helena, Vol. III, 315.
13 Forsyth, History of the Captivity of Napoleon at St Helena, Vol. III, 316.
14 Lowe from 1 Edgware Road to Bathurst, 1 January 1822, Bathurst Private Papers, BL 57/47.
15 Brookes, St Helena Story, 245.
16 Nevill, Earls of Abergavenny research from The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct or Dormant, 13 vols, 1910–1959; reprinted in 6 vols, Gloucester, Alan Sutton Publishing, 2000, Vol. I, 43.
17 No record of Edward Abell’s birth has been found except International Genealogical Index suggested birth date of 1801, which must be incorrect. (The handwriting in the 1810 application to the EIC is not that of a nine-year-old, his education would not by then have been ‘Classical and Mathematical’ and he would not have joined the EIC army and gone into battle at the age of ten.) Keith and Shirley Murley of The Briars, Mt Martha, found records through the Essex Historical Society of the births of Edward’s six full brothers and sisters, by their mother Mary née Stock, their father’s third wife: Mary-Ann (1784), James (1785), William (1787), Sophia (1788), and twins Charles and Robert (1789). (Only two of these siblings, William and Charles, survived to adulthood.) Given the pattern of birth spacing and the mother’s likely exhaustion after the family’s move to Alphington, it would be reasonable to speculate on a gap of two years before the birth of the youngest, Edward, therefore positing 1791. It is unfortunate that most of the records of St Gregory’s parish—where Abell’s details might have been registered—were destroyed in the London Blitz.
18 Francis Abell, Edward’s father, was baptised 17 December 1738. Abell family research courtesy of Keith and Shirley Murley of The Briars, Mt Martha.