Betsy and the Emperor
Page 53
19 Information on the Abell family background courtesy of Keith and Shirley Murley of The Briars, Mt Martha.
20 Francis Tillett Abell was born c.1764 (and was later a mayor of Colchester). Edward’s other half-siblings were Charlotte, born c.1770, and Sarah. Research from Keith and Shirley Murley of The Briars, Mt Martha.
21 Messrs. Dodwell & Miles, Army of India, Alphabetical List of the Officer of the Indian Army for the Year 1760 to the Year 1837, London, Longman, Orme & Co., 1811; Madras Almanac and Compendium, Madras, 1820.
22 ‘Major General Sir Henry Torrens’ from Entries for Queen’s Royal Surrey Regimental Association. (Given the disparity in their ages, Francis and Henry Torrens may have been half-brothers.)
23 William Dalrymple, City of Djinns: A year in Delhi, London, HarperCollins, 1993, 105–9, 126–30.
24 See Mildred Archer and Toby Falk, India Revealed: The art and adventures of James and William Fraser, London, Cassell, 1989, 15; William Dalrymple, City of Djinns: A year in Delhi, London, HarperCollins, 1993, 98–9; William Dalrymple, White Mughals: Love and betrayal in eighteenth-century India, HarperCollins, 2002, 53–4.
25 Dalrymple, City of Djinns, 98–9, 105–7.
26 Dalrymple, City of Djinns, 127–30.
27 Kalanga Fort was also known as Nalapani Fort; ‘List of Inscriptions on Christian Tombs and Tablets of historical interest in the United provinces of Agra and Oudh’.
28 Sir Charles Metcalfe (1785 –1846) was between 1822 and 1845 a British colonial administrator, acting governor-general of India in 1835, and lieutenant-governor of the North-Western Provinces from June 1836 to June 1838; Metcalfe, quoted in G.L. Rai-Zimmdar, AngloGorkha Friendship, Lulu.com, 2008, 20.
29 John Pemble, Britain’s Gurkha War: The invasion of Nepal, 1814–16, Barnsley, UK, Frontline Books, 2009.
30 See Archer and Falk, India Revealed, 27–35; James Baillie Fraser, Journal of a Tour through part of the snowy range of the Himala mountains, and to the sources of the rivers Jumna and Ganges, London, Rodwell & Martin, 1820.
31 On 22 May 1817, Edward Abell left Madras on the Benson for Mauritius. There he joined the Woodford, Captain Brady, for his passage to England, calling at St Helena between 9 and 13 October, arriving at Deal on 29 November. The Morning Chronicle of 4 December 1817 noted the arrival of ‘Edward Abell Esq’, a private passenger, not an officer.
32 East India Company Court Book April 1818 to September 1818, 178, 22 May 1818, BL India Office 126-B/167.
33 Abell was approved by Henry Goulburn in May 1818 as the civil agent for Ceylon to the Madras Presidency: BL India Office 126-B/167; the Madras Year Book lists him as a Madras British resident, with ‘Occupation: None’ until 1820. He does not appear in the Madras Year Book for 1821.
34 The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British India and its Dependencies, 1821, gives 19 October 1820 as the date of Francis Torrens’ death and lists numerous cases of cholera. FIBIS (Families in British India) notes that Lieutenant-General Francis Torrens, born 1748, died 5 August 1820, ‘after uninterrupted residence in this country of 51 years’. He was buried at St Mary’s ‘New cemetery’, Madras.
35 Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British India, 1822, 286, 491–3, quoting Madras Courier, 30 October 1821.
36 Colonel Torrens in India to General Sir Henry Torrens in London, 19 and 24 February 1822, Sir Henry Torrens Papers, BL Add 620967, f.146.
37 John R. Gillis, For Better, For Worse: British marriages, 1600 to the present, Oxford University Press, 1985, 141. For this reference and for Lawrence Stone’s Road to Divorce, I am indebted to Stephen Scheding and his research for his book-in-progress, ‘My Friend’s Masterpiece: An object lesson in art (& love)’.
38 Balcombe from 28 Essex Street, Strand, to Lowe, 4 April 1822, Lowe Papers, BL Add. 20133, f.304.
39 Lowe, 1 Edgware Road to Wilmot, 7 April 1822, Bathurst Private Papers, BL 57/47, f.519. (NB: In that year Under-Secretary Robert Wilmot changed his name to ‘Wilmot Horton’, too short a time afterwards to be worth adding this confusion.)
40 Gillis, For Better, For Worse, 136–8.
41 Gillis, For Better, For Worse, 140.
42 Gillis, For Better, For Worse, 129, 194.
43 Edward Abell and Lucia Elizabeth Balcombe marriage certificate, Exminster, 28 May 1822, UK National Archives.
44 ADB now gives the correct date, 28 May 1822, but early encyclopaedias and Wikipedia still follow Dame Mabel’s line of exactly one year earlier.
45 Sir Hudson Lowe to Lord Bathurst, 18 March 1818, Bathurst Private Papers, BL 57/43 f.189–59.
CHAPTER 28
1 J. Pike, ‘Cholera—Biological Weapons’, in Weapons of Mass Destruction, 2007,
2 Dalrymple, City of Djinns, 145–6.
3 Aleck Fraser letter from St Helena to his brothers William and James in India, 26 March 1813; after Edward’s death on 25 April this letter would surely have been sent on to their mother. Fraser Collection, National Register of Archives of Scotland (hereafter NRAS) 2696.
4 Richard Mullen and James Munson, The Smell of the Continent: The British discover Europe, London, Macmillan, 2009, xii–xiii.
5 Lowe from 1 Edgware Road to Bathurst, 6 June 1822, Bathurst Private Papers, BL 57/47 f.537.
6 O’Meara’s book, Napoleon in Exile, was in its fifth edition by 1823.
7 Martineau, Napoleon’s Last Journey, 22–3.
8 The tower of the Abbaye Saint-Bertin, ‘which could be seen for miles around’, collapsed in 1946.
9 Edward Satchwell Fraser junior, born 26 April 1786, died 25 April 1813 at St Helena; Alexander (Aleck) Fraser, born 10 April 1789, died 4 June 1816 in India. Information courtesy of Malcolm and Kathy Fraser.
10 Jane Fraser diary, 5 September 1822, Fraser Collection, NRAS 2696.
11 Jane Fraser from Saint-Omer to William Fraser in India, 6 September 1822, Fraser Collection, Bundle 440, NRAS 2696.
12 Jane Fraser diary, 5 September 1822, Fraser Collection, NRAS 2696.
13 In 1832, Betsy’s friend, Edward John Eyre assessed her daughter’s age as ‘about ten’.
14 Jane Fraser diary, 7 September 1822, Fraser Collection, NRAS 2696.
15 In fact, for the period of exactly five months—28 August 1822 to 28 January 1823—when the Frasers’ stay coincided with the Balcombes and we have the assistance of Jane’s diary, Mrs Balcombe was recorded as either ‘unwell’ or ‘distressed’ for 37 days, while Balcombe with his chronic gout was unwell for eight days of the same period.
16 Martineau, Napoleon’s Last Journey, 5–9.
17 The wedding gift from the Montholons (incorrectly labelled 1832 not 1822) was on display at ‘The Briars’, Mt Martha, but since the 2014 theft of other Napoleonic relics it was removed from exhibition. It is in storage but will be returned to display. (Information courtesy of Ilma Hackett of ‘The Briars’.)
18 Jane Fraser diary, 13 September 1822, Fraser Collection, NRAS 2696.
19 Lowe to Bathurst, 14 September 1822, Bathurst Private Papers, BL 57/47 f.551.
20 William Balcombe to Sir Hudson Lowe from Saint-Omer, 11 October 1822, BL Add. 20233, f.180.
21 Lowe to Bathurst, 23 October 1822, Bathurst Private Papers, BL 57/47 f.559.
22 The Examiner, 27 October 1822.
23 Morning Chronicle, 26 October 1822.
24 Lowe to Bathurst, 5 November 1822, marked ‘Never sent’, Bathurst Private Papers, BL 57/47 f.561.
25 Lowe to Bathurst or Wilmot (recipient’s name not clear), 5 November 1822, Bathurst Private Papers, BL 57/47 f.563.
CHAPTER 29
1 Jane Fraser diary, 25 October 1822, Fraser Collection, NRAS 2696.
2 Jane Balcombe née Green had two brothers—George and Francis Green—but which one was not specified.
3 Lowe to Bathurst, 3 January 1823, Bathurst Private Papers, BL 57/48 f.590.<
br />
4 Betsy’s daughter, Mrs Charles Johnstone, in an appendix to the third edition (1873) of her mother’s Recollections, claimed that George IV intervened in favour of Balcombe’s appointment: ‘George IV . . . being convinced by Sir George Cockburn that my grandfather’s loyalty was as strong as ever, sent him out to Australia as Colonial Treasurer of New South Wales and all its dependencies’, Recollections of the Emperor Napoleon, London, Sampson Low, Marston, Low & Searle, 3rd edition, 1873, 312–13. Mrs Johnstone may have come to this probably erroneous conclusion from the fact that the colonial treasurer was designated as a ‘Court appointment’.
5 Bathurst to Sir Thomas Brisbane, 2 October 1823, advising of appointment of William Balcombe as NSW Colonial Treasurer, HRA, I, Vol. XI, 138, Despatch No. 37 per Hibernia; Bathurst to Brisbane, 2 October 1823, advising appointment of Saxe Bannister as NSW Attorney General, HRA, I, Vol. XI, 140, Despatch No. 39 per Hibernia.
6 Betsy (Mrs L.E. Abell) described Abell’s admission in a letter from Sydney to Major-General Sir Henry Torrens, 10 August 1824, NLA MS 7022.
7 Lawrence Stone, Road to Divorce: England 1530–1987, Oxford University Press, 1990, 143: without a written deed of separation, ‘how could a separated wife prevent her husband from intermittently raiding her home and seizing all her goods and earnings, which by law were still his?’ (With gratitude to Stephen Scheding for his introduction to me of the complexities of nineteenth-century marriage and divorce laws and to the Stone and Gillis reference books.)
8 See Hamilton, Marengo: The myth of Napoleon’s horse, 205.
9 Jane Fraser diary, 22 August 1823, Fraser Collection, NRAS 2696.
10 Christopher Hibbert et al., in The London Encyclopaedia, London, Macmillan, 1983, notes that Blackfriars Road was known as Great Surrey Street until 1829.
11 Jane Fraser diary, 22 August 1823, Fraser Collection, NRAS 2696.
12 Gillis, For Better, For Worse, 231.
13 Stone, Road to Divorce, 187–90.
14 Stone, Road to Divorce, 143.
15 Stone, Road to Divorce, 141, 149–82.
16 Information on death of Charles courtesy of Abell family research by Keith and Shirley Murley of The Briars, Mt Martha.
17 General Sir Henry Torrens to Mrs Abell, 8 October 1823, Sir Henry Torrens Papers, BL Add. 62096 f.174.
18 The three Bigge reports were published in Parliament in 1822 and 1823, advising the abolition of most features of the old convict system and the separation, as far as possible, of convicts from the mass of the population. ‘A pardon by the governor was to restore a man to full legal rights’, C.M.H. Clark, Melbourne, Penguin, 1995, A Short History of Australia, 50.
19 ‘Elizabeth Jane Balcombe Abell’, baptised in London on 23 October 1823, IGI Batch CO62361 Source No. 0918607. (IGI actually gives this as a birth date, which, as demonstrated, has to be incorrect, for on 22 August 1823 the Frasers visited Betsy at Blackfriars and spoke of seeing ‘her little infant, a lovely little girl’. The date would be for her baptism.)
20 The Times, 21 November 1823, gave an effusive description of the ‘stupendous work’. The line was ready for use only to King Tor quarry and would take another four years to extend to Princetown.
21 Balcombe repaid the loan on 15 August 1824, writing to Wilmot Horton, 15 August 1824, ‘Sir, I have the honor to enclose your fifty pounds you were so kind as to advance me . . . and I beg to assure you it will never be erased from my memory.’ Received by Horton on 3 January 1825, (NSW Colonial Treasurer Correspondence, NSW State Records Office.)
22 A.J. Hill, ‘Macarthur, Sir Edward (1789–1872)’, ADB.
CHAPTER 30
1 By 1824, Governor Phillip’s government vegetable beds, which gave the name to ‘Farm Cove’, had been replaced by rolling lawns, although soon enough they were replaced by the streets and buildings of commerce.
2 Many freed convicts, those on tickets-of-leave, and those assigned to employers or to their own spouses lived in The Rocks.
3 Margaret Maynard, in Fashioned from Penury: Dress as cultural practice in Colonial Australia, Cambridge University Press, 1994, 18–21, notes that attempts to standardise convict dress in colonial New South Wales had not been successful, but after a quantity of clothing of a coarse yellow cloth (probably kersey) was sent to the eastern colonies by chance in 1817, ‘its use became synonymous with Australian convicts in the 1820s and 1830s’.
4 Dame Mabel Brookes, St Helena Story, 245, suggested tuberculosis as the probable cause of Jane’s death. The captain’s log was sought in the NSW State Records Office, but was found to no longer exist.
5 Joseph Tice Gellibrand, the new attorney-general for Van Diemen’s Land, wrote from the Cape on 30 January 1824 to his friend Wilkinson in Hobart, ‘We have had a fine passage & very good weather’: State Library of Tasmania, ‘Tasmanian Historical Research Association Papers and Proceedings’, N.S. 187/19.
6 Alan Atkinson, The Europeans in Australia: A history, Vol. II, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 2004, 39.
7 E.W. Dunlop, ‘Macqueen, Thomas Potter (1791–1854), ADB; HRA, I, Vol. 12, 141–3, Horton to Brisbane, 20 October 1823; Macqueen to Horton, 21 July 1823; Horton to Macqueen, 18 August 1823.
8 Vivienne Parsons, ‘Frederick Goulburn, (1788–1837)’, ADB.
9 The Clarence River Advocate, 24 November 1903, 4, noted that in 1903 ‘the old oak tree was computed to be 115 years of age at the time it made its disappearance’.
10 Boyes to his wife Mary in England, 12 April 1824: Peter Chapman (ed.), The Diaries and Letters of G.T.W.B. Boyes, Vol. 1, 1820–32, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1985, 174.
11 Boyes to Mary, 12 April 1824: Chapman (ed.), The Diaries and Letters of G.T.W.B. Boyes, Vol. 1, 173.
12 Sydney Gazette, 8 April 1824.
13 Earl Bathurst to NSW Governor Sir Thomas Brisbane, 2 October 1823, HRA, I, Vol. XI, 138, Despatch No. 37 per ship Hibernia; acknowledged by Brisbane on 8 June 1824.
14 R.L. Murray, letter from Hobart to D’Arcy Wentworth in Sydney, 27 March 1824, MLA 754.
15 Brisbane to Bathurst, 8 June 1824, advising that he has fixed Balcombe’s salary at £1200 annually, HRA, I, Vol. XI, Despatch No. 1, 138.
16 The Bulletin, 29 June 1905: ‘Soon known as the “Balcombe House”, ownership passed in 1837 when William Cox died to his son in England, the Reverend James Cox. It was occupied in 1838 by Sir Maurice O’Connell. CSR bought the site in 1902 and demolished the house to make room for the Colonial Sugar Refineries’ big building on the corner of O’Connell Street.’
17 John Hirst, Freedom on the Fatal Shore: Australia’s first colony, Melbourne, Black Inc., 2008, 13.
18 Michael Cannon, Who’s Master? Who’s Man?: Australia in the Victorian Age, Melbourne, Viking O’Neil, [1971], 1988, 19.
19 Margaret Steven, ‘Macarthur, John (1767–1834)’, ADB; Macarthur had a tenuous connection with George IV in this way: Macarthur met Sir Robert Farquhar in India in 1801 and they became close friends. This friendship became important in giving Macarthur access to ‘influential circles’ in England. Farquhar’s father was physician to the Prince of Wales (afterwards George IV). See Brian Fitzpatrick, British Imperialism and Australia, 1783–1833, Sydney University Press, [1939], 1971, 193.
20 Earl Bathurst to NSW Governor Sir Thomas Brisbane, 2 October 1823, plus note 36, 913, re then administration of the finances of the colony, HRA, I, Vol. XI, 138, Despatch No. 37 per ship Hibernia.
21 Andrew McMartin, Public Servants and Patronage: The foundation and rise of the New South Wales public service, 1786–1859, Griffin Press, Adelaide, 1983, 132–3
22 J.F. Harrison to Under-Secretary Robert William Hay, 14 September 1826, HRA, I, Vol. XII, 563–4. (This letter recommending his son was written after the Sydney appointment, seeking another position for James.)
23 The Blue Book of 1827, giving the formal establishment status of the Treasury, notes the appointment of James Stirling Harrison by the governor on 7 April 1825, at the recommendation of the Colonia
l Secretary Wilmot Horton.
24 George Forbes (ed.), Sydney Society in Crown Colony Days, being the personal reminiscences of the late Lady Forbes, ML typescript, 1914, 19–21.
25 Roger Therry, Reminiscences of Thirty Years’ Residence in New South Wales and Victoria, 1863, facsimile edition, Sydney, Royal Australian Historical Society & Sydney University Press, 1974, 39.
26 Atkinson, The Europeans in Australia, Vol. II, 13.
27 Therry, Reminiscences, 40.
28 Therry, Reminiscences, 41–2.
29 Helen Heney, Australia’s Founding Mothers, Melbourne, Thomas Nelson Australia, 1978, 4.
CHAPTER 31
1 Forbes (ed.), Sydney Society in Crown Colony Days, 19–21.
2 Forbes (ed.), Sydney Society in Crown Colony Days, 21.
3 Forbes (ed.), Sydney Society in Crown Colony Days, 22.
4 Arthur McMartin, Public Servants and Patronage: The foundation and rise of the NSW Public Service, 1786–1859, Sydney University Press, 1983, 187.
5 Sydney Gazette, 20 May 1824.
6 Vivienne Parsons, ‘Goulburn, Frederick (1788–1837)’, ADB, indicates that Goulburn’s officious manner made a dangerous enemy in Macarthur.
7 Chapman (ed.), The Diaries and Letters of G.T.W.B. Boyes, 198 (Wemyss’s dinner party was on 27 May 1824).
8 G.P. Walsh, ‘Sir John Jamison (1776–1844)’, ADB.
9 Chapman (ed.), The Diaries and Letters of G.T.W.B. Boyes, 198.
10 Chapman (ed.), The Diaries and Letters of G.T.W.B. Boyes, 198.
11 ‘The Fashionable World’, Sydney Gazette, 1 July 1824.
12 Jamison’s ‘invisible lady’ mentioned in M. le baron de Bougainville, Journal de la navigation autour du globe, Paris, Arthus Bertrand, 1837, Vol. I, edited and translated by Marc Serge Rivière as The Governor’s Noble Guest: Hyacinthe de Bougainville’s account of Port Jackson, 1825, Miegunyah Press, Melbourne University Press, 1999, 141–3.
13 ‘The Fashionable World’, Sydney Gazette, 1 July 1824.
14 Mary Reibey to her cousin in England, 10 February 1825, in Nance Irvine (ed.), Dear Cousin: The Reibey Letters, Sydney, Hale & Iremonger, 1992, 87–8.
15 Christine Wright, Wellington’s Men in Australia: Peninsular war veterans and the making of the empire c.1820–40, Sydney, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.