Napoleon's Poisoned Chalice

by Dr Martin Howard

  On learning of O’Meara’s most recent misdemeanour, Lowe was predictably outraged. Balmain recorded his reaction.

  ‘Dr O’Meara’, says the Governor ‘has committed unpardonable faults. He informed the people there [at Longwood] of what was going on in the town, in the country, onboard the ships; he went in search of news for them and paid base court to them. Then he gave an Englishman, on behalf of Napoleon, and secretly, a snuff box! What infamy! And is it not disgraceful of this grandisseme Emperor to break the regulations.

  Lord Roseberry commented, ‘This is not burlesque; it is serious.’ Lowe’s exaggerated response to a minor infringement of regulations was designed to ensnare O’Meara and he sent the doctor an order via Thomas Reade that he must not quit Longwood unless something extraordinary occurred there or he was directed to do so by the naval Commander-in-Chief Admiral Plampin. O’Meara disobeyed this directive by going immediately to The Briars in an unsuccessful attempt to converse with his naval superior. Oddly, the letter from Reade contains no allusion to the snuff box. Forsyth struggles to explain this; ‘Probably Sir Hudson Lowe thought that O’Meara must be sufficiently conscious of his own improper act and he did not require to be told why he was thus openly mistrusted.’ The obsessive Lowe rarely made careless omissions in his orders and correspondence; more likely he was a little ashamed at the petty reason he had found to persecute O’Meara and did not wish it to be more widely known.

  Bertrand states in his journal that O’Meara now decided, with some regret, to tender his resignation to the Governor as he believed the new restrictions both to have been unfairly imposed and incompatible with his role as the Emperor’s physician. Lowe formally accepted this resignation but O’Meara was to remain at Longwood until instructions had been received from the British Government and some arrangement had been made to find a new doctor acceptable to the French. From mid April, Napoleon had refused to see O’Meara in protest at what he perceived to be the Governor’s unwarranted interference. This allowed the doctor to raise the stakes, demanding his reinstatement. On 5th May, he wrote to Lowe.

  As Napoleon Bonaparte has declined seeing me since the 14th of April last and I feel that some dangerous effects may follow, I beg leave to propose putting matters on the footing they formerly were until the arrival of an answer from England … The actual state of matters is now appalling, and will probably produce very unpleasant sensations both in England and Europe. His Excellency may perhaps reflect upon the terrible responsibility which weighs upon him if (as is possible and very probable) Napoleon Bonaparte, deprived of assistance, was to die before the expiration of the five or six months required to obtain an answer from England.28

  We can imagine the neurotic Lowe repeatedly reading this letter with sweat forming on his brow. O’Meara well understood his antagonist’s profound sense of duty and was quite prepared to exploit this to achieve his own objectives. A few days latter, the Governor decided to discuss the matter openly with Russian Commissioner Balmain, who recorded the conversation in some detail. Balmain noted that the ‘O’Meara affair’ was now the subject of gossip all over the island.

  ‘There is a vessel leaving today for England. Write a report for your [Russian] Government. But I cannot give you any more bulletins, O’Meara is out, and Baxter is in disgrace with the French. I cannot give you a word about his health. He sees nobody and I hardly know whether he is even living. What do you think of his illness?’

  ‘They tell me that he is suffering in his head, liver and stomach, that Montholon spends the entire night at the bedside putting warm clothes on his stomach.’

  [Lowe now criticised O’Meara for his role in the snuff box affair.]

  ‘Has Dr O’Meara’, I asked him, ‘violated the regulations?’

  ‘No, not exactly.’

  ‘Have you asked him about that, and has he acknowledged it?’

  ‘No, I have not yet asked him directly. I have my reasons.’

  ‘May I speak to you frankly? Tell you my candid opinion, not as Russian Commissioner – for I haven’t the right – but as a friend?’

  ‘I shall be greatly obliged to you.’

  ‘If Dr O’Meara is guilty, accuse him and try him publicly, so that in St. Helena, Longwood and Europe they may know what he has done and why you have punished him. But if he is innocent and should be reproached only for peccadilloes, forget about the affair and set him at liberty. Remember that if Bonaparte dies without having seen a doctor, as he seems determined on doing, the English will be accused of having poisoned him and it will be easy for the Bonapartists in France and other places to produce false witnesses against you. And millions of men will henceforth look upon you as his assassin.’

  This observation impressed the Governor. He fell into a reverie, then thanked me cordially for my frankness and left.’

  Two days after this interview, Lowe rescinded his previous order limiting O’Meara’s movements and permitted the surgeon to continue as normal at Longwood. O’Meara later claimed that the Governor was also forced to acknowledge him as Napoleon’s ‘private surgeon’, an entitlement he had previously contested.29

  Although Lowe had backed down, he remained determined to ostracise O’Meara. Accordingly, he instructed Colonel Edmund Lascelles, who had recently arrived in command of the 66th Regiment, that the doctor was no longer a fit person to be admitted as an honorary member of the regimental mess. Lascelles, in turn, informed O’Meara‘s friend, Lieutenant Rodolphus Reardon who suggested to the surgeon that it would be better for him not to make any more appearances. This was a red rag to O’Meara and he immediately wrote to Lascelles asking to present his case to the officers of the 66th. In his own words, he had no intention of ‘slinking away secretly’. At first, events favoured the doctor. O’Meara was a respected figure in the regiment and Lascelles told him that, although he could no longer be an honorary member, he and the officers would be happy to dine with him as a ‘stranger’. Encouraged by this, O’Meara had the gall to visit the mess but, realising he could not indefinitely ignore the interdict of the Colonel, he then wrote to the officers thanking them for their friendship and regretting that he would no longer be able to enjoy their society. On the following day he received a reply.

  Deadwood, 26th June, 1818

  Dear Sir – As president last night I had the honour of communicating to the mess the contents of your letter of the 25th instant and am directed by the commanding officer and officers composing it to say it is with much regret they hear of your departure as an honorary member of the mess and to assure you they always conceived your conduct while with them to be perfectly consistent in every respect with that of a gentleman. I am directed to say, the mess felt much indebted for the very flattering expressions of esteem contained in your letter, and have the honour, & c.

  Chas. M’Carthy

  Lieut. 66th Regiment

  Forsyth, O’Meara’s harshest critic, has to concede that ‘he possessed many agreeable and social qualities’ and that he was ‘very probably a popular member of the mess’. We have no reason to doubt the sincerity of this letter or its authorship.30

  O’Meara later alleged that Lowe had employed Thomas Reade to turn Lascelles against him and to convince the Colonel that his expulsion from the mess would greatly please the Governor. If this was a premeditated scheme of Lowe’s then it was unlikely that O’Meara would remain unscathed. He was not the only target. The Governor regarded the conduct of both Lascelles and Reardon to be unsatisfactory and, following a summary investigation by Sir George Bingham, both officers were removed from the island. Major Henry Dodgin succeeded to the command of the 66th and by November there was a change of heart among the officers of the regiment with regard to O’Meara. A letter addressed to Bingham by twenty seven officers assured him that they had no knowledge of the supportive letter written to the surgeon and that they wished the Governor to be informed of this. A further seven officers who were acquainted with the letter to O’Meara wrote to Dodgin stating that the
y had had no knowledge of any impropriety attached to the doctor and were acting out of ‘the common rules of politeness’. When the officers of the 66th became aware of O’Meara’s defence of his conduct in a letter to the Admiralty of October 1818 (a letter to which we will return) they again felt obliged to distance themselves from him, writing to Bingham that the letter signed by McCarthy was merely ‘a mark of common civility’.

  Walter Henry was a close observer of these events. He was not a supporter of his fellow medic.

  It is, I think, much to be regretted that the officers of the 66th mess should have given Mr O’Meara any written certification of good character while a member of the mess. However correct his behaviour might have been before, the gross insult to our commanding officer, and indirectly to ourselves, of sitting down to dinner after the prohibitory note he had received, ought to have prevented any verbal or written testimony being given to a man who could act with such effrontery.

  Henry thought O’Meara to be culpable with respect to the snuff box affair and he raised the possibility that O’Meara had repeated confidential mess conversations at Longwood. On the other hand, he did not believe that Lowe should have expelled the surgeon from the mess thereby dragging his regiment into the quarrel.31

  Whether the regimental officers’ backlash against O’Meara was spontaneous or orchestrated by the Governor and Reade is difficult to decipher. Certainly, it was dangerous to be O’Meara’s friend. The fate of poor Lieutenant Reardon, who was perceived by Lowe to be too close to the doctor, is adequate proof of this. The charges against Reardon in the military enquiry held by Bingham were firstly that he had held a conversation with the Bertrands in which the Governor’s conduct towards O’Meara was censured and, secondly, that he had disseminated the content of a letter from O’Meara to Lascelles in which the surgeon had referred to the Governor in insulting terms. The transcription of the enquiry survives and it is obvious from his replies to Bingham that Reardon understood himself to be guilty by association with Napoleon’s doctor. He refers to O’Meara as a ‘villain’ but this was probably a vain attempt to conceal his true loyalties. Referring to John Stokoe, the surgeon of the Conqueror, Reardon ‘lamented that two innocent persons were brought into trouble by being his [O’Meara’s] friend. Dr Stokoe regretted having anything to do with O’Meara … he considered it very hard after so many years service that he might be ruined by his intimacy with him.’ Stokoe’s fate is described in later pages. Reardon never recovered from his association with O’Meara. His later apologetic letters to Lowe failed to win the Governor’s forgiveness and his military career was destroyed.32

  Notes

  1. Forsyth, W, History of the Captivity of Napoleon, Vol. I, p. 75; Young, N, Napoleon in Exile, Vol. I, pp. 76–9; Gonnard, P, The Exile of St. Helena, pp. 69–70; Masson, F, Autour de Sainte-Hélène, Vol. III, pp. 172–3; Chaplin, A, The Illness and Death of Napoleon Bonaparte, pp. 96–7.

  2. Marchand, Mémoires de Marchand, Vol. II, pp.17–18; O’Meara, B, Napoleon in Exile, Vol. I, pp. 6–8, II, 444–5; Young, Vol. I, pp. 77–8.

  3. O’Meara, Vol. I, pp. 7–8; Henry, W, Surgeon Henry’s Trifles, p. 148; Forsyth, Vol. I, p. 163; Young, Vol. I, p. 79; Balmain, Count, Napoleon in Captivity, p. 170; Roseberry, Lord, Napoleon The Last Phase, p. 76; Chaplin, p. 16; Gourgaud, Général, Journal de Sainte-Hélène, Vol. II, p. 360; Korngold, R, The Last Years of Napoleon, p. 297; Seaton, RC, Napoleon’s Captivity in Relation to Sir Hudson Lowe, pp. 117–8.

  4. Gonnard, p. 70; O’Meara, Vol. I, pp. 42–4.

  5. Forsyth, Vol. II, pp. 582–6; O’Meara, Vol. I, pp. vii–viii, Vol. II, pp. 385–6; Marchand, Vol. II, p. 115; Young, Vol. I, p. 78.

  6. Richardson, F, Napoleon’s Death: An Inquest, p. 118; Marchand, Vol. II, p. 69; O’Meara, Vol. I, pp. 118–9, 190–6, 233, 300, 442; Young, Vol. II, pp. 249–50; Las Cases, le Comte de, Le Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène, Vol. VII, p.84.

  7. Gonnard, p. 71; Masson, Vol. III, p. 176; Marchand, Vol. II, p76; Korngold, pp. 79–81; Seaton, p. 118.

  8. Lowe Papers 20146 f. 49; Young, Vol. II, pp. 47, 57; Masson, Vol. III, pp. 177–80; Gregory, D, Napoleon’s Jailer, p. 142; Gonnard, pp. 71–2; Forsyth, Vol. I, pp. 259–60, 72–3, 398–9; Giles, F, Napoleon Bonaparte: England’s Prisoner, p. 87.

  9. Forsyth, Vol. I, pp. 583-4, Vol. II, p. 533; Giles, p. 72; O’Meara, Vol. I, p. 86, 446; Young, Vol. I, p. 249.

  10. Lowe Papers 20145 ff. 9, 33, 54, 58; Forsyth, Vol. II, p. 586; O’Meara, Vol. I, pp. 97–100, 117–8, 124–5; Gonnard, p. 73; Malcolm, Lady, A Diary of St. Helena, p. 79.

  11. Young, Vol. I, pp. 133–4; Forsyth, Vol. I, p. 57; Gourgaud, Vol. I, pp. 152, 194, 259, Vol. II, p. 333; Bertrand, Général, Cahiers de Sainte-Hélène, p. 24.

  12. Gourgaud, Vol. II, pp. 99, 313, 359; Balmain, pp. 195–6; Montholon, Comte de, Lettres du Comte et de la Comtesse de Montholon, p. 41; Bertrand, pp. 120–1; Young, Vol. I, pp. 193, 343; Forsyth, Vol. I, pp. 282–3; Gonnard, p. 72.

  13. Gonnard, pp. 72–6; Forsyth, Vol. I, pp. 76–8; O’Meara, Vol. I, pp. 46–7; Masson, Vol. III, p. 178; Gourgaud, Vol. II, p. 290.

  14. Lowe Papers 20146 f. 7, 20145 ff. 41–4; Forsyth, Vol. I, pp. 260–2; Gonnard, p. 77.

  15. Lowe Papers 20146 f. 15; Gregory, p. 143; Forsyth, Vol. II, p. 534.

  16. Young, Vol. II, p. 96; Forsyth, Vol. II, p. 538; Lowe Papers 20146 ff. 7, 23.

  17. Balmain, p. 147; Korngold, pp. 296–7.

  18. Young, Vol. II, pp. 96–7; O’Meara, Vol. II, pp. 346–7; Gourgaud, Vol. II, p. 326.

  19. Balmain, pp. 171–5; Young, Vol. II, p. 97.

  20. Gonnard, pp. 78–9; Young, Vol. II, p. 54; Gourgaud, Vol. II, pp. 270–4; Marchand, Vol. II, pp, 175–6; Bertrand, p. 33.

  21. Henry, pp.162–4; Gonnard, p. 79.

  22. Richardson, pp. 123–4; Chaplin, pp. 11, 79–80.

  23. Young, Vol. II, pp. 64–5; O’Meara, Vol. II, pp. 517–8; Lowe Papers 20145 f. 248; Balmain, p. 146.

  24. Marchand, Vol. II, p. 159; Masson , Vol. III , p. 186; Young, Vol. II, p. 102.

  25. Marchand, Vol. II, pp. 179–89; Masson, F, Napoleon at St. Helena, p. 207; Young, Vol. II, p. 69; O’Meara, Vol. II, pp. 402–3.

  26. Young, Vol. II, pp. 65, 70; O’Meara, Vol. II, p. 398; Forsyth, Vol. I, pp. 549–50; Richardson, pp. 172–3.

  27. Gonnard, p. 80; Young, Vol. II, p. 97; Forsyth, Vol. II, pp. 592–4, Vol. I, pp. 562–5.

  28. Roseberry, p. 72; Young, Vol. II, pp. 98–9; Forsyth, Vol. I, pp. 558, 565–6; Bertrand, pp. 105–6.

  29. Balmain, pp. 177–9; O’Meara, Vol. II, p. 402.

  30. Young, Vol. II, pp. 99–101; Forsyth, Vol. I, p. 572.

  31. Forsyth, Vol. II, pp. 594–7, Vol. I, pp. 572–6; O’Meara, Vol. II, pp. 407–14; Young, Vol. II, pp. 99–101; Henry, pp.163–4.

  32. Chaplin, A, A St. Helena Who’s Who, pp. 195–204.

  3

  HIS MASTER’S VOICE

  O’Meara’s dismissal from St. Helena was prompted by events off the island. For reasons that remain obscure, Gourgaud departed for England in March 1818. Montholon later claimed that Gourgaud was entrusted with a secret mission in Europe but it may be that the long-suffering officer had simply tired of Longwood and his petty arguments with the Emperor. On arrival in England in early May he gave interviews to the British Undersecretary Henry Goulburn and the French and Russian Ambassadors in London. Among other revelations, he dropped the bombshell that General Bonaparte was in fact very well and that O’Meara had been duped. Indeed, Bonaparte was no more ill than when he had first arrived on St. Helena.1

  Bathurst had written to Lowe at the end of April expressing his opinion that O’Meara should not be removed from his post as he did not believe that the doctor’s disagreements with the Governor and his refusal to reveal Napoleon’s conversations were sufficient reasons to satisfy public opinion. Now, having learnt of Gourgaud’s utterances, he viewed the matter in a new light and he wrote to Lowe on 16th May instructing him to dismiss the surgeon and return him to Eng
land. Bathurst was unsure whether O’Meara had given false health reports because of ‘professional ignorance’ or out of a ‘blind devotion’ to Napoleon, but the end result was the same.

  We must expect that the removal of Mr O’Meara will occasion a great sensation and an attempt will be made to give a bad impression on the subject. You had better let the substance of my instruction be generally known as soon as you have executed it that it may not be represented that Mr O’Meara has been removed in consequence of any quarrel with you, but in consequence of the information furnished by General Gourgaud in England respecting his conduct.

  O’Meara still had allies within the Admiralty offices. A letter from Finlaison sent only a month or so earlier contained confirmation of Lord Melville’s approval of his ongoing correspondence. The doctor was asked to ‘continue to be equally full, candid and explicit in future’. Finlaison continues, ‘Admiral Pulteney Malcolm , who is now beside me, begs I should express to you his particular wish that in every future discussion or report, you will as much as possible avoid bringing up his name as he is of opinion it can do no good. He sends his compliments and wishes you well through your arduous employment which he thinks no one could ever be found to fill so well.’2