Malcolm’s wish for anonymity is more revealing than his fulsome praise. O’Meara’s supporters in London were now unable or unwilling to save him. Lowe set about removing him from Longwood. The following letter was placed in O’Meara’s hands by the Assistant Military Secretary.
Plantation House, July 25th, 1818
Sir, – I am directed by Lieutenant General Sir Hudson Lowe to inform you that by an instruction received from Earl Bathurst, dated the 26th of May, he has been directed to withdraw you from your attendance upon General Bonaparte and to interdict you all further interviews with the inhabitants at Longwood. Rear-Admiral Plampin has received instructions from the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty as to your destination when you quit this island. You are in consequence to leave Longwood immediately after receiving this letter without holding any further communication whatsoever with the persons residing there.
I have the honour, & c.
Edward Wynyard
O’Meara ignored the central instruction to depart forthwith – ‘I determined to disobey it whatever might be the consequences.’ He justified his actions by citing his duty to his sick patient. If Napoleon was now to be left without a doctor acceptable to him, as appeared very likely, it was necessary to make provision for this, to prepare his drugs and to leave a medical plan of action. After ordering his servant to pack his belongings, O’Meara spent his last two hours in the company of the Emperor. Marchand witnessed the scene and noted that Napoleon was unsurprised by the course of events. He urged his doctor to seek out Joseph, his brother, and the rest of his family on his return to Europe.
Dr O’Meara took away with him testimony of munificence equal to the Emperor’s trust, which his conduct merited. A small bronze statue of the Emperor, made during the Hundred Days, which I had brought, was on the mantelpiece. The Emperor noticed that he was looking at it with interest; he took it down and gave it to him as well as a note written in his own hand: ‘If he sees my good Louise, I beseech her to let him kiss her hand.’ The Emperor gripped his hand, embraced him, said goodbye to him and added: ‘Be happy.’ As he was leaving, he called him back and said to him, ‘Tell Lady Holland how much I value her good wishes.’ I accompanied the doctor for a few steps after he had left the Emperor and I told him how disastrous I thought his departure was. The Emperor’s health was visibly worsening and there were not even any instructions to follow in the future. I thanked him for his conscientious care for all of us and wished him a safe voyage. The shameful act was played out; Dr O’Meara was taken away from the Emperor at the moment when he needed him the most.
French commentators and Lowe’s detractors have claimed that the Governor was aware of Napoleon’s poor health and that his removal of O’Meara was a wilfully malicious act. This is unfair. He was following explicit instructions from the Secretary of War. Also, he was understandably dubious of Napoleon’s supposed symptoms when Gourgaud, his close companion for several years, had just informed the British Government that his illness was a sham. A protest from Longwood was inevitable and Montholon wrote to the Governor re-emphasising Napoleon’s determination to select his own doctor and adding that if he died deprived of that man then he would be a victim of murder. O’Meara was challenged by Wynyard for having flagrantly disobeyed the instructions of the letter and he replied that he did not acknowledge its authority. He was directed to collect his belongings and to go to Jamestown where he was to await the departure of the sloop Griffon for the passage to England.3
The doctor’s imminent departure did not break the cycle of accusation and retaliation. O’Meara claimed that his baggage had been ‘secretly rummaged’ and his papers examined. He also alleged that he was deprived of a change of clothes and that his writing desk, in the custody of the Governor’s agents, had been opened and a gold watch and precious jewellery removed. Sir George Bingham, the sitting magistrate, undertook an enquiry, but this proved inconclusive. The doctor applied to Admiral Plampin for redress but the senior naval officer, for reasons which will become clearer, was unwilling to support an opponent of the Governor.
O’Meara did not forget his patient and he sent a detailed report on the Emperor’s illness to Bertrand. He was reluctant to share this information with the British authorities. Baxter was persona non grata at Longwood and so it is unsurprising that when, acting on Lowe’s instructions, he asked O’Meara for his medical journal, he was refused. O’Meara argued that he required his patient’s consent before delivering his medical details into the hands of a ‘strange surgeon’. According to O’Meara, Baxter hesitated and then replied that he would be prepared to give up such a journal without consulting the sick person or caring about his feelings. Their meeting caricatured the awkward dual role of British medical officers on St. Helena; O’Meara adopted the guise of the ethical physician and Baxter, albeit reluctantly, that of the loyal military officer.4
O’Meara left the island on the Griffon on 8th August, 1818. Filled with hatred against Lowe, he was unable to resist the temptation to slander the Governor. Both Midshipman Blackwood of the Favourite and Mr Hall, Surgeon of the same ship, confirmed that whilst on Ascension O’Meara had stated that if he had complied with Lowe’s wishes it was unlikely that Napoleon would still be alive. Mr Hall drew the inference that Lowe had wished to poison the Emperor or that he had at least planned to shorten his life by withholding proper medical assistance.5
On 17th September, O’Meara reported to the Admiralty that he had arrived back in England; on the following day, Barrow, the Secretary, wrote to him communicating Their Lordships’ approval of his recall. O’Meara, who had been confident of support from this quarter, viewed the response as a slap in the face and he resolved to write a long letter in reply justifying his own conduct and criticising the role of Hudson Lowe. This letter of 28th October 1818 is the most explicit expression of O’Meara’s defence and a valuable source for the whole episode. The young surgeon had become convinced of his eventual triumph over his senior adversary and he spectacularly overplayed his hand. He wrote:
[Sir Hudson Lowe] made to me observations upon the benefit which would result to Europe upon the death of Napoleon Bonaparte, of which he spoke in a manner which, considering his situation and mine, was publicly distressing to me.
O’Meara added that, because of his liver disease, Napoleon’s life would be endangered by a longer residence on St. Helena, particularly if he continued to be subjected to ‘disturbances and irritations’. He signed off this explosive piece of writing with a request to the senior officers of the Admiralty to communicate to him their judgement of his actions. His optimism was based on his known support within the department. Lord Melville, no friend of Lowe, was still rooting for him. However, he had clearly gone too far – intending murder, he had committed suicide. A junior surgeon could not be allowed to publicly accuse the Governor of St. Helena of attempted assassination and to openly criticise the British Government’s choice of Napoleon’s exile. Melville was over-ruled by the Prime Minister Lord Liverpool, a reflection of the importance which was now attached to the ‘O’Meara affair’, and Sir George Cockburn agreed that the doctor should be dismissed from the service.6
Mr Croker, Secretary to the Admiralty, replied to O’Meara on 2nd November. It was, as Forsyth gleefully points out, a réponse sans répliquer.
Their Lordships have lost no time in considering your statement and they command me to inform you that (even without reference to the complaints made against you by Lieut.-General Sir Hudson Lowe) they find in your own admissions ample ground for marking your proceedings with severest displeasure.
Having quoted the paragraph in which O’Meara implied that Lowe wished Napoleon dead, he continues:
It is impossible to doubt the meaning which this passage was intended to convey, and my Lords can as little doubt that the insinuation is a calumnious falsehood; but if it were true, and if so horrible a suggestion were made to you directly or indirectly, it was your bounden duty not to have lost a moment in communi
cating it to the Admiral on the spot, or to the Secretary of State, or to their Lordships … Either the charge is in the last degree false and calumnious or you can have no possible excuse for having hitherto not expressed it.
O’Meara’s position was indefensible even if his allegations were true. Croker finished his letter by informing O’Meara that his name was to be erased from the list of naval surgeons. Up to this point, the doctor was probably ambivalent as to his wider allegiances but from this time on he was undoubtedly as hostile to the British Government as he was to the Governor of St. Helena.7
O’Meara now acted as Napoleon’s agent in London. His true motivation to undertake this role was only known to him but it was almost certainly catalysed by a complex mix of considerations: he perceived that he had been mistreated by Lowe and the British authorities; he was flattered that such a celebrated figure as Napoleon trusted and liked him; he had a genuine sympathy for Napoleon as a man and as his patient; he was likely to become rich by strengthening his links with the Bonapartists.
The Emperor had begun to brief O’Meara on his new role while the doctor was still on St. Helena. At their final meeting, O’Meara recalled Napoleon giving him instructions.
When you are in Europe, you will either go yourself or send to my brother Joseph. You will inform him that I desire he shall give you the parcel containing the private and confidential letters of the Emperors Alexander and Francis, the King of Prussia, and other sovereigns of Europe with me, which I delivered to his care at Rochefort. You will publish them, couvrir de honte [to shame] those sovereigns, and manifest to the world the abject homage which those vassals paid to me, when asking favours or supplicating for their thrones.
The doctor was also told to actively oppose any public criticism of the Emperor and his entourage on St. Helena. O’Meara failed to find the letters referred to but he was able to wield his pen to his patron’s advantage. As early as 1818, the Morning Chronicle published details of his rupture with Lowe. When, in 1819, Theodore Hook, a colonial officer returning to England from St. Helena, wrote an account favourable to the Governor, O’Meara made a detailed reply (An Exposition of some of the transactions that have taken place at St. Helena since the appointment of Sir Hudson Lowe as Governor of that Island). This publication became known to Napoleon’s supporters in Europe and Joseph Bonaparte wrote to congratulate him. O’Meara then proceeded to publish other works relating to Napoleon. He had received some of the Emperor’s notes on the Manuscrit de Sainte-Hélène and he published them in 1820. He also released a revised version of Gourgaud’s The Campaign of 1815 in London, Paris and Philadelphia and, in 1821, he sent a further letter to the Morning Chronicle containing details of the disease of which Napoleon had died. His contribution to Napoleonic propaganda peaked with the first appearance of his notorious Napoleon in Exile or a Voice from St. Helena.8
This frenetic activity was financed from the Emperor’s coffers. O’Meara was well rewarded. In addition to his earnings from his literary efforts, the bribe of October 1817 and the gifts presented to him on his departure from St. Helena, a letter of Napoleon of April 1818 directed Joseph or Eugene to pay him £4,000, he was the recipient of further presents from Joseph, and he acquired a pension of £320 per annum from Napoleon’s mother, Madame Mère.9
The Emperor’s supporters in London operated in the shadows. It is clear that O’Meara was not working alone. He had a very active colleague in William Holmes, a man whose name crops up repeatedly in accounts of Napoleon’s affairs. Holmes was both O’Meara’s close friend and business partner. He was an Army and Navy agent, acting for officers on service abroad, drawing their pay, meeting their bills and keeping their accounts. Hudson Lowe, admittedly not an impartial source, claims that he was not much respected and not connected with any bona fide business. The formal connection between O’Meara and Holmes started at the beginning of 1818 when the doctor, presumably authorised by Napoleon, asked the agent to be the financial representative of the Longwood exiles in London. The Emperor was coming to the end of his funds and Holmes was asked to raise money in Europe. This involved much clandestine correspondence between England and St. Helena. After O’Meara’s return to the capital, Holmes continued to manage the Emperor’s finances, making a number of substantial payments including those to the doctor. In September 1819, O’Meara reassured Madame Montholon, now residing in Brussels and one of the recipients of the money, that she could entirely trust the agent; ‘Consider him in everything as if it were I who had the honour of applying to you and believe all that he tells you with reference to the affairs that interest us.’
O’Meara’s connections in England remain cloaked in secrecy. He was increasingly regarded as an authority on and exponent of the extreme political opposition with regard to the treatment of Napoleon by Lord Liverpool’s government. Was he actually plotting Napoleon’s escape from St. Helena? This has been suggested but the sources are shaky and we are probably in the realms of conspiracy theory rather than historical fact. One of the best known ‘plots’ to free the Emperor was reputedly instigated by Colonel Latapie, an exiled French cavalry officer, with help from General Brayer, a Count of the Empire, and Lord Cochrane, a once distinguished British admiral who had become a renegade. All three had taken refuge in South America and, according to the French Embassy in London, they were about to seize the island of Fernando de Noronha and collect enough mercenaries to capture St. Helena. As if this were not remarkable enough, they were to be assisted by an Englishman called Johnstone, ‘a smuggler of an uncommonly resolute character’, who was said to be a close friend of O’Meara. The smuggler was constructing a ‘submarine vessel’ but this was supposedly confiscated by the British Government and the bizarre scheme collapsed.
Colonel Maceroni, an officer who had served in the French army under Murat and who had been implicated in the writing of St. Helena propaganda and connected with the political opposition in London, makes his own claims. If he is to be believed, which is doubtful, O’Meara, on his return from St. Helena, made large-scale preparations for the rescue of the Emperor which relied upon the ‘mighty powers of steam’. Sympathetic British officers volunteered to leave their regiments and exchange to posts on St. Helena. Maceroni declines to enter into ‘particulars’, which is a shame. This great enterprise failed due to lack of funding. Napoleon’s mother was not willing to hand over her entire fortune until the act was done whereas O’Meara insisted that he could not proceed without her financial support. If this is all true, we must presume that the Bonaparte family was wary of such complicated escape plots, especially if they were attached to a demand for money.10
Lowe’s apologists, authors such as Forsyth and Seaton, express their frustration that their man did not make a more robust defence of his actions with regard to O’Meara. In his letter to Bathurst of January 1818, Lowe ponderously details O’Meara’s ‘line of proceeding from the first period of my acquaintance with him’, giving his version of the rift between the two men. He accuses the doctor of a ‘system of provocation’, suggesting that O’Meara was deliberately manipulating his own dismissal. In a private letter to Bathurst in early October, no doubt anticipating the furore that would attend the return of O’Meara to England, Lowe rehearses the criticisms that might be made of him. He supposes that O’Meara might accuse him of forcing the physician to be a spy, of failing to give him a fair hearing on St. Helena, and of general victimisation. When O’Meara delivered the first serious cut of the knife with his self-destructive letter to the Admiralty later in the month, Lowe made notes in response to O’Meara’s specific allegations. Forsyth regrets that this vindication was not made public but, in truth, Lowe’s annotations are not informative. He appears to have consulted a thesaurus; O’Meara’s words are variously dismissed as being ‘false’, ‘a false innuendo’, ‘a pure falsehood’, ‘a calumnious falsehood’, ‘an infamous falsehood’, ‘a deliberate falsehood’, ‘a wilful falsehood’, ‘an utter falsehood’, and ‘a fabrication’.
&nb
sp; Lowe’s indignation was not limited to O’Meara’s conduct. Perhaps his initial reluctance to tackle him publicly was, in part, because he believed the junior medical officer to be unworthy of the effort. He had more important adversaries. Senior officers in the Admiralty had encouraged O’Meara to indulge in his clandestine correspondence. They allowed the physician to believe that he could accuse the Governor with impunity. This was iniquitous and Lowe’s outrage was justified. He wrote to Bathurst that O’Meara’s ‘hopes of support from the superiors of his own service’ had been ‘a primary cause of much of the trouble he has given’. Later, he added a pencil note in the margin of this dispatch, ‘sole cause it may now be said’.11
In contrast to Lowe, O’Meara employed his pen in gratuitous self-justification, commencing with his letters to the Admiralty and continuing with his newspaper correspondence and later published works. Historians of the St. Helena period generally show their hands with respect to the Lowe versus O’Meara argument, portraying one of the two as the vilified innocent. A final judgement is elusive as Lowe’s account of affairs is often unrevealing and O’Meara’s not entirely trustworthy. It may be simply a matter of whom we choose to believe – traditionalists have tended to trust Lowe whilst the more liberal opposition elements have favoured O’Meara. This distinction is based as much on temperament or politics as on the evidence, as it is hard to unearth the truth from the two men’s accusations and counter allegations. We need a third opinion from an impartial witness; a man on the scene when the Governor and doctor clashed behind the walls of Plantation House.
With the exception of the Governor himself, Major Gideon Gorrequer occupied arguably the most important position in the British garrison. He was fluent in French, a diligent secretary, and the possessor of a remarkably retentive memory. For five years he worked at Lowe’s side, ever present during official business, whether this was an interview with the French or a conversation at the Governor’s residence. He documented the contents of these discussions in note books and these records were used to facilitate Lowe’s subsequent lengthy letters to Bathurst. From this official correspondence it would appear that Gorrequer was a staunch supporter of Lowe, but the Austrian Commissioner, Sturmer, perceptively described him as ‘un finaud’ (‘a wily bird’).
Napoleon's Poisoned Chalice Page 8