Napoleon's Poisoned Chalice

by Dr Martin Howard

  Burton retained the back portion and went in search of Madame Bertrand. The Countess admitted, in the presence of her husband, Antommarchi and a British officer, Major Anthony Emmett, that she was in possession of the face mask. She assured the doctor on her honour that he would be provided with a copy of the cast as soon as suitable plaster was available. In all likelihood, this would be following their return to Europe. Burton was unimpressed. ‘Having been thus cajoled and ungraciously treated, I was anxious to have Madame Bertrand’s promise in writing.’ There now followed a vigorous correspondence between the surgeon and his two adversaries, Count and Countess Bertrand.14

  On 22nd May, Burton sent a firm but polite letter to the Countess. In it, he reminded her that the mask could not have been made without his exertions and that Antommarchi had played only a secondary role. He pointed out that he was still in possession of the crucial back part of the mask without which it was incomplete. The surgeon requested that the object be returned to him and promised that, upon his return to London, he would make a faithful copy for the French. Having received no reply by the following day, Burton dispatched a second short note from Jamestown asking for a definitive response to his claim. This was also ignored and, realising that the precious relic was slipping through his fingers, he decided to write a more assertive letter to Count Bertrand.

  23rd May 1821

  Sir,

  Having twice done myself the honour of addressing myself by letter to Countess Bertrand, on the subject of the bust of Napoleon being detained by some person at Longwood, and as she has not thought proper to answer either of my letters, of which conduct I feel duly sensible, I beg leave to address you on the subject, as the person legally concerned for your wife and to refer to my letter of the 22nd to the Countess, in which I claim the bust as my private property having exclusively procured the material and formed it myself with your consent. At the same time I beg to repeat my positive engagement to give you one of the best casts that can be taken from it on my arrival in London, and even if you need the original itself as soon as I take a cast from it for myself; than which I think nothing can be more liberal on my part. If however it is not agreed to, in justice to myself I am compelled distinctly to state that if the bust is not handed over to me today I shall immediately have recourse to every legal measure this Island affords of detaining it here under seal until our respective claims are determined and that if this Island does not afford the means, the same ship which carries you to England shall also carry my claims to the Authorities there, as well as to the Customs House officers, with a statement of the whole transaction, not only to that country but to France, where I have no doubt the merits of the case will be fully investigated and the notices duly appreciated.

  With feelings of great regret for being compelled to express myself this strongly.

  I have the honour to be, Sir,

  Your most obedient and humble servant

  Francis Burton

  The Grand Marshal could hardly have expected that he would be threatened with legal action by a British army doctor in his final hours on St. Helena. He decided that a reply was in order but instead of writing directly to Burton, he composed a letter in collaboration with Montholon. It is actually the latter’s name at the bottom but it is the Grand Marshal speaking. In a carefully worded response, Bertrand first states that it was he and Montholon who requested that Antommarchi should make a mask. The role of Burton is both acknowledged and belittled.

  Never, Sir, did you set forth to me any claim to this mask being your property. Nor did you obtain my consent in this matter. I had not the honour to know you, either personally or by name, although I now assume you to have been one of the doctors who were present at the post-mortem examination of the Emperor’s body. You assisted Monsieur Antommarchi and I witnessed with gratitude the trouble you took.

  It was convenient for Bertrand to pretend that Burton was no more than Antommarchi’s assistant. The Grand Marshal then refutes the surgeon’s claim to the mask on the basis that it was commissioned by the French and that the doctor was merely the artist or sculptor. Bertrand argues that an artist commissioned to paint a portrait was not the owner of the work; it instead belonged to the client who initiated the contract. The letter finishes as follows.

  I cannot therefore, Sir, admit that you have any kind of right to the ownership of the original cast, nor even that of one of the copies. But I shall always be ready to testify to the readiness with which you assisted Monsieur Antommarchi in the operation which had been entrusted to him, and I have no doubts that the Emperor’s family will show its gratitude by presenting you with one of the finest examples of the Emperor’s death mask.

  There are a number of corrections to the wording, suggesting that Bertrand and Montholon gave careful thought to their response. No doubt they hoped that the complimentary references to Burton’s participation and the promise of a fine copy would placate the surgeon and end the matter.15

  On 27th May 1821, the whole of the Longwood contingent together with some officers of the 66th embarked for England on the store-ship Camel. The party reached Portsmouth at midnight on 31st July. Here, the Bertrands and Montholons were treated with great civility. They were visited by senior naval and military men and were able to renew acquaintance with the officers of the Northumberland. After a few days, they travelled on to London. The British Press, the only newspaper to record the fact, noted that General and Madame Bertrand and family, General Montholon and family, and Professor Antommarchi had booked into Brunel’s Hotel on Leicester Square. The papers were generally polite although the British Monitor chose to refer to Bertrand as ‘noodle’ and Montholon as ‘doodle’. Among the Grand Marshal’s papers, which were only fully disclosed in 1946, is a note referring to the mask. It is undated but must have been written at the time of his arrival in London. Bertrand states that he has placed a copy of the original cast into the hands of a ‘Monsieur X’ for safe-keeping. This was so that if the original ever became damaged, more faithful copies might be made. It was his intent to send the actual mask to Madame Mère in Rome.16

  Burton left St. Helena on 13th June on the Abundance. Lowe had given him a package with instructions to deliver it to Earl Bathurst. This contained the private papers and diary of Las Cases although the surgeon was unaware of this. He also carried with him the back part of Napoleon’s death mask. An entry in Gorrequer’s diary for May 1821 – the exact date is not specified – provides more information on the making of the mask and Lowe’s role in its procurement. According to the Military Secretary, a number of small plaster of Paris figures were broken up to provide material for its construction. These were almost certainly the source of the plaster that Burton poured into the two moulds. Gorrequer says that the cost of these ornaments was £22-10-00; a substantial amount of money at the time. He adds that the Governor encouraged Burton to claim ownership of the mask and that Lowe suggested to the doctor that he should tell Madame Bertrand that the British authorities might intervene in the matter. Lowe wished to enjoy one final small victory over the French.

  In a letter to Bathurst written on 13th June, the Governor recommends Burton and makes reference to the mask.

  Dr Burton has not been very well used by the Count and Countess Bertrand. They wished to have a cast of General Bonaparte’s head in plaster of Paris. Professor Antommarchi undertook to have it done, but could not succeed. Dr Burton, by a happy combination of skill and patience, succeeded, though with very indifferent material, in obtaining an almost perfect cast. The Bertrands have kept the face; Dr Burton has preserved the back of the skull, or craniological support. There was a contest on [sic] correspondence between them on the occasion, and I have only to approve of Dr Burton’s delicacy in seeing it was a subject upon which he could not with propriety refer to me for a decision.

  With the Governor not prepared to back his case publicly, Burton was left to fight for the mask on his own. The surgeon reached London on 9th August bearing his dispatch from
Lowe and soon had an interview with Goulburn and Bathurst at the Colonial Office. This was probably a routine debriefing; Lowe had promised Bathurst that the surgeon would be able to give ‘the fullest information on every matter’. The mask may well have been discussed but there is no evidence that the Government officials gave Burton any practical help to retrieve it.17

  Burton now wrote to Count Bertrand asking for his copy but was rebuffed with a letter informing him that an application would have to be made directly to Napoleon’s family. The surgeon decided that legal action was the only recourse left to him and, after consultation with a lawyer, he applied to Bow Street magistrate’s court for a search-warrant.

  This was granted and two officers of the Crown went to the Bertrands’ hotel in Leicester Square. When they arrived and had made known the nature of their errand, they were remonstrated with both by Bertrand and Sir Robert Wilson. The latter was a notorious British army officer who had seen a great deal of action in the wars and was a willing magnet for publicity. One biographer calls him as a ‘dedicated controversialist’ and another describes him as being a ‘sensationalist’. Wellington famously declared that he was ‘a very slippery fellow’. Wilson was attracted to the partisans and followers of the fallen Emperor and it is typical that he was in the company of Count Bertrand at this moment. The officers were impressed by the protestations of such celebrated men and they waived their right of search.

  According to a contemporary journalist writing in The Courier, Bertrand made Burton an offer of compensation but the doctor indignantly refused. The subsequent hearing at Bow Street was a bitter disappointment to Burton. The Grand Marshal argued that the mask was the property of the family of the deceased, to whom he was an executor, and that he was not authorised to surrender it. Although the authorship of the mask was not questioned – Antommarchi made no claim to it during the legal proceedings – the magistrate decided that it was a matter beyond his jurisdiction. If Burton chose to press his case for ownership, he would have to seek another tribunal. Wilson begged to observe that he believed that the Bertrands and their party had been treated abominably and he applauded the court’s officers for not insisting on a formal search. Only a week later, the renegade soldier was castigated for fomenting trouble at Queen Caroline’s funeral.

  Burton thought the case to have been misrepresented in the newspapers and he wrote to The Courier to give his version of events. Of the actual court proceedings and the outcome, he makes the following brief comments:

  Mr Birne [the magistrate], on hearing both sides, declined acting any further in the business, on the principle that it involved a question of Executorship. Now, it is possible to look upon the bust as the property of the friends of the deceased and not that of the person who procured the material and executed the work, unemployed by them, and without meeting the slightest hindrance on their part – I leave the world to decide.18

  The world had weightier matters to consider and the affair of the mask was quickly forgotten. It seems that the surgeon made no further efforts to gain possession of his creation. He probably believed that this would be futile, particularly once the mask had been taken to France by the Bertrands. Sir Richard Burton, the orientalist and explorer, was a nephew of the doctor. Lady Burton, in her biography of her husband, says that Dr Burton had a letter from Antommarchi in which the latter acknowledged that the British surgeon was the author of the mask. We cannot know if this was true but, if it was, Burton decided against its publication. After all, even conclusive proof of authorship would not win him back the prize. He returned to obscurity as Surgeon in the 12th Lancers and died suddenly in London in October 1828 from a haemorrhage into the lungs.

  When Burton was alive, Antommarchi had been reticent regarding his role in the making of the mask. Now, he seized his chance. The fate of the original face mask is shrouded in mystery but it is probable that Antommarchi took a secondary or piece-mould from it when he was the guest of the Bertrands in Paris in the summer of 1822. This allowed him to take a secondary cast from which he could produce any number of plaster and bronze masks. The news of Burton’s death filtered through to Antommarchi around 1830. According to the editor of a later edition of Antommarchi’s memoirs, the Corsican physician ‘suddenly remembered that he had moulded the head of the dying hero’. Blowing the dust off his masterpiece, Antommarchi now spent several years publicising it. In July 1833, ‘at the request of the most eminent men of the Empire’, he issued a prospectus in which he described himself and his role on St. Helena as follows.

  [Antommarchi is] a generous citizen who did not hesitate to leave his country and his family and so abandon all the advantages of a magnificent position acquired by his efforts to go and reside in a mortal climate, whence he disputed with death the existence of the Great Man.

  He then described his moulding of the mask and invited subscribers. This was primarily a financial venture but, despite touting far and wide, he failed to sell the expected number of reproduction masks and he soon became disillusioned.

  There are currently many Napoleon death masks in museums and private collections around the world. Some are classified as copies but a number are said to be originals. The ‘official’ death mask, on display in the army museum of Les Invalides in Paris, was approved by Antommarchi and Napoleon’s mother and has been known of since the 1830s. There is widespread scepticism regarding its authenticity. Many Napoleonic scholars believe the mask to be a fake; one theory is that it shows the features of the Emperor’s maitre d’hôtel, Cipriani. French Government departments are at loggerheads over the issue. The Culture Ministry contends the claim of the curators of Les Invalides and states that the true mask is held but not displayed at another museum in the outskirts of the capital. To complicate matters further, there are claims for several other masks. One is attributed to Archibald Arnott. Another version which was displayed at the Royal United Services Institute in London between 1947 and 1973 has more determined advocates. It was sold at Christie’s auction house in 2004 and has not been seen since. Unlike the Paris masks – in which Napoleon appears unnaturally young – the London mask is that of a bloated old man. The French authorities detest it and entirely reject its provenance. These are all face masks. The fate of Burton’s back part of the mask is unknown. The doctor died intestate and the trail is cold. It could easily have fallen into the hands of his eminent cousin, Professor Graves, but there is no trace of the relic in the medical museums of Dublin.19

  The story of the mask, like that of Napoleon’s exile on St. Helena, is unfinished. Burton received belated recognition for his role in the mask’s creation. At the start of the nineteenth century, historians began to question the honesty of Antommarchi. It was Frédéric Masson, an exhaustive researcher of all things Napoleonic, who unearthed Graves’s lecture and, in his Autour de Sainte Hélène of 1909, gave the young army surgeon the lion’s share of the credit. In his own lifetime, Burton was deprived of any reward or wider recognition for his cameo role on St. Helena. Compared with some of his medical colleagues, he escaped lightly. Nevertheless, he can be included in the line of Anglo-Irish Army and Navy doctors – Warden, O’Meara, Stokoe, Verling, Arnott, Shortt and Burton – who were attracted to Napoleon but were ultimately harmed and disappointed. For them all, the Emperor was nothing less than a curse.

  Notes

  1. Chaplin, A, Thomas Shortt, pp. 7–26; Drew, R, Commissioned Officers in the Medical Services of the British Army, Vol. I, p. 192.

  2. Chaplin, pp. 7–26; Richardson, F, Napoleon’s Death: An Inquest, pp. 172–3; Forsyth, W, History of the Captivity of Napoleon, Vol. II, pp. 133, 155–7.

  3. Bertrand, General, Napoleon at St. Helena, p. 221; Gorrequer, Major G, St. Helena during Napoleon’s Exile, pp. 204, 244–5, 250–4; Chaplin, A, A St. Helena Who’s Who, p. 97.

  4. Young, N, Napoleon in Exile, Vol. II, pp. 227–8; Bertrand, pp. 227–8; Ganière, P, Napoléon à Sainte-Hélène: La Mort de L’Empereur L’Apothéose, p. 259.

  5. Yo
ung, Vol. II, pp. 227–35; Bertrand, pp. 181, 261; Richardson, pp. 165–6; St. Denis, LE, Napoleon from the Tuileries to St. Helena, p. 279; Marchand, Mémoires de Marchand, Vol. II, p. 337; Forsyth, Vol. II, pp.162–7; Chaplin, A, The Illness and Death of Napoleon Bonaparte, pp. 48–9; Henry, W, Surgeon Henry’s Trifles, p. 181; Montholon, Comte de, Lettres du Comte et de la Comtesse Montholon, pp. 80–1; Chaplin, Thomas Shortt, p. 81; Lowe Papers 20214 f. 202; Antommarchi, F, Les Derniers Moments de Napoléon, Vol. II, p.126.

  6. Chaplin, Thomas Shortt, pp. 7–26; Ganière, p. 259; Young, Vol. II, pp. 229–32; Montholon, CJT de, Récits de la Captivité, Vol. II, p. 559; Bertrand, p. 262; Henry, p. 181.

  7. British Library Eg. 3718 ff. 164–5; Lowe Papers 20214 ff. 195–6; Young, Vol. II, pp. 232–5; Chaplin, Thomas Shortt, pp. 23–4; Chaplin, The Illness and Death of Napoleon Bonaparte, p. 53; Kemble, J, Napoleon Immortal, pp. 276–7; Ganière, pp. 261–2.

  8. Richardson, p. 173; Young, Vol. II, pp. 233–4; Gorrequer, p. 234.

  9. Chaplin, Thomas Shortt, pp. 7–26; Young, Vol. II, p. 235; Lemaire, J-F, Autour de ‘L’Empoisonnement’ de Napoléon, p. 21; Gorrequer, p. 247; Drew, Vol. I, p.196.

  10. St. Denis, p. 283; Marchand, Vol. II, p. 339; Watson, GL de St M, The Story of Napoleon’s Death-Mask, pp. 44, 113–19; 10–21; Antommarchi, Vol. II, p. 115.

  11. Drew, Vol. I, p. 180; Chaplin, A St. Helena Who’s Who, pp. 64–5; Watson, pp. 40–3.

  12. Watson, pp. 38–54, 124–32, 150–2; Young, Vol. II, p. 244; Marchand, Vol. II, p. 337.

  13. Watson, pp. 125–8, 154, 44–8, 133–5; Marchand, Vol. II, p. 341; St. Denis, pp. 283–4; Lutyens, E, Letters of Captain Engelbert Lutyens, p. 192; Veauce, E de, L’Affaire du Masque de Napoléon, pp. 50–4; Paoli, F, Le Dr Antommarchi ou Le Secret du Masque de Napoléon, pp. 172–6.