Betsy and the Emperor Page 6

  CHAPTER 5

  THE PAVILION

  I walked past the Consulate Hotel down the steep main street, at the bottom of which the RMS St Helena, still at anchor, was framed in the town wall’s archway. With some surprise I noted the sign ‘Solomon & Company’ on a substantial building—the largest island merchant during Napoleon’s captivity and apparently still. At the colonnaded post office they were doing the brisk business only possible when a ship was in, selling St Helena’s colourful stamps to tourists. In 1815, Joseph Cole was the postmaster in the same building. He shared the office space with William Balcombe, superintendent of public sales for the East India Company and senior partner in their private trading business, Balcombe, Cole & Company.

  Although there is a Napoleon Street in Jamestown, it seems few locals waste time thinking about the exiled emperor, who was a disgruntled resident for less than six of the island’s rich and varied history of more than five hundred years. A white-bearded Anglican priest with a country parish told me: ‘Back in 1815 the Saints flocked to the waterfront. They saw this little man arrive and found him very uninteresting and they’ve remained uninterested ever since.’

  But it is altogether a different matter for visitors to the island. One of the most popular excursions is a charabanc tour of the ‘Napoleonic sites’, the three French ‘domaines’ looked after by the honorary French consul and Napoleonic scholar Michel Dancoisne-Martineau. I booked for the Napoleonic tour: Longwood House; the empty Tomb where the emperor’s corpse was interred for nineteen years before its return to France; and The Briars. I was pleased that the first stop would be the latter, William Balcombe’s old property where Bonaparte stayed for two months in the summer-house pavilion.

  It was all activity at The Briars, where a guardhouse had been established at the front gates. An oxcart was coming from town with ‘the General’s’ baggage, while two of his followers walked up the steep Sidepath to settle their master into his new premises. The young valet Marchand enjoyed the physical exercise after the long sea voyage. A talented artist, he had purchased a set of paints during the Madeira stopover, and was now exhilarated by the dramatic scenery.1 The diminutive Count de Las Cases, who lagged behind, was 49 years of age but looked older, with mournful but refined features, a sharp nose, and coarse grey hair tied at the back.

  They were questioned by the British captain on duty at The Briars before proceeding to the pavilion. Marchand saw that the Balcombes were going out of their way to make Napoleon comfortable: ‘The hostess and her two lovely daughters offered everything that could contribute to the furnishing of the room for the Emperor; I accepted a few chairs, an armchair and a table; what Noverraz was bringing from town would soon allow the Emperor to settle into his usual habits. At the Briars one had to consider oneself to be camping; the Emperor had around him the furnishings of a field tent.’2 However, Napoleon was accustomed to field tents, having spent more time in them than in palaces.

  Las Cases was delighted to see the solitary figure of Napoleon outside the pavilion, gazing at the view, and advanced to salute him.

  ‘Ah,’ said the emperor, ‘here you are! Why have you not brought your son?’

  ‘Sire,’ replied Las Cases, ‘the respect, the consideration I owe you prevented me.’

  ‘Oh, you must learn to dispense with that,’ said Napoleon. ‘Bring your son to me.’3

  The count’s fourteen-year-old son Emmanuel had been removed from his lycée to accompany his father and the deposed emperor. The boy’s mother had remained in France, appalled by the prospect of America, let alone St Helena.

  Las Cases had a rather grand lineage. A nobleman of the ancien régime, with the full title Marie Joseph Emmanuel Auguste Dieudonné, Comte de Las Cases, he was the elder son of a marquis.4 During the Terror of 1793 he was an obvious candidate for the guillotine and escaped from France. With other desperate aristocrats he had thrown himself into an English coal ship and remembered being treated ‘exactly like a cargo of negroes’. They landed on the banks of the Thames a great distance from London and he stumbled on foot to the city.5

  The count’s memoirs describe how he eked out an existence giving French lessons but was rescued from penury by Lady Clavering, a Frenchwoman living with her English baronet husband.6 In 1802 (during the Peace of Amiens), Las Cases accompanied his employers to France as tutor to their children. Through old connections by then returned to favour, he met Bonaparte, and was soon in thrall to him, becoming convinced that he was ‘the most extraordinary man who has appeared for centuries’.7 He offered his life in service to his hero. In 1804, the Emperor Napoleon appointed him a chamberlain or Councillor of State at his court and made him a Baron of the Empire. Although Las Cases’ devotion was unquestioned, many people found it astonishing that he volunteered for exile on St Helena. But there is little doubt that he had a shrewd idea of the value of becoming the deposed emperor’s memorialist, and he applied himself seriously to the task, honoured to record the great man’s account of how Europe had been won—and so inexplicably lost.

  It was now agreed that the count and his son would live with Napoleon at the pavilion, sleeping in the tiny loft space and by day recording a description of his campaigns for the benefit of history. Napoleon himself took a sceptical view of the benefit of history and believed it would do ‘what it usually does with those who have won a hundred battles but lost the final one. For what is history, but a fable agreed upon?’ But he thought it worth telling some fables of his own.

  The count spoke excellent English, a relief for the Balcombes to have an efficient interpreter.

  William Balcombe and Admiral Cockburn had been busy trying to sort out the financial and logistical details. Balcombe informed his patron in England that he had become the first Englishman in history to entertain Napoleon Bonaparte as a house guest, which was braggadocio of the highest order: ‘He is very affable and pleasant, plays at cards with us and speaks French with my Daughters, amuses himself about the garden and appears in very good spirits . . .’

  In the rest of his letter of 20 October to Tyrwhitt he quickly got down to business. He explained that the admiral had recommended to the British government that he should have an adequate salary for supplying Bonaparte’s wants: ‘I assure you that I have enough to do to supply his Table and it is a very arduous task to do it at this place. Sir G. Cockburn has advised me to write to you to recommend to Government something handsome may be allowed me per Annum for my trouble. I should be satisfied if they were to give 7½ per cent upon what his expences amount to per Annum. The Admiral says he would fix a salary here but he is sure you will be able to get me more than he is authorised to give. I feel extremely grateful for your kindness and shall do everything in my power to deserve it.’8

  Cockburn meanwhile was writing an official despatch to John Wilson Croker, Secretary to the Admiralty (unaware that Croker was privy to recent developments through Dr O’Meara’s letters to the clerk Finlaison). He asked the Lords of the Admiralty to advise on ‘the expenses to be incurred for the maintenance of General Bonaparte and his followers on this island’.

  The admiral was in a quandary. His instructions, while exasperatingly vague, specified ‘that, as far as it may prove practicable, such comforts and establishment as are usually enjoyed by officers bearing the rank of full General should be allowed to General Bonaparte, and a table of eight covers kept for him, with everything else in a similar ratio’. He was obliged to do this without a budget allocated by government. The French themselves, as far as he knew (they had managed to deceive him), had carried little apart from some silver plate, a handsome set of Sèvres porcelain and a negligible amount of money, the last since confiscated and transmitted to Treasury. In the circumstances, Cockburn proposed drawing such sums as were needed from the island’s commissary. He explained that to enable him to do this at the cheapest rate and avoid being exploited, ‘I have engaged a Mr Balcombe, a respectable inhabitant, strongly recommended to me by Colonel Beatson before I qui
tted England, and by the Governor since my arrival, as most conversant and efficient in such matters, to purvey for me, and generally to assist me in procuring the several things it becomes necessary for me to purchase upon the island’.9

  Bonaparte had asked for a carriage, arguing that this offered the only exercise he could take (although his feet actually offered better exercise equipment). The admiral promised to enquire if Governor Wilks had a spare conveyance, and sent to the Cape for some horses.

  Cockburn instituted the new shipping regulations decreed by the Admiralty. Foreign vessels were forbidden to anchor in the shipping roads; if they attempted it, they would be fired upon. All fishing boats, rowing boats and other small vessels owned by St Helena residents were to be ashore between six in the evening and six in the morning or risk all hands being shot. Two British frigates were permanently at anchor off the port and two brigs circled the island night and day. ‘My cruisers,’ Cockburn reported, ‘are so well posted round the island that the devil himself could not get out of it.’10

  The drawbridge in the town wall was raised at sunset, so cutting off access to the sea, and a general curfew instituted. Locals were forbidden to stir from their houses except in daylight hours. It caused little inconvenience at The Briars as they rarely went out at night; if they did, it was necessary to obtain the governor’s permission, easily granted to any ‘respectable inhabitant’.11

  The fortifications were greatly extended, with cannon placed at regular intervals along the cliffs. An officer remarked: ‘Sir George is at his old work of fortifying . . . He is building a redoubt at Egg Island, about half a mile from St Helena, to defend the bay or beach . . . Indeed there would be great difficulty landing anywhere on the island (but just at James’s Town) from the tremendous surf. To the northward of the island it is always impossible; and to the westward, except James’s and Lemon Valleys, you see nothing but an abrupt rock rising out of the water.’12

  Captain James Mackay and the sentries guarding The Briars camped in a tent at the front gate and were relatively unobtrusive. The French had few restrictions on their movements during daylight hours—with the exception of Bonaparte, who was to be accompanied on outings beyond the gates by an English officer at all times, and his visitors were subject to clearance. When General Gourgaud came up from Jamestown on 19 October, he was offended to be questioned before admission to the grounds.

  Betsy wrote very little about Gourgaud in her Recollections. He wrote much more about her in his fascinating and scurrilous Journal, written in code and never intended for publication. Before actually meeting her he had been intrigued to hear of pretty Betsy Balcombe, an English rose. It seems that on encountering a mere cheeky schoolgirl, his fantasies turned to disdain.

  Gaspard Gourgaud was born in 1783 to a court musician and a domestic at Louis XVI’s palace. As a boy he saw the King carted off to the guillotine, a frightening experience which may have contributed to his emotional instability. After military college he gained a commission as an artillery officer; he was wounded at Austerlitz, fought bravely at Pultusk, and for his courage and loyalty was made a baron in the new Napoleonic peerage. Having been promoted to imperial ordnance officer, he joined the emperor’s carriage when they left Moscow, so missing the worst of the Grande Armée’s terrible retreat. On the voyage to St Helena it became evident that he worshipped his former commander with histrionic extravagance. Engravings portray him with a protruding upper lip, rendering the man an unfortunate sneering expression.

  During Gourgaud’s visit to The Briars, Napoleon suggested a walk. He wished to see something of the nearby countryside, although it angered him that this was only possible accompanied by an English guard. Betsy and Jane were invited to join the expedition and the four set off at a brisk pace, while Captain Mackay and the sergeant followed at a discreet distance. Napoleon chose to grandly ignore their presence.

  They strolled into a meadow where cows belonging to The Briars’ milking herd were grazing between the palm trees.13 In Betsy’s account, one of the beasts started behaving strangely, lowing and bellowing, swinging her head from side to side in a deranged fashion. ‘Look at that poor brute,’ said Napoleon. ‘Going mad with the heat just as I am.’

  The moment the cow saw the party, she put her head down, her tail up, bucked and advanced au pas de charge at the emperor. We are told he made a skilful and rapid retreat, despite his plumpness, leaping over a low stone wall. Gourgaud, to Betsy’s astonishment, drew his sword—remarkably, these weapons had been returned to the French—and advanced towards the cow, exclaiming: ‘This is the second time I have saved the emperor’s life!’

  Captain Mackay came running but the cow had lost interest. It turned away and resumed cropping grass. Napoleon joked to Betsy that the beast was a British agent: ‘She wishes to save the English government the expense and trouble of keeping me.’14

  The Balcombes came to inspect the pavilion and its new furnishings: an oriental rug, silver platters and tureens, the campaign bed with green silk curtains and floss mattress, and an elaborate silver washstand from the Élysée-Bourbon palace.15

  Betsy was intrigued by two miniatures on the wall. One was a portrait of the emperor’s son as a baby in his cradle, his tiny hand supporting a globe, the banner of France and helmet of Mars behind him. Napoleon told her this signified that his son would be a great warrior and one day rule the world. In the other, the boy was an angelic child with a nimbus of golden curls, a typical blond Habsburg in the arms of his mother, the plump Empress Marie Louise. Betsy said bluntly that she did not like that one as much as the other.

  In her later account, Napoleon confided that the empress was an amiable creature and a very good wife; she would have followed him to St Helena, bringing their son with her, if only she had been allowed. However, by then he may have known—perhaps not, but it was an open secret in Europe—that Marie Louise was pregnant to the eye-patch-wearing courtly seducer Count von Neipperg, and his son was in the Viennese palace of Schönbrunn, effectively a prisoner of his grandfather, Francis I of Austria.16 But it was important for Napoleon to emphasise his connection with the great royal house in order to argue the illegitimacy of his imprisonment and the dynastic prospects of his son, known in France as ‘l’Aiglon’—‘the Eaglet’.

  Napoleon made a considerable effort to charm the Balcombes and in turn seemed charmed by them.17 The company of children brought out the best in him, and the mountainous rocky locale must have stirred memories of his Corsican childhood, climbing granite slopes with a tribe of brothers and sisters among whom he soon won the position of leader.18 He had been kind and affectionate with his stepchildren, Hortense and Eugene, adored his own son, and he could tolerate and laugh at the familiarities of Betsy, Jane and their two small brothers, for they posed no threat. With children he did not need to impose distance or insist on rank, although this was rigidly observed with adults. For Mrs Balcombe he felt both respect and attraction, given her uncanny resemblance to Josephine. But his friendship with William Balcombe would not have rested simply on that man’s engaging and affable personality and his ability to furnish a good table.

  One of the world’s greatest strategists rarely wasted energy on being pleasant merely for the sake of civility, and certainly not at this nadir of his career. His principal motivation, just as it had been on the island of Elba, would have been to escape from the hellhole of imprisonment and resume the reins of power. He was always alert to the person or situation likely to offer him advantage. He perfectly understood the value of long campaigns and of building allies where it counted; the historian Philip Dwyer has observed: ‘For Bonaparte, people were pawns in his political and military calculations, to be dispensed with if they could not be useful.’19 The proprietor of The Briars was potentially extremely useful.

  Bonaparte’s best hope of release from the island to a less restricted situation (from where he could plan his resurgence) was the intervention of the Prince Regent. He would have recognised the importance
of the patronage and affection Balcombe received from Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, an intimate of the prince. The connection was well known on the island; Balcombe was inclined to boast of it himself. Tyrwhitt’s name must have been known to Bonaparte, who had a remarkable memory. From his time as First Consul he would have remembered Tyrwhitt’s diplomatic visit to Paris in 1801 as the secretary and emissary of the prince, bringing gifts of ornamental trees and shrubs for his wife Josephine’s celebrated garden at Malmaison.20 Without question he was aware of Tyrwhitt and his close relationship with the Regent. Once his exile on St Helena began, or even on shipboard before he arrived—for some of the officers and seamen had been to the island before—he would have learned that this man was the patron, protect- or and friend of the merchant William Balcombe.

  This offers an explanation as to why Bonaparte expressed interest in occupying the little summer house of The Briars before he had even inspected it, and, when Balcombe offered him the whole property including the main house, the former emperor maintained a resolute preference for residing at the uncomfortable pavilion. What this allowed was the possibility of daily interaction with the Balcombes and whatever advantage might accrue from that.

  CHAPTER 6

  BONEY’S LITTLE PAGES

  The charabanc tour of the Napoleonic sites was in a converted 1929 Chevrolet truck, rejuvenated in 1945 with a Bedford motor. The driver and guide was Colin Corker, a cheerful, entrepreneurial St Helenian, who had fitted out his eccentric vehicle with twelve seats and some plastic sheeting for when it rained. In the misty uplands beyond Longwood it usually rained.

  Our first stop was The Briars, William Balcombe’s old property, reached by the Sidepath, one of two steep roads out of town hacked from the rocky slopes by slaves. The Briars, a shelf of soft land perched above the fork of the Jamestown ravine, was now the name for a suburb of new houses; Balcombe’s old Indian-style villa was gone, destroyed by termites.