This stiff surgeon who maintained his cause hath lost his place, but gained the world’s applause.
Byron The Age of Bronze
In the meantime, what of Barry O’Meara, the Emperor’s devoted Irish doctor? He had arrived in London six weeks after his departure from St Helena in September 1818. Within a few days he reported to the Admiralty. Initially he was well received, and is said to have had the valuable post of Surgeon to Greenwich Hospital offered to him. However, the mood changed as he continued his outspoken support of Napoleon and his denunciation of the conditions under which he was being kept. He described the situation on the island, stressing the poor climate and the damage it was doing to Napoleon’s health. He pointed out that most of the favourable reports about the climate of St Helena came from those who had stayed in Jamestown, where the weather was Mediterranean, or, like Wellington, on the sheltered side (Wellington had in fact lodged in The Briars during his stay). On the exposed mountainside the climate was quite different. Mould grew on the damp walls. Rain leaked constantly through the roof during the long nine-month wet season. Large pink-eyed rats infested the walls and floorboards. These aggressive vermin infected food and water and destroyed the linen. O’Meara urged that Napoleon was sick, and should be returned to Europe—preferably England—for proper medical attention.
The reception committee listened in silence to the doctor’s forceful report. The Chairman replied: ‘Sir Hudson Lowe is of a different opinion. Every one of his reports stipulates that General Bonaparte might possibly be imagining that he was seriously ill.’ Medically, of course, Sir Hudson’s opinion was worthless since not only had he no medical qualification, but neither he nor any other doctor on the island (apart from O’Meara) had even seen Napoleon for many months. All he had was the old suspicion that O’Meara had been ‘turned’, and was acting as a propagandist for Napoleon’s sly attempt to have his exile curtailed.
At this point O’Meara no doubt repeated his suspicion that Napoleon was not safe in the hands of Sir Hudson Lowe, and that broad hints had been dropped that O’Meara should help to ‘get rid’ of Napoleon. This accusation was, of course, impossible to prove, and would have required a ruthlessness far from Sir Hudson’s character. It was also one that the Admiralty could not ignore.
O’Meara wrote a long letter supporting his claim, repeating the statement in a manner which, as the Admiralty noted, it was ‘impossible to doubt the meaning this passage was intended to convey’. From their point of view the statement against his superior officer not only impugned Sir Hudson’s character but, as they rather pompously put it, ‘the honour of the nation’. If it was true, they argued, it should not ‘have been reserved in your own head for two years, to be produced at last not (as it would appear) from a sense of public duty but in furtherance of your personal hostility against the Governor.’ The Admiralty took a dim view of this, and informed him that they had ‘directed that your name be erased from the list of naval surgeons’. O’Meara had now lost his pension, his place in the navy and his good name.
Because he had put the interests of his illustrious patient above everything O’Meara now, after nearly twelve years in the navy, was faced with the unappealing prospect of starting from scratch in London. (The ending of the Napoleonic wars a few years before had thrown many exnaval and military doctors into the medical marketplaces in Dublin and London—O’Meara’s years on St Helena meant that he was a few years behind that group.) He sent a 38-page letter to the Admiralty explaining his awkward position on the island. ‘I was in charge of a sick man who happened to be the country’s greatest enemy. My position as an officer demanded that I serve my country. My profession expected me to give my patient the best medical attention possible—this was a task I had carried out to the best of my ability.’
Selling everything he possessed, he rented rooms on the ground floor of a tall imposing building on Edgeware Road. His lack of local contacts meant that his best strategy was to develop the dental skills he had learned as an apprentice surgeon in Dublin and had no doubt honed on board ship. By way of advertising, he hung Napoleon’s wisdom tooth in the window and opened up as a dentist. Business was slow. His notoriety as a supporter of Napoleon, and some of the hard things that had been written about him in the press no doubt did not help.
His treatment by the British naval authorities, in unilaterally removing his means of livelihood without the semblance of a trial, no doubt hardened his opinion of the British establishment, and he evidently took an active part with other radicals in supporting the struggle of Queen Caroline against her husband George IV. Caroline had been offered a bribe of £50,000 a year to stay out of England, but had refused this. So the government dredged up an 18th-century precedent and initiated a Bill of Pains and Penalties to deprive her of her privileges as Queen and incidentally to dissolve the marriage. The debate on this bill amounted to a trial in the House of Lords of the question as to whether Caroline had committed adultery with her handsome courtier Bartolemmeo Pergami. In the clubs the wags, remembering that the King as Prince of Wales had undergone a form of marriage with his former mistress, told each other that she certainly had committed adultery—with the husband of Mrs Fitzherbert!
For weeks, witness after witness retailed more or less squalid tittletattle about stained sheets and private doors and unexpected intimacies. One of the Italian witnesses achieved a temporary fame by his constant reply ‘non mi ricordo’ which became a catchphrase indicating something one did not choose to remember. For most of the witnesses there was considerable doubt as to whether the King’s agents had bribed them. Barry O’Meara was deeply involved in the Queen’s cause. We catch a glimpse of him in Thomas Moore’s diaries from Paris in September 1820: ‘O’Meara, the celebrated surgeon of Napoleon is here,’ Moore writes, ‘upon the Queen’s business—forwarding witnesses etc.’ In the end, although no one had any doubt that Caroline had been at the very least indiscreet, the Bill was passed with such a small majority that with great relief all round it was dropped. The Queen herself died three months after Napoleon. (When the King was informed that his ‘greatest enemy was dead’, he said, ‘Is she, by God?’ He was somewhat crestfallen to be informed ‘No, Sire—Napoleon.’)
To keep himself occupied O’Meara invented a tooth powder, which sold quite well. He also decided to edit his lengthy diary, which he had meticulously written up night after night for two and a half years. There were 18 volumes in all, each one containing over 100 pages of tightly written script. He had quite a lot of editing to do.
Although the weight of English public opinion was against Napoleon, and broadly in favour of the government’s policy, there was a small but well-connected and vocal group that believed that the government’s actions in imprisoning Napoleon were illegal, and that the conditions under which he was being held were oppressive. At the same time, the enormous public interest in anything to do with Napoleon was difficult to interpret. The display of his famous campaign carriage in Bullock’s Museum, Piccadilly, soon after Waterloo, brought tens of thousands to view it. Was this to be interpreted as support, or was it no more than interest in an old enemy about whom people had heard so much? Conscious of this ambiguity, the government sponsored a pamphlet supporting its position by a literary hack called Theodore Hook—Transactions that have taken place at St Helena, subsequent to the appointment of Sir Hudson Lowe.
The publication infuriated O’Meara, who described it as ‘a vehicle of slander, calumny and misrepresentation’. He interrupted his work in editing his longer narrative of the events on the island, and in a very short time had published his 200-page point by point riposte, called, in the elaborate mode of the time, An Exposition of some of the Transactions that have taken place at St Helena since the appointment of Sir Hudson Lowe. This sold remarkably well, with a second edition coming a few months later.
The success of this publication encouraged him to continue with the mammoth task of editing his diary. He moved into a more comfortable apartment. He bought a small library of French novels and historical works, which he knew would be of interest to Napoleon. These books were carefully packed in wooden crates and shipped to St Helena. Barry had them delivered to the shopkeeper Mr Solomons, with instructions that two or three novels should be sent up to Longwood with the shopping every day. Unfortunately, Sir Hudson Lowe discovered the plot. The entire collection was confiscated. Napoleon would never hear of O’Meara’s generous gift. On their side, the government put out rumours that O’Meara was attempting to arrange a rescue, to be financed by Madame Mère (Napoleon’s mother) in Rome.
Since his return O’Meara, in common with other returnees from St Helena such as Las Cases, the Polish officer Piontkowski, General Gourgaud and Madame de Montholon, had been a welcome dinner guest at Holland House. Here, Charles James Fox’s nephew and his wife Lady Holland were the centre of the British Napoleonist movement. With Irish tact, O’Meara had presented Lady Holland soon after his return with a lock of Napoleon’s hair, neatly tied in a silver wire. Equally enthusiastic, Lord Holland helped O’Meara prepare his claims that Hudson Lowe had at best treated Napoleon’s health as a matter of indifference. At its most extreme, this amounted to accusing Sir Hudson of actively hastening Napoleon’s death. This aspect of O’Meara’s diary continued to be the most frequently attacked, and certainly in the cold light of London some of the more paranoid fears of the entourage at Longwood (as for instance that the wine was being poisoned) did seem far fetched. On the other hand there was no doubt that the ministers would have been glad to have been relieved of the responsibility (and expense) of guarding Napoleon, and the issue was complicated by the fact that not even his most fervent admirer would deny that Napoleon was perfectly capable of acting or promulgating a lie to further his ends.
O’Meara became a frequent visitor to Holland House. The eighteen manuscript volumes were ’culled’ down to four. In putting them into print, his editor further reduced them to two volumes. In May 1821 Napoleon died, and O’Meara now felt free to publish his diary of their memorable conversations. Napoleon in Exile, or a Voice from St Helena, with a dedication to Lady Holland, was published in July 1822. It was an immediate success, the crowds queuing to buy copies from the publisher, so it was said, blocking the street. The book quickly ran through several printings. It also was quickly translated into French. Suddenly O’Meara was a well-known London character, about whom everyone had an opinion. As the gossipy diarist Creevey put it, ‘I wonder whether you will be anything like as much interested by O’Meara and Buonaparte as I have been and am still. I can think of nothing else . . . I am perfectly satisfied Buonaparte said everything O’Meara puts into his mouth. Whether that is true is another thing . . .’
Soon enough the government side began to hit back, largely with personal attacks on O’Meara and his way of handling the ambiguous position in which he had found himself. A very aggressive review of A Voice from St Helena was published in the Quarterly Review in March 1823, and another in Blackwood’s. The Quarterly’s review was written by J. W. Croker, a man much hated in literary circles for his unfair attacks on Keats and other young poets. As secretary of the Admiralty, Croker had drafted the letter that informed O’Meara that he had been erased from the list of naval surgeons.
The weather-vane Creevey recorded how his own opinions, which had initially been positive, began to shift. ‘I am curious to see O’Meara’s defence. How he is to exculpate himself from the many charges of double dealing baffles my poor imagination.’ Others were less ambivalent: Daniel O’Connell met O’Meara in Dublin, as he wrote to his wife (July 1823): ‘We dined with him at Lyons. He is a plain, unaffected young man, greatly attached to the memory of the unfortunate great man.’
The stress O’Meara was under at this time was revealed by a court case. The Times, Britain’s most influential paper, was extremely anti Napoleon and his supporters. One article in particular reflecting adversely on his Voice from St Helena infuriated O’Meara. Thus it was in Knightsbridge, one afternoon, that O’Meara suddenly crossed the road and accosted a tall, burly, well-dressed man. Pinning the surprised man against the wall O’Meara was about to give him a good thrashing—when he realised that this startled Mr Walters was not the owner of The Times. With the greatest embarrassment O’Meara released his grip on the unfortunate man and offered his profuse apologies.
On Thursday 22 July 1822 O’Meara appeared at Marylebone Court in front of magistrate Sir John Rawlingsome. Mr Walters was about to be sworn in when O’Meara’s solicitor (Mr Charles Philips) stepped forward stating that ‘he attended for the defendant who had asked him to express his sorrow for the unprovoked attack he had committed on Mr Walters—and also to state should the matter be adjusted, that he was most willing to make an apology. He also begged leave to observe that the breach of the peace committed on Mr Walter was entirely by mistake.’
Mr Walters then addressed the Magistrate saying that all he wanted was a public apology. ‘The Magistrate then said that if Mr Walters felt himself satisfied with an apology and did not wish to proceed he would certainly not press the case, but it must certainly appear that Mr O’Meara intended to commit a breach of the peace, and to prevent a repetition of such an outrage he could not allow the defendant to depart without calling on him to find sureties to keep the peace.’
O’Meara was then bound over in his own recognisance of £500, and a promise to keep the peace towards all the King’s subjects.
In the meantime, Sir Hudson Lowe had returned to England. He and his family had sailed for home in July 1821, not long after Napoleon’s death. He felt he had done his job well. If he had been harsh on a few occasions he consoled himself that he was only doing his job. His return to London proved to be a disappointment. O’Meara and others had raised significant questions about the way in which St Helena had been governed, and although there was a façade of official solidarity, there was no doubt considerable embarrassment too. The Foreign Office gave him the less than glowing ‘satisfi’ report. At a levée, George IV merely shook his hand and gave him a nod without saying a word. He went to Holland House in an attempt to revive the welcome he had received before he went out to St Helena. He could not gain admission. The door was firmly shut in his face.
The publication of A Voice from St Helena with its strong attacks on the regime on the island excited public controversy, and Sir Hudson sought legal redress for what he perceived as libels. He spent a considerable amount of time collecting more or less reluctant testimonies from all his previous subordinates on the island. He even forced William Balcombe into agreeing to sign an affidavit, something Balcombe did with the greatest reluctance. (Balcombe, who was never one of the world’s great managers, as we have seen, had done badly in England. He had been writing to Lowe for three years hoping to return to St Helena. Lowe had refused on each occasion. Now that he had agreed to support Hudson Lowe against O’Meara, he became gainfully employed. He was appointed to the important post of Colonial Treasurer of New South Wales. Balcombe immediately set off for Australia with all his family. Sadly, the elder daughter, Jane, died during the voyage and was buried at sea.)
Unfortunately, Lowe spent much too long on the preparation of his case, and when it was finally brought it was struck out for being late—technically ‘lost in point of time’. Then he was urged to publish his own account of matters with backing documents. Instead he decided to pester the government for some official vindication, which it was reluctant to give.
In October 1823, in a bizarre incident, Lowe was attacked by a young man just outside his home in Paddington. He was hit with a small riding whip. The assailant was the young Emanuel de Las Cases, attempting to revenge a supposed insult to his father. He had been stalking the Governor for some days—seizing his chance that morning.
Lowe turned to pursue his attacker, but was baulked by a bystander. So he turned and entered his carriage. Las Cases, who was now in his mid-twenties, ran after the carriage and threw his card through the open window—it was flung out instantly. Later, on his return, Sir Hudson found more cards had been found on the ground. Sir Hudson took the view that this was no more than a treacherous attack on him in the course of his public duties, and informed the Government and the legal authorities of the matter. A warrant was issued for the arrest of Las Cases, but he could not be found.
In October 1825 Sir Hudson was made commander of forces in Ceylon, finally returning to England in 1831. By this time he was in straitened circumstances, having to sell his magnificent library with its Napoleonic memorabilia. He died in 1844, so poor that the government organised a small pension for his surviving daughter.
O’Meara became a most accomplished after-dinner speaker. One who came in two minds about him said that he ‘left the meeting enchanted by Dr O’Meara’s delivery and likeable personality. His speeches rang true. Napoleon was a genius.’
It was at one of these dinners that Barry first met the Lady Theodosia Leigh née Boughton. She had been first married while still in her teens. Four years and two children into her first marriage in 1777 to Captain John Donellan, her husband was sensationally hanged for the murder by poison of her brother Sir Theodosius Boughton. Donellan’s defence was a flat denial backed by an attempt to cast suspicion on the victim’s mother, his mother-in-law. Since the young man had died before coming of age, the outcome left Theodosia independently wealthy.
Some years later the young widow met the amusing but overweight Lord Leigh. He had money, land and social standing. Their marriage, which lasted until 1818, was childless. O’Meara’s after-dinner speeches and his amusing anecdotes fascinated Lady Leigh, and in 1823 they married.
O’Meara could devote himself to his radical political interests. A man of open heart and generous disposition, his political opinions were strong, and he continued to support liberal causes. He spent his time, as one obituary put it, ‘in the enjoyment of the society of choice spirits. He had a very large circle of acquaintance in the various clubs of the West End.’ Daniel O’Connell recorded enjoying ‘a most splendid entertainment’ at O’Meara’s in January 1824, ‘including some beautiful champagne. I stayed there till near one in the morning listening to some fine singing and conversing.’ Records survive of O’Meara’s involvement on the committee of the Westminster Reform Club; he was proposed as a member by O’Connell. Among the other members was the famous Alderman Wood, Queen Caroline’s great supporter. Less famous at this time was Benjamin Disraeli who, the committee noted, was in arrears with his subscription. O’Meara was also, with Daniel O’Connell and others, on the first committee of the New Reform Club, founded in 1836 (later known simply as the Reform). However, the good life was beginning, so the obituary declared, to take its toll, as he was growing corpulent.
It was at a political meeting of O’Connell’s that O’Meara caught the chill that prematurely ended his life. Although he had been in ‘exuberant health’ before this, he woke with a fever, and then erysipelas. He took to his bed. He became quite ill and even delirious, supposing himself on occasion to be still in Longwood. Despite the best medical attention, his condition rapidly deteriorated. The illness progressed into bronchial pneumonia. As the obituary in the medical journal The Medico-Chirurgical Review put it, ‘delirium set in early and continued to the last. The powers of life ebbed—pulse got daily weaker—and the patient sank in the tenth day of the disease.’ On 12 June 1836 Barry Edward O’Meara died at his home, 16 Cambridge Terrace, Edgeware Road, London.
The contents of his house were put up for auction in July. As the Annual Register recorded, ‘in the Edgeware Road on 18th and 19th of July a sale of Barry Edward O’Meara’s effects took place. There was considerable competition among the purchasers for various articles, which had been the property of Napoleon. For example:
A few lines of the Emperor’s writing was sold for 11 guineas
A lock of the Emperor’s hair sold for £2 11 shillings
His wisdom tooth (extracted by O’Meara) sold for 7 guineas
Some articles of plate formally the property of Napoleon were sold for about 6 times their intrinsic value.’
In his will he left virtually everything to his nephew Barry and niece Harriet, then living at no 72 Dame Street, Dublin (now the site of the Olympia Theatre). They were his sister Charlotte’s children—unexpectedly, there is no mention of his son Dennis. He asked that his funeral expenses be moderate, but somewhat belying this he requested that the following be put on his tomb: ‘I take this opportunity of declaring that, with the exception of some unintentional errors in Napoleon in Exile, the book is a faithful narrative of the treatment inflicted upon that great man Napoleon, by Sir Hudson Lowe and his subordinates. I have even suppressed some facts which, although true, might have been considered to have been exaggerated and not credited.’
St Mary’s Paddington, where Barry O’Meara is buried
On 13 June 1836 the following leader appeared in The Courier: ‘The island of St Helena has given to Mr O’Meara a place in history and when time shall have permitted all personal feelings to subside, history will do him justice. She will record him as a man of the most rigid integrity capable of any sacrifice in the support of principle and with a practical chivalry defying power and welcoming privation in the maintenance of his proud consistency. His was not the mere theory of patriotism but he avowed he felt and proved his sincerity by suffering in its defence. Power might have elevated, and wealth might have enriched, could he have stooped to attain a dishonourable silence. But he disdained the compromise, and the gloomy rock of Napoleon’s imprisonment has borrowed one gleam from the virtue of its historian. To those who could not be misled by the partisanship of politics, it may be satisfactory to hear that with his dying breath he authenticated the details communicated in his work. He left in his will an inscription to that effect to be recorded on his tomb, thus Napoleon in Exile will be henceforth a voice speaking from the grave. A more warm-hearted or a more sincere friend than O’Meara never lived.’
Terence Barry O’Meara, Barry O’Meara’s oldest living relative
His surgical instruments were all sold for 2 guineas. They were eventually donated (1910) to the Royal College of Physicians, Kildare Street, Dublin where to this day they are on display in a special glass cabinet.
Most of O’Meara’s relatives appear to have done well. His only child Dennis became a farmer in Tipperary. Dennis had one daughter, she was called Kathleen. She moved to Paris at an early age and remained there for the rest of her life. She became a writer, publishing several novels, typically on the theme of conversion to Catholicism—no doubt reflecting her own experience—and was the Paris correspondent for the Tablet and other Catholic publications. She died from breast cancer aged forty-nine. She had no children.
O’Meara’s nieces and nephews appear to have been remarkably successful in their chosen careers including Divines of the Church, explorers, and engineers and, of course, the army.
Some years ago I was fortunate enough to meet Barry O’Meara’s oldest living relative. This delightful man lived in the beautiful little village of Copworth, Sussex. He was quite proud of his name, Terence Barry O’Meara. Yes, he had fought in the Second World War as an engineer. ‘I was fortunate enough to get out at Dunkirk. I went missing for a few weeks; however, with help from the French underground I was eventually able to make my way back to England. It was assumed by all that I had been killed.
‘I knew that my family would be told that I had been killed. We did not have mobile phones in those days, you know,’ he said with a quiet smile. It was typical O’Meara.
