From the side balcony of The Briars’ Pavilion one looks down towards Jamestown, the ocean in the distance, and across to the waterfall which spills over the lip of the horseshoe-shaped gorge into the rocky gloom far below. The sides of the gulch are barren except for aloes and prickly pear, an impenetrable clump of them in the foreground, descendants of those that once inflicted pain on some well-upholstered buttocks. But the cascade still sparkles just as Betsy described it, and those clear waters were the reason seafarers called at the island, that the poor hermit Lopez survived for so long, and that a settlement developed and supported the growth of a trading empire.1
Across the gorge and looming some 500 metres above the Pavilion is High Knoll Fort, St Helena’s most spectacular military installation. Seen from below, with its martello tower, turreted stone walls and slit embrasures, it could be a medieval castle. It was actually built during the Victorian era as a redoubt against any possible invaders, its guns commanding James Bay while the whole island population could be herded into its keep. It has been described by a building archaeologist as one of the finest nineteenth-century forts in the world.2 This citadel greatly extended an earlier fort on the same site, built in the 1790s. After Napoleon’s arrival, soldiers kept a close watch on The Briars from up there; in the event of any suspicious activity involving the prisoner, they could signal to other watch-houses on high points right across the island.
Charles Darwin, visiting St Helena on HMS Beagle in July 1836, was astonished: ‘It is quite extraordinary, the scrupulous degree to which the coast must formerly have been guarded. There are alarm houses, alarm guns and alarm stations on every peak.’3
At the end of October, Gourgaud made another visit to The Briars, on the way passing a slave auction at the crossroads in town. He had a familiar discussion with Napoleon: ‘He cannot understand his defeat at Waterloo. “It isn’t for me,” he adds, “it is for poor France.” His Majesty tells me again, that with twenty thousand men less, he ought to have won the battle. It is Fate which made him lose it.’
Gourgaud was annoyed to find the Balcombe girls joining them for dinner in the marquee. In fact, Betsy had been reluctant, as they had already dined. ‘Then come and see me eat,’ Napoleon had insisted.
Cipriani delivered his punctilious announcement: ‘Le dîner de votre Majesté est servi.’ The girls sat beside their host at the table, opposite a sullen Gourgaud. A plate of elaborate sweets was placed in front of them, ‘spun sugar confections, architectural delicacies’, produced by Pierron, said to have been the most famous and accomplished confectioner in Paris. Betsy protested that she was not hungry but made herself eat half a cream. ‘But although I was satisfied, Napoleon was not; and when I left off eating, he commenced feeding me like a baby, calling me his little bambina, and laughing violently at my woeful countenance.’4
The mornings always began with the dictation of the memoirs. ‘The Emperor knew that the best way to counter boredom was work,’ wrote Marchand, noting that Napoleon had tried to do the writing himself, but ‘his hand could not follow his thoughts that were so highly-strung, concise and full of fire; his fingers could not keep up with the speed of his imagination’.5 Gourgaud was bored and unemployed in town so was persuaded to help young Emmanuel de Las Cases transcribe fair copies, all the while protesting that he was not a clerk.
In Betsy’s account, word of Gourgaud’s complaints reached her brothers’ elderly tutor, Mr Huff. The old man burst in on Napoleon and Las Cases during a dictation session and offered his services. When these were declined, he became distraught and was bustled out by Marchand. We are told that Mr Huff, who had lived on the island for more than fifty years, became obsessed with the former emperor, fantasising that he was personally ‘destined to restore the fallen hero to his glory’. He so neglected his pupils that Balcombe felt compelled to dismiss him.6
The Reverend Mr Samuel Jones was engaged as the new tutor at The Briars and was able to stay at Ross Cottage, Balcombe’s poultry farm, a comfortable walk some two miles away. Huff ’s former bedroom in the house was taken over by Captain James Mackay, who had been camping in a tent at the front gate. They had all become fond of this cheerful officer, whose main duty was to keep ‘General Bonaparte’ in his sights. Captain Mackay had become fond of young Jane Balcombe and kept her in his sights as well.
‘It soon became evident,’ Betsy heartlessly observed in her Recollections, ‘that old Mr Huff was mad, and, though strictly watched, he found an opportunity one fatal morning to destroy himself.’7 She did not describe the method of suicide, but ‘the act was committed’ where the road to The Briars joined the Sidepath, a favourite lookout point with its spectacular view over the cliff to Jamestown far below. No one seemed to grieve for Huff, least of all anyone at The Briars. A coronial inquest determined that he had died by his own hand. Custom and the church dictated that a suicide be buried with a stake through the heart. Mr Huff ’s corpse was refused a Christian churchyard burial so he was interred near where he had shuffled off his mortal coil, at the crossroads near The Briars, where his skeleton was discovered in 1957 during road mending on the island.8
Betsy did not care to think of the deranged old fellow lying in the ground nearby. She had ‘a terror of ghosts’. She wrote that her weakness became known to Napoleon, and when she retired for the night, blowing out the candle, she could sometimes hear him prowling in the garden, calling softly: ‘Miss Betsee, Ole Huff! Ole Huff!’ One evening she and Jane were sitting with their mother on The Briars’ verandah, enjoying the cool evening breeze, when ‘suddenly we heard a noise, and turning around beheld a figure in white—how I screamed. We were then greeted with a low, gruff laugh, which my mother instantly knew to be the emperor’s.’9 Mrs Balcombe marched across the lawn to the flitting apparition. She lifted the edge of a white sheet to reveal the black face of Alley, the slave boy. The laughter from the shadows left no doubt who had organised the charade.
The Balcombe boys’ new tutor Mr Jones had no proficiency in the French language. Nor had William Balcombe, but as he was catering for the French exiles he considered it imperative that his daughters’ conversational skills uphold family honour. He ruled that Betsy and Jane should complete a translation a day. Bonaparte’s own language lessons had not progressed far—he said he hated irregular English verbs—but he condescended to look over the girls’ French assignments and correct mistakes. Betsy thought him overzealous in the role.10
One afternoon she took her work to the pavilion for correction; Count de Las Cases, receiving dictation, and General Gourgaud, labouring over a fair copy, did not welcome her intrusion. Betsy boiled with resentment as she watched Napoleon make decisive marks on her exercise. ‘Look at your hand,’ she said. ‘It’s like a baby’s, so fat and pretty! I don’t believe it was ever strong enough to hold a sword.’
The courtiers were predictably outraged. Gourgaud drew his sabre from its scabbard and prodded at stains on the blade. ‘That is the blood of an Englishman!’
Napoleon ordered him to sheath it at once. ‘It is bad taste to boast, Gourgaud, especially in front of ladies.’ He told Betsy to judge for herself whether he could handle a weapon, and withdrew his own magnificent sword and scabbard from a richly embossed case of tortoiseshell studded with golden bees. The sword handle was of wrought gold.11
‘May I hold it?’ Betsy asked. Gratified to see her so impressed, Bonaparte placed it in her hands. ‘I drew the blade out quickly from the scabbard, and began to flourish it over his head; making passes at him, the emperor retreating, until at last I fairly pinned him up in the corner. I kept telling him all the time that he had better say his prayers, for I was going to kill him.’
Her exultant cries brought Jane rushing from the house. ‘Stop, stop! I shall tell Papa if you do not desist!’ But the giddy girl laughed and continued to hold the great warrior at bay, until her arm dropped from the weight of the sword.
Napoleon’s reaction was remarkably benign. When Betsy relinquished the weapon, he pinched her ear. This made her scream, for it had just been pierced for earrings, so he pulled her nose instead ‘but quite in fun’. ‘I never met with anyone who bore childish liberties so well as Napoleon,’ she recalled later. ‘He seemed to enter into every sort of mirth or fun with the glee of a child, and though I have often tried his patience severely, I never knew him to lose his temper or fall back upon his rank or age, to shield himself from the consequences of his own familiarity, or of his indulgence to me.’12
The story of Betsy and the sword swept across Europe. Bonaparte had been threatened by a young girl who seemed ‘cracked in the head’.13 Even the great Austrian statesman Prince Metternich was given a personal account of the incident.14
Mesdames Fanny Bertrand and Albine de Montholon had little to do each day but read, sew, watch their children play in the castle gardens, and find new ways of quarrelling with each other. During breaks in hostilities they visited Saul Solomon’s store in the vague hope of finding something interesting to purchase. They were a popular sight from the doors of the taverns, wine houses and hostels, teetering on dainty Parisian heels up Jamestown’s cobbled main street, holding lace-trimmed parasols aloft to protect their complexions. Their ensembles in satin and mousseline de soie (silk muslin) were the latest in Empire fashion, and Albine’s hourglass shape belied her new pregnancy. Encased in whalebone corsets, the ladies found the summer heat unendurable.
Fanny, convent-educated and devout, grieved that there was no priest on the island. She still hoped to persuade her husband, despite his loyalty to the emperor, to depart after twelve months for England, where they could live in style with her relatives, influential figures in the English-Catholic aristocracy. In the meantime she had resolved that she and Albine must endure the place and, if possible, each other. However, she preferred the company of Mrs Jane Balcombe and the newly arrived Catherine Younghusband.
Catherine described Fanny Bertrand to her aunt in Ireland: ‘She is an elegant woman, about 5 ft 7 inches in height, but pale & delicate, & miserable at being in this place. The Grand Maréchal, General Bertrand, is a fine soldier-like & polite man . . . Their three children, Napoleon, Hortense and Henri, exceed in beauty any children I have ever seen. Madame Bertrand speaks English perfectly well. She is of Irish extraction & of the Dillon family. She seemed very much pleased to see us & took great notice of Emily. I think we are likely to have much pleasure in her society.’15
Tempers were becoming frayed among the members of the French suite. ‘Cipriani annoys me continually with his questions and his visits to my room,’ wrote Gourgaud at the Porteous house. ‘There is a great quarrel between Madame Montholon and Madame Bertrand.’16 A few days later, Gourgaud flew into a rage against Montholon and had to be restrained. Napoleon rebuked General Bertrand, who had failed to write a letter of formal complaint listing their various grievances. Bertrand replied that some of the grumbles about chamber servants and mattresses were unworthy of His Majesty.
A welcome distraction came with the news that Admiral Sir George Cockburn was to host a ball at the castle in late November. The local society people would attend, and also the military and ships’ officers, one of whom wrote that if Sir George ‘can find the ladies, of course we shall go there’.17 The real excitement was that the French were to be invited, including their diabolical leader. Whom among the local ladies might he ask for a quadrille? Some felt faint at the thought. But those who had spoken to him on his rides had found him pleasant. And quite handsome really. At Solomons’ store and along the promenade they talked of little else.
Gourgaud heard the rumours and was elated. He was already paying for sex with black and mulatto girls, but he craved the company of a genteel young woman. He fantasised about one in particular: Laura Wilks, the governor’s daughter, whom he had seen just once. Napoleon’s interest was piqued. He had not contemplated attending the ball and exhibiting himself for the titillation of the locals. There would be no one worthy to partner, he believed, except the two ladies of his own court. However, although a colonial governor’s daughter was far beneath him, perhaps if she was very pretty . . . He asked Betsy to describe Miss Wilks, saying that ‘Gourgaud spoke in raptures of her, and sketched her portrait from memory’. He produced the drawing and asked if it was a good likeness. Betsy replied that Miss Wilks ‘was infinitely more lovely, and that it bore no trace of resemblance to her. I mentioned also that she was very clever and amiable. Napoleon said I was very enthusiastic in her favour, and had made him quite long to see her.’18
That opportunity presented itself at the admiral’s ball. As the day drew closer, Betsy’s own excitement could barely be contained. She had been in boarding school for years and had never attended such a grand occasion. She would need a new dress and chattered about fabrics and designs. However, her father ruled that she was too young; Jane could go, but Betsy must wait for at least a year before coming out into society. She resolved to change his mind.
Written invitations from the castle duly arrived for Napoleon and all his French companions except the domestics. But there was a major problem with the wording. On 14 November, which happened to be his birthday, Gourgaud made a glum entry in his journal: ‘We receive invitations to the Admiral’s Ball. There is one for “General Bonaparte”.’ Napoleon promptly refused it. He said he did not know of such a person on the island. ‘Send this card to General Buonaparte,’ he told Bertrand. ‘The last news I heard of him was at the Battle of the Pyramids.’19
Betsy was still desperate to go, and pleaded with Napoleon to intercede with her father. He surprised her by arguing her case, and Balcombe relented. Soon she and Jane were paying a visit to Solomons’ store with their mother to choose silks, muslins and ribbons and to pore over the London fashions in The Lady’s Magazine. Betsy was entranced with the design for her dress, which was to be appliquéd with delicate paper roses.
One evening, as was their frequent habit, Napoleon and Las Cases came to The Briars’ house after dinner for a game of whist, with sugar plums as stakes. The senior Balcombes were unaccountably absent—Mrs Balcombe, who suffered from recurrent hepatitis, may have retired early—but the little card table was set up in the parlour. Napoleon and Jane were to play together against the ill-matched partnership of Betsy and the count.
The cards were muddled and Las Cases was instructed to sort them into suits. While his former chamberlain was occupied with this fiddly task, Napoleon asked Betsy about her robe de bal. She was inordinately proud of the new gown, her first, and had him to thank that she would be wearing it to the castle. She ran upstairs and fetched it, showing off the fine needlework and appliquéd paper roses. ‘Very pretty,’ he said.
Las Cases returned to the table with the sorted deck, so Betsy placed the dress on the sofa and the game began. It was soon clear that Napoleon was not abiding by the rules. Betsy caught him ‘peeping under his cards as they were dealt to him, he endeavoured whenever he got an important one to draw off my attention, and then slyly held it up for my sister to see. I soon discovered this and, calling him to order, told him he was cheating, and that if he continued to do so, I would not play.’
At the end of the hand, Napoleon claimed to be the winner; when Betsy disputed this, he laughed and declared that she was the cheat and should pay what she owed.20
‘Never! You revoked! You cheated!’
At this Napoleon jumped up and, calling her wicked (‘Ah, you are méchante!’), snatched up her ball dress from the sofa. He ran from the room with it and up to the pavilion. She gasped in astonishment. Then she set off up the path in pursuit. But he was too quick, darting through the marquee and locking himself in the inner room. Despite her remonstrances and tears, he called through the door that he was keeping the dress to teach her a lesson.
The ball was the following evening. There was no sign of Napoleon throughout the day. Betsy sent several begging messages to the pavilion but was told that the emperor was sleeping and could not be disturbed. Neither of her parents was willing to approach him. Because she was not yet of an age to ‘come out’ into society, they had not wanted her to go in the first place; nor would they have wished to engage their distinguished guest on such a frivolous matter—although they must have wondered why he bothered with it.
The day wore on and at last the hour arrived for their departure. The horses were brought around and the young slave boys loaded the tin cases holding the ladies’ silks and satins—but not Betsy’s beautiful gown. Her mother and sister would be able to change into their evening finery at the castle and she would still be wearing her plain little house dress. By the time they reached the gate she was inclined to return home, but then Napoleon came running across the grass with her gown over his arm. ‘Here, Miss Betsee, I have brought it for you! I hope you are a good girl now and that you will enjoy the ball.’ He walked beside their horses until they came to the end of the bridle track which joined the Sidepath. He asked idly about a farmhouse he noticed far below. As they waved goodbye he called out to Betsy: ‘Make sure that you dance with Gourgaud!’ The emperor was mocking her as usual. She detested Gourgaud.21
The whitewashed castle walls were lit by flaming torches, reflected in the waters of James Bay. Turbaned black pages in brilliant satin livery greeted the new arrivals in the forecourt, took charge of the horses and directed the ladies to the anteroom where they changed.
The Balcombes and the French party entered the ballroom together at nine o’clock. Madame Bertrand, in a Parisian gown of heavy brocade, and Madame de Montholon, in a low-cut dress, her breasts sparkling with diamonds and emeralds estimated to be worth £1000, were the sensations of the evening. (Admiral Cockburn was tolerant enough to overlook the fact that he had requested all precious jewellery to be surrendered when they boarded the Northumberland.) The locals had never seen such style and glamour.22 A number of dashing officers, including Colonel Bingham, approached the French ladies, and soon their dance cards were filled. ‘The dress of the French party is so magnificent,’ observed Catherine Younghusband, ‘as to throw all the English and St Helenians into the background.’ However, in her view that was no great challenge: ‘The English ladies born here are called Yam-stocks. They are, many of them, very pretty & blooming, but very ignorant.’23
A few midshipmen eyed off the local beauties, but were mindful of a lieutenant’s warning that many of the girls viewed these occasions as a ‘Ladder to Matrimony’ and escape from the island: ‘The Governor’s ball gives them an opportunity of setting their caps to the best advantage, and many an unwary bachelor becomes inextricably enthralled by the sirens of St Helena.’24
Gourgaud was discomforted to be greeted by their host Admiral Cockburn, who requested—with a firmness that sounded like an order—that he should book the first quadrille with Mrs Balcombe, the second with Betsy Balcombe and the third with Miss Knipe, a farmer’s daughter.25 ‘My intention was not to dance with the Balcombes but here I am caught,’ Gourgaud complained to his journal. Betsy would have agreed with him. She failed to write about the ball herself and must have found it a disappointment after all her expectations. It was especially tedious to have to dance with Gourgaud. No doubt she looked delightful in her rose-trimmed gown and attracted some attention, but she was outshone by the French ladies. And by the governor’s daughter.
Laura Wilks whirled past them in an officer’s arms. It was only the second time Gourgaud had seen her—he was impressed enough the first time to rush home and sketch her—and now he was completely infatuated: ‘She has a charming face; a mixture of sweetness, intelligence and distinction. She salutes me as she dances past. Ah! Why am I a prisoner?’ Poor Gourgaud wanted to get married. He was tormented by erotic fantasies involving various women. He was not mollified when Napoleon told him, ‘When you don’t think about them you don’t need them.’ He did think about them, and his covert and hasty sexual encounters were not enough; he hoped to woo a young lady such as Laura Wilks for a wife. But alas, her dance card was filled and he was instructed by the admiral to escort Madame De Fountain, the dull wife of a councillor, to supper.
What was worse, he considered that he and his French compatriots were snubbed in the table seating, and the six quadrilles to which he was committed dragged on until five thirty in the morning. There were other annoyances: ‘A rosy young lady made a terrible fart as she was dancing.’26 In the November heat, the energetic, perspiring couples on the floor were observed by some to be ‘not safe to approach . . . literally swimming through the dance’.27
The sun was rising as the Balcombes came down the castle steps to the courtyard to find a cart blocking the archway and only exit, with a group of carousing midshipmen on top, singing at the top of their voices ‘Lord W’s carriage stops the way’.28
While the dancing was still in progress that night, the admiral and Governor Wilks had received an alarming message. Bonaparte had slipped past the captain and duty sergeant at The Briars earlier that evening and clambered down the mountain track to Maldivia farmhouse in the valley below. His unexpected visit astounded its occupant, Major Charles Hodson of the St Helena regiment, who did his best to be hospitable, as he later recalled: ‘I, of course, went out to meet him; he came into the house, looked about, and seemed very well pleased with it and the garden, which he walked over, paid Mrs Hodson a great many fine compliments, and took a great deal of notice of the children.’29
Napoleon joked that his tall and imposing host should be called ‘Hercules’, and was loaned an Arab pony for the ride home. He gave the servants who accompanied him some French coins. He was asleep at the pavilion, exhausted by the adventure, by the time the intelligence reached the castle.
No harm had been done. This time. But security would need to be stepped up at The Briars.