The manuscripts department of the British Library has a dim, hushed, almost religious calm, scholars, illuminated by individual lamps, transcribing from documents or weighty tomes onto notepads or laptops, all under the watchful eyes of the librarians at the long desk at the front, like priests at the altar presiding over their congregation.
I was at the foremost desk, directly under the gaze of the head priest. She had just placed a large volume in front of me, the first of my requests from the 3rd Earl Bathurst’s Private Papers, to be allocated strictly one at a time.
It had been a complicated effort over some days to obtain them, but it was all worth it. I opened the volume and carefully turned the pages of copperplate correspondence, mostly distinguished from the official despatches by the salutation ‘My Dear Lord—Private’ instead of ‘My Lord’ or ‘Sir’, and kept by Bathurst at his home. Among these I found Lowe’s letter dated 29 September 1818, which described an important discovery. A box had been brought ashore at St Helena containing correspondence. The governor was exultant to find his suspicions confirmed.
Your Lordship will peruse with feelings of no ordinary disgust, the details of the accompanying Report, disclosing such mean and unworthy tricks and artifices to elude the Regulations in force on this Island, to establish a secret correspondence with Europe for pecuniary and other concerns, and to raise a cabal at this same time on the Island itself, in favor of Napoleon Bonaparte . . . Whatever may have been said by General Gourgaud with respect to other persons that have been employed in clandestine communications, I could never fix a direct suspicion on any others than Mr. O’Meara or Mr. Balcombe (however assistance may have been afforded by others as the instruments or bearers), for they were the only persons who by their official situations had free access to the persons at Longwood, and if they were unprincipled enough whilst receiving the public money for their services there, to become the tools for any indirect purpose whatever, it was next to impossible to prevent it.1
William Balcombe was unaware of the impending tempest soon to break over him.
The Balcombe family were no longer living in London but staying at Hythe, near Southampton, with Mrs Balcombe’s niece, another Lucia, and her husband Luke Dodds, a former East India Company captain who had retired, having made a fortune doing several voyages on the China run. The Balcombes had in a sense been instrumental in bringing the couple together. Ten years earlier, Lucia had come out to St Helena on the Indiaman Walmer Castle to marry her fiancé William Burchell, Balcombe’s then business partner. On the voyage, she and the ship’s commander, Captain Luke Dodds, fell in love. The jilted Burchell left the island soon afterwards, and never recovered from the shock. Future fame as a naturalist awaited him in southern Africa, but he avoided women for the rest of his long life.2
Lucia and Luke had now been happily married for a decade, with a son and a daughter. They had a large, comfortable house at Hythe and welcomed the Balcombes into their home. It was a fortunate arrangement for William; being not far from Portsmouth, he was able to keep in touch with old friends from St Helena: Captain Ross, formerly of the Northumberland, as well as Admiral Sir George Cockburn and his secretary John Glover. Sir George had been appointed a Junior Lord of the Admiralty in April, and in the recent general election of 4 August he had won the seat of Portsmouth for the Conservative Party. Balcombe had helped his campaign, coming down from London to assist.3
On 21 August, Balcombe wrote from Hythe to his business associate William Fowler on St Helena: ‘I send some newspapers for Barry O’Meara—if he should not be there endeavour to give them to General Bertrand. I have this moment heard from Town that Sir H.L. is recalled—Keep this to yourself & Cole. I have been with Cabinet Ministers. Of course I told the truth—whoever comes out as Governor you will have strong letters of recommendation to from different quarters. I find Mr Holmes, Barry O’Meara’s friend is an excellent fellow. He is coming down to stay with us—Sir G.C. has been very kind.’4
Wherever Balcombe had obtained the inaccurate story that Lowe was soon to be recalled, it was a shock to the governor. When he read the letter, his secretary Gorrequer heard him in his office muttering: ‘They had better not remove me or I’ll raise such a clatter about their heads that will astonish them!’5
Balcombe’s friends on St Helena, Fowler and Stokoe, were worried about receiving mail that could embroil them in trouble. Stokoe was sent two notes and some newspapers by the naval agent Holmes, whom he had never met, asking him to deliver the enclosed letters ‘in private’ to Count Bertrand. ‘I have also sent you a late publication of Las Cases, which when you have perused it, give to those friends you think it will amuse.’6 Stokoe himself was not amused and took the letters straight to Admiral Plampin, who presented them to the governor. Lowe noted that the newspapers were recent issues of the Morning Chronicle, Statesman and Examiner containing O’Meara’s ‘gross slanders’, and the letter to Bertrand listed ‘pecuniary transactions of considerable amounts’. His case against his enemies was growing.
In the meantime, however, Lowe had assumed a leading and generally overlooked role in making St Helena a more humane place than it had been for the 160 years of its East India Company administration. Since the law passed by the British Parliament in 1807, enacted four years later, the island remained perhaps the only Company possession where slavery still continued. What wealth it had accrued—from its plantations, stock, and trade with passing ships—had all been built on slaves’ sweat.
To his credit, Lowe had frequently questioned the continuation of the practice at the island council, but with little result. (The issue of the slave Toby’s freedom was an exception; he claimed he had refused that request only because Bonaparte aimed to make it a political issue, to incite all the slaves to rise up.) But in August 1818 an event occurred which demanded action. Sir George Bingham, commander of troops on the island, came out of the courthouse to see ‘a poor slave girl, about 14 years old, limping down the road with blood dripping from fresh wounds on her arm and back which had been produced by a whip’. Profoundly shocked, he asked the girl who had assaulted her. She told him it was her ‘owner’, Charles De Fountain. Bingham called De Fountain to the magistrates’ court and ordered he pay the statutory fine of two pounds. He said he wished he could make it twenty times greater and force him to have ‘the same treatment he had meted out to the poor slave’. When De Fountain complained to the governing council about being spoken to in that manner, Bingham refused to withdraw his words.7
This gave Lowe the opportunity to raise the whole issue of slavery. On 13 August, he convened a meeting at the castle of the principal slave proprietors and delivered an eloquent speech, urging them to agree to a new law declaring all children born of slave parents free after a stipulated date. At a meeting four days later, the slave owners unanimously gave their approval. Lowe delivered a proclamation that after 25 December 1818, all children born to slaves would be considered free.
The East India Company Court of Directors (which included Lady Malcolm’s father) wrote praising Lowe for his ‘wise, humane and liberal measures . . . for preventing the perpetual continuance of slavery in the island’.8 But there were few mentions in British newspapers of Lowe’s role. The Morning Post was typical in congratulating ‘the honour of the inhabitants of this island’, omitting to state who it was that had raised ‘this laudable proposition’.9 Lowe was by now widely unpopular because of his alleged treatment of Bonaparte and thus failed to receive the acknowledgement he deserved.
A few newspapers ran advertisements for the English translation of the Memoirs of Count de Las Cases, ‘the Companion of Napoleon. Communicated by himself’.10 Of far greater interest to the public was the arrival at Portsmouth on 10 September of the HMS Griffon with Dr Barry O’Meara, ‘late surgeon to Buonaparte’, aboard. The Times reported: ‘She brought despatches from Sir H. Lowe. The cause of the dispute between Mr. O’Meara and Sir H. Lowe is before the public, and his return home has arisen out of that circumstance. He left Buonaparte in a very dangerous state of health. His complaint is a confirmed disease of the liver, which his dull inactive life most powerfully contributes to increase . . . The medical care of him has been confided to Mr. Stokoe, surgeon of the Conqueror . . . who had consented to undertake the office with great reluctance.’11
Balcombe, living close to Portsmouth, was certain to have greeted his old companion O’Meara on his arrival and to have asked after their friends and the latest events on the island. But he would have been alarmed to learn that O’Meara had not received the letter Balcombe had sent him from Holmes’s office on 24 June, carefully secreted within three envelopes.
Portsmouth could not hold O’Meara for long. He was now a celebrity, and newspapers and journals vied to publish his personal account of living with his patient, the fallen emperor, what confidences he had received, and details of how they were both treated by the governor. The Edinburgh Review won special access and published a long and sympathetic article that vilified Lowe: ‘A very general belief prevails, both in England and on the Continent, that the treatment of the prisoner is unnecessarily harsh . . . we confine ourselves at present to the consideration of the documents recently given to the publick by Mr. O’Meara, the respectability of whose character is beyond all question—the facts stated by whom have been wholly uncontradicted.’12
When Lowe eventually saw the article, he said with some justice that it was a virtual eulogy ‘on the conduct of Mr O’Meara’.13 He wrote a despatch to Bathurst concerning a letter Admiral Plampin learned that Stokoe had received from Balcombe. Plampin had not seen it himself but heard that in speaking of ‘leaving no stone unturned to serve “our friend Barry”’, Balcombe had added that ‘he had got Sir George Cockburn and Sir Pult—M—on “our side” or words to such effect’. It seemed to Lowe, who was now dangerously paranoid, that his suspicions of a former naval ‘cabal’ or conspiracy on the island were all but confirmed. However, a British Library margin note indicated that his draft despatch was ‘never sent in entirety’. No doubt Lowe wisely deleted his remarks about the admirals Cockburn and Malcolm. As targets of his wrath, they were too powerful—but Dr John Stokoe was not.
On 19 September, seven weeks after O’Meara’s departure from St Helena, a box was brought ashore by Captain Brash of the Lusitania storeship. It had been sent down to the port of Deal by the naval agent William Holmes. The captain had been asked to deliver it, along with a parcel and a letter, to William Fowler of Balcombe, Cole & Company. When Fowler received the items, he opened the envelope to find another inside addressed to ‘James Forbes Esq’. Not knowing such a person on the island, he gave everything to Sir Thomas Reade, who promptly took it all to the governor. It turned out to be just what Lowe had been waiting for.
The hapless Fowler was brought before the governing council and formally interrogated. He said that he did not know of any James Forbes, nor of a William Holmes either. Lowe instructed that the box be opened in the presence of himself and of Sir George Bingham and Thomas Brooke, two members of his council. The box was found to contain French books, histories and a copy of a recent Morning Chronicle. The books were clearly destined for Longwood, and although they were mostly scholarly works, the clandestine mode of their arrival excited Lowe’s suspicions. Both Bingham and Brooke agreed that it would be perfectly proper to open the letter addressed to the mysterious ‘James Forbes’. Inside was a letter to ‘Dear O’Meara’ from Holmes, clear evidence of secret and illicit communications being carried on with London:
I have persuaded Brash to take the French books, and they follow him to Deal tonight to be shipped; and he has instructions to give them to Fowler. The English books are sent to Stokoe. I intend starting for Paris next week to see Lafitte, and perhaps will see Las Cases, but fear my journey will be useless from the insufficiency of the documents I hold. Balcombe much regrets that he did not bring me full authority to act; he does not wish to appear active himself; he nevertheless acts in concert with me on all occasions.
I am seriously concerned to hear of Napoleon being so ill; do advise him to take exercise; for, if he shortens his life by refusing to do so, he will only the more gratify the savage malignity of his foes: he ought not to despair, for, rest assured, a change for the better will, sooner or later, take place, and his great mind should not at this juncture forsake him . . . Street and Parker [banking house] refused to pay Gourgaud’s bill for £500, but they have since heard from Las Cases, and it is settled. I understand the old General [Bertrand] does not mean to publish, but, should he, Perry of the Chronicle has promised his assistance. I understand you are to draw for £1800: you shall hear the issue of my visit to Lafitte; and, if your remittances are paid, trade of that kind can be carried on to any extent.14
Admiral Plampin was called, and agreed that the tenor of the letter and the duplicity of its delivery warranted opening all the items brought by Brash. The parcel was found to contain English books intended for O’Meara and two more letters for him. One was the already quoted letter from Mrs Balcombe, written on 27 May when her husband was on his sickbed at Hastings. The second envelope was opened and found to contain a further envelope addressed to Mr Stokoe.
The surgeon was summoned; he denied knowing any Mr Holmes and was willing to have the letter opened in the presence of Lowe and the admiral. It contained a third envelope, addressed: ‘For our friend Barry O’Meara, St Helena’. Three envelopes—to O’Meara, Stokoe and O’Meara again—tucked inside each other, like a set of Russian dolls, a complicated but clumsy subterfuge. When that final envelope was opened, it revealed what Lowe reported to Bathurst as ‘Mr Balcombe’s singular and extraordinary letter’, written to O’Meara from Holmes’s office on 24 June:
My dear Barry,
Everything has been done that can be done; all your books were sent on board Lucytania [sic], but the captain has just called at our friend Holmes’ office, where I am writing this, to say he can’t take them (I mean the French books). Holmes is indefatigable in his exertions in your cause, and all my friends, among the rest Sir George and Sir P—, are of the same opinion with us. All communications whatever must be sent to Holmes, as I mean to leave off any agency business in England except through him. He is more acquainted, and has a very extensive knowledge of what ought to be done for you; rest perfectly easy that no stone will be left unturned to serve our friends on the island. I have been hard at work for you, and what has been said has been listened to. I am just going to the Secretary of State’s office, where I have been twice before on your business. The election is going on rapidly; the opposition members are all coming in, the ministerial going out; a change in the administration is expected. The Leveret, Sir George C—has told me, will sail for your island in the course of ten days, when you will receive the French books from Holmes. I have delivered all up to Holmes, who is making the best use of them. Pray burn all my scrawls, as they are not fit to read—written so bad. With best regards to all our friends,
I remain, &c
James Balcombe’15
As a pseudonym, ‘James’ Balcombe seemed such a thin disguise it was hardly worth the effort! Lowe had no doubt whom Balcombe meant when he wrote of ‘all our friends’ on the island—they lived at Longwood. We know from his correspondence that he was disturbed by Balcombe’s continuing relationship with Sir George Cockburn, now a junior Sea Lord, and Sir Pulteney Malcolm—never friends to himself. Furthermore, Balcombe had mentioned two meetings with Bathurst and that he was to have a third; in his lordship’s frequent despatches to Lowe there had been no indication of these encounters. (But Lowe would have noted with some satisfaction that Balcombe’s predictions of a change of government in Britain had proved incorrect, and that his comments would have displeased his kind patron, the Tory Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt.)
Despite the irregularity of the books’ arrival, Lowe arranged for all 44 of them to be sent to Longwood—works such as Brougham’s Speech on the Education of the Poor, two volumes of The Last Reign of Napoleon, three volumes on Histoire des Croisades and four on Campagnes en Russie. He then retired to his office to compose voluminous reports to Bathurst—private letters and a long official despatch—on the outrage of the discovery.