The Balcombes had moved again, to a lodging house in Hastings, probably not wishing to outstay their welcome at Hythe. William would still have been reading with avidity and anxiety all the newspaper accounts concerning St Helena. Most of them, except for The Times, condemned the governor’s harsh treatment of England’s prisoner and his attempt to make a spy of an honourable doctor.
O’Meara was staying at lodgings next to Holmes’s house at 28 Chester Place, Kennington, in London. On 28 October, he wrote a long, defensive memorandum to John Wilson Croker, Secretary at the Admiralty, justifying his behaviour as Bonaparte’s physician and setting out the history of his difficulties with the governor; his aim was to forestall any of Lowe’s charges against him. He expected that his memorandum would be read by the Sea Lords, including Admiral Cockburn, and still hoped that some advantageous position might result from the confidential information he had supplied to the Admiralty for three years. (At the time of writing he did not know that Lowe had intercepted the correspondence that had arrived from Balcombe after he left the island.) But in his memorandum O’Meara went too far. He wrote that before his relationship with Lowe broke down, the governor had overwhelmed him with civilities, and invited him to dinner, as if seeking something from him. ‘On some of these occasions, he made to me observations upon the benefit which would result to Europe from the death of Napoleon Bonaparte of which event he spoke in a manner which, considering his situation and mine, was peculiarly distressing to me.’1
The response from the Admiralty was swift and brutal. Croker wrote that ‘their Lordships . . . find in your own admission ample grounds for marking your proceedings with their severest displeasure’. Concerning the governor’s alleged comment on the benefit of Napoleon’s death, ‘It is impossible to doubt the meaning which this passage was intended to convey, and My Lords can have as little doubt that the insinuation is a calumnious falsehood; but, if it were true, and if so horrible a suggestion were made to you, directly or indirectly, it was your bounden duty not to have lost a moment in communicating it to the Admiral on the spot, or to the Secretary of State, or to their Lordships’.2
O’Meara was summarily removed from the list of naval surgeons and dismissed from the navy, so depriving him of his pension.
On 6 November, the sloop-of-war HMS Mosquito anchored at Portsmouth, having come from St Helena. It caused a flurry of excitement when a temporary shore ban prohibited anyone on board communicating with the land, and ‘wild surmises’ began. One story was ‘that Buonaparte was dead, and that his body was on board’. Rumours multiplied when the Mosquito’s Captain Brine ‘took post-chaise-and-four’ to London and a council was immediately summoned at the Admiralty. But The Times believed that the real reason for the meeting was that there were suspicions about correspondence that implicated Balcombe in plans for the release of Napoleon.3
Brine was carrying an urgent official despatch from Lowe. Contained in it were Holmes’s letter referring to his planned visit to the bank in Paris and the incriminating letter by ‘James Balcombe’, both written to O’Meara and sent on the Lusitania with the box of books; also an earlier one for O’Meara left ashore by Balcombe at Ascension Island on his voyage back to England.
There was said to be ‘a bustle at the Colonial Office’.4 A message was sent to Balcombe, who happened to be with Holmes at Chester Place, Kennington, probably having gone there to confer on what might have been discovered. He was summoned to attend the Colonial Office the following day.
On Sunday 8 November, Balcombe must have entered the Downing Street building with great trepidation. He would have been even more alarmed when ushered into a spacious room to see four men waiting for him. It was an ambush. He was to be interviewed not by an under-secretary as he had expected but by three of the most powerful men in Britain: Earl Bathurst; Viscount Melville, First Sea Lord of the Admiralty; and Viscount Sidmouth, the stern Secretary of State for the Home Office. These were heavy hitters indeed, and hardly less so was John Wilson Croker, Secretary to the Admiralty, who took the minutes. They are worth reproducing verbatim, given the grave nature of the interrogation:
Lord Bathurst informed Mr Balcombe that he had to acquaint him that a correspondence of a very serious nature had been seized in which he was sorry to state that Mr Balcombe was concerned, but it gave him pleasure to find that Mr Balcombe had shewn more unwillingness to take an active part than others who were engaged in it, and that he now gave Mr Balcombe an opportunity of making some amends for what he had done by giving such information as he was able to afford.
Mr Balcombe said that he had not been concerned in any correspondence of which he was ashamed, and that he could give no information.
Lord Bathurst acquainted Mr Balcombe that there was a letter of his in that correspondence.
Mr Balcombe asked to whom.
Lord B said to Mr O’Meara.
Mr Balcombe declared that he had not written a letter to Mr O’Meara, and he then added that he did not remember having written one. He said he had avoided all French people—that he had been at Hastings on account of his health.
Lord B asked him if he had been charged with any Commission on quitting St Helena.
He said none.
Lord B said—‘Not to Paris?’
Mr Balcombe said ‘No’—He had not been at Longwood for a fortnight before he left that Island.
He was then asked whether he had not left a letter at Ascension to be forwarded.
He said he had—that it contained Bills of Exchange and nothing else.
He was asked if he had been commissioned at St Helena to act here [in London] for anybody.
He said he had not—that he had indeed been desired to send some Books to St Helena, but that he believed that somebody else had sent them, and he did not know what they were.
The letter referred to in the beginning of the conversation having been again mentioned by Lord B, Mr Balcombe said that he might have written a letter to Mr O’Meara but that he did not recollect it, and rather thought that he had not.
Lord Bathurst then said that he would detain Mr Balcombe no longer.
The above Minute was taken by Mr Croker from the dictation of Lords Bathurst and Sidmouth immediately after Mr Balcombe had retired and it contains to the best of our recollection a correct statement of what passed.5
Afterwards, deeply shaken, Balcombe walked down the road and around the corner to confer with Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt at his little cottage. He was in desperate trouble. Sir Thomas helped him compose a letter, addressed from ‘Parliament Place’, to be delivered to Bathurst the following day:
My Lord
With reference to the Conversation which took place at the interview with which your Lordship honored me yesterday, I take the liberty most respectfully to advert to two points to which your attention was directed, and upon which I feel it to be my duty more fully to inform your Lordship . . .
He gave a detailed list of the bills of exchange he had left at Ascension Island on his voyage to England. They were triplicate bills for his mercantile business, and were left at the island in case of an accident befalling his own ship; two were to ships’ captains, one to a naval lieutenant and the fourth ‘a Bill drawn by Dr O’Meara on his Agent for the amount of a debt owing to me’.
Secondly—As to any correspondence of mine with Paris, I beg leave most confidently to state to your Lordship that I never have, nor has any individual of my Family as far as my knowledge and belief go, had any correspondence with that City or with any other part of the Continent, directly or indirectly in any manner whatever.
With regard to my general conduct during a residence of 14 years on the Island of St Helena and since my return to Europe, I should feel truly happy were it submitted to the most rigid examination, confident that in no act of my life have I intentionally done anything in contravention of the regulations to which I have been subject, and equally confident that the results of such an enquiry could not fail to place my character above the reach of suspicion.6
No doubt still following Sir Thomas’s advice, Balcombe then called at South Sea House, the office of his agents, William and James Burnie, to ascertain if there was mail from St Helena that might illuminate what had been discovered. He found a letter waiting from William Fowler with a message about ‘a most mysterious affair which has taken place and in which I am sorry to say your name is made use of ’. Fowler was even more unhappy that his own name had been used; he recounted how the box of books had been opened in the presence of the governor and letters discovered. He and Cole had fortunately been exonerated from blame. ‘You however have incurred strong suspicions whether from the use made of your name by the writer of the letter or anything contained in its inclusions I know not, but I confidently look forward to your honorably exculpating yourself, which you will see the necessity of doing immediately, and I have therefore sent you the earliest intelligence. Without a line from you at all, both Cole and myself feel very uneasy at any such accusations going abroad, as to your conniving or assisting in any thing being forwarded to the Longwood Establishment except through the regular channel, however unfounded they may be and we shall wait most anxiously to hear the result which we beg you will acquaint us with without delay.’ He sent ‘best wishes to Mrs Balcombe & the young Ladies’.7
This was devastating for Balcombe. During the interview at the Colonial Office, his inquisitors had known of the letters included with the box of books and had been waiting for him to admit to them. He had been caught lying. Again with Sir Thomas’s help, he sent a second letter to Bathurst:
My Lord
Since I had the Honor of addressing your Lordship yesterday I have received a letter from Mr Fowler, one of the partners in my Establishment at St Helena, by which it appears that a letter had been received by him from Mr Holmes, Navy Agent of Lyons Inn with an inclosure addressed to Mr Jas. [ James] Forbes, and referring to a Box of French Books, in charge of Captain Brash of the Lusitania; that the letter so addressed to Mr Jas Forbes was in point of fact written to Dr O’Meara and that the Books were also destined for that individual.
Understanding with feelings of great regret that suspicions are entertained of my being privy to this transaction, I take the liberty with a view of submitting to your Lordship all the information which I have received upon this subject, to inclose a copy of W. Fowler’s letter, and I beg leave most solemnly to apprise your Lordship that until the receipt of that letter I was totally ignorant of any such consignment having been made to my House [Balcombe, Cole & Co.] and least of all of the transmissions of any letter or package to my partner under a fictitious name.
He claimed that before his departure from St Helena, O’Meara had requested that he send some French books and pamphlets, but when he arrived in England and found in the newspapers ‘imputations injurious to my character’, he had declined to execute the commission. He later learned that O’Meara had made the same request to his agent, Mr Holmes, and some books had been forwarded. ‘Deeply affected by these imputations as attached to myself individually and to the Credit & Character of my Establishment at St Helena, I have considered it to be my duty to make this representation to your Lordship, and I beg permission to add that I shall at all times be most ready and anxious to obey your Lordship’s commands in any way, to impart any information in my power upon this or any other subject connected with my own conduct as well as with my House, conscious that I have in no instance compromised my loyalty or deserved the aspersions which have been cast upon my character.’8
‘PLOT UNCOVERED TO HELP NAPOLEON ESCAPE!!’ shouted the Morning Post.9 The press was onto what was sensed as a big story. Rumours had been spreading ever since the arrival of the Mosquito. The Times took a more measured approach: ‘The curiosity which was excited by the arrival of the Musquito [sic] from St Helena at Portsmouth, and the summoning of a Council as soon as possible after her Captain reached London, may be esteemed as subsiding . . . the real truth we suspect to be the detection of some correspondence, having for its object, if it should ever come to a conclusion, the release of the prisoner . . . There are some sagacious Statesmen in this country who think that BUONAPARTE, driven from every other country, and at enmity with us, had still a right to put himself into our hands, and prescribe to us how he would be treated; but as this is not the general notion of that person and his deserts, we hope we shall keep him as long as we think proper, and certainly not let him escape, or others take him from us without our consent.’10 And so the story of the ‘St Helena plot’—of collusion, clandestine letters, cyphers, transfers of money, all to help Bonaparte escape—was rolling off the presses.
In the middle of this drama, Balcombe did a most unusual thing: he took a trip to the country. Tyrwhitt would have made clear that his situation was immensely serious, that he could be facing a gaol term or an even direr fate. Balcombe urgently needed to sever any association with O’Meara and Holmes. He could perhaps avoid gaol by going to live quite close to one, at Sir Thomas’s large house, Tor Royal, at Princetown on Dartmoor. The living would be more economical in Devon, and besides, Sir Thomas believed that there could soon be gainful employment for Balcombe. With the last French and American inmates repatriated, the great war prison now stood empty, but Tyrwhitt hoped that it would shortly have a new use, for he had various schemes for more inmates. In addition, his plans for a horse-drawn railway between Plymouth and Princetown had been listened to with interest by the Plymouth Chamber of Commerce.11
Six days after his Colonial Office interview, Balcombe wrote to a cousin, Miss Cheal, who agreed to accompany him on a visit of inspection to Tor Royal so as to check the house’s suitability for his family. After that, he told her, he had ‘very urgent business’ at Southampton,12 which was possibly a chance to consult with Admiral Cockburn on how he should proceed in the current crisis.
Agents of the government, employed by Lord Sidmouth’s Home Office, had been watching Holmes’s house at Kennington and his office at Lyons Inn, in order to identify his associates. One of them proved to be none other than General Gaspard Gourgaud. Now that Lowe’s strict custodianship seemed somewhat vindicated and Napoleon appeared less of a wronged martyr in the newspapers, the emperor’s supporters were in a delicate situation. It proved the wrong time for Gourgaud to have come out claiming to be a Bonaparte supporter after all.
Gourgaud had started to fear that he might have gone too far in betraying those at Longwood. If his treacherous confessions were ever revealed, Bonapartist partisans would prevent his return to France—or else assassinate him. In an attempt to rehabilitate his image, he had written letters to Bonaparte’s family—to Madame Mère in Rome and Prince Eugene—as well as to the Emperor of Austria and even the Russian Czar, deploring Napoleon’s ‘pitiful circumstances’ on St Helena and his harsh treatment by Lowe. The letters were promptly published in European newspapers. Gourgaud had sent the first of these letters in August 1818 to the former empress Marie Louise, now the Duchess of Parma. He described her husband as ‘dying the cruellest death, a prisoner on a rock in the middle of the ocean, separated by two thousand leagues from his loved ones, alone, without friend or relative, without news of his wife or his son, and bereft of every consolation. Since my departure from this fatal rock, I hoped to be able to come and tell you of his sufferings, convinced as I was of all that your generous soul was capable of doing.’13
The British government resolved to help him on his way. Two officers were sent to his lodging house at 7 Compton Street, Brunswick Square. On 25 November, the Courier’s headline read: ‘ARREST OF GENERAL GOURGAUD’. He was taken with his papers to the Lord Privy Seal’s office at Whitehall and interrogated. He was then conveyed to Romford, where a scuffle ensued. It was market day, and while the horses were being changed he shouted in the inn yard: ‘Thieves! Murder! I am General Gourgaud. They are going to rob and murder me!’ He was bundled back into the coach, then onto a ship and out of the country. The Courier noted: ‘His papers, which are of considerable importance, as pointing out the chief agents of the St Helena plot, and unravelling the clue to the secret machinations by which hopes were entertained of achieving the release of Napoleon, are all secured and will, it is understood, lead to discoveries of the highest interest. They are said to implicate several persons of no mean consideration in this country.’14
But the authorities did not obtain Gourgaud’s St Helena journal, written in cypher, which he had somehow managed to keep with him. Surprisingly, he did not attempt to cash in on it—probably because it was too explicit about his own failings. It was not published until many years later.
Henry Goulburn, under-secretary at the Colonial Office, wrote to tell Lowe that his favourite defector was a disappointment.15 It was now believed at the Colonial Office that Gourgaud had been an agent of Bonaparte’s all along. Goulburn added that Balcombe was another disappointment, having declined to give satisfactory answers: ‘Lord Bathurst thought that it might be possible to induce Mr Balcombe, under an apprehension of the consequences of the discovery of the correspondence to give some information with respect to the other persons concerned in it and therefore sent for him immediately. Mr Balcombe was evidently alarmed but as you will observe from the enclosed Minute of what passed, declined giving any satisfactory reply to the questions put to him. He has subsequently addressed two letters to Lord Bathurst, of which I now enclose you copies. You will not fail to observe in them many inconsistencies and, I think, a great anxiety to know the extent of information which we possess. A letter from Mr Holmes of which I also enclose a copy betrays a similar feeling. To these of course no reply has been given, Lord Bathurst considering that our best chance of making further discoveries rests in concealing the extent of those we have made. I will take care and let you know whenever any thing occurs to throw light upon the nature of the commissions with which Mr Balcombe and Mr Holmes have been charged. All that now appears is that the latter did go to Paris in the course of the autumn.’
Lowe was asked to send more information concerning an American ship that had made a suspicious call at St Helena for water and was since seen hovering off the island, although repeatedly chased away by the warships. ‘If these facts are true it would give some reason to suppose that they were connected with some attempt at escape.’ Goulburn required more details, ‘as the tone which will be taken by the friends of General Bonaparte is that escape is quite out of his contemplation and that all alarm on that score is therefore imaginary’.16
The Colonial Office was building a substantial case. Bathurst wrote to congratulate Lowe on the interception of the letters carried by the Lusitania, establishing ‘beyond contradiction the clandestine correspondence carried on by Mr. O’Meara. The contents of the letters, and the manner in which Mr. Balcombe endeavours to conceal the part which he has taken in this transaction, clearly show that the commissions transmitted by Mr. O’Meara were not of the innocent nature ascribed to them, and that they were something more than orders for books for his own, or even for the amusement of Longwood. Although no judicial proceedings can be held against any of the parties yet, the papers, even should nothing more be discovered, will be satisfactory documents in the event of any parliamentary discussions.’ He still thought the books sent by Holmes were suspicious and that their bindings should be opened in case they concealed something.
Bathurst was willing to believe that neither Stokoe nor Fowler were parties in the transaction, ‘and that those who have taken a part on the side of Mr. O’Meara have been duped by him, and are sincere in the regret which they express’. (He seemed to be referring to Balcombe as one of the dupes.) He advised Lowe ‘to show no ill-humour’ and to conceal his suspicions. ‘It will be a trial of your temper to read Mr. O’Meara’s charges against you. The answer which the Lords of the Admiralty gave to it must be satisfactory to you, more especially when you know that Sir George Cockburn was the first person who, on reading the charges, declared that Mr. O’Meara ought to be instantly dismissed from the service . . . You will observe that Mr. O’Meara’s great object is to involve as many persons as possible in the attack against you; and he has therefore introduced the names of many individuals.’17
A legal action against O’Meara, Holmes and Balcombe was in serious contemplation. One charge being considered was of assisting Bonaparte in an escape attempt—a hanging offence, ‘without benefit of clergy’ [last rites], so condemning a prisoner straight to hell. Goulburn wrote to Lowe asking him to prepare documents in such a form that they could be presented in court if legal proceedings were to go ahead.
The newspapers were so full of these developments that little space was given to the death of Queen Charlotte, the consort of the sadly ailing George III, who was beyond comprehending her passing.18 In some newspapers the emphasis was changing concerning the nature of the ‘plot’ and who had contrived it. The Morning Chronicle asked if there was a coincidence in the timing of the arrival of the despatches from St Helena, the arrest of Gourgaud and the discussion of ‘the Ex-Emperor’s case’ at the current Congress of European heads of state at Aix-la-Chapelle. It speculated that ‘such a stir as was created’ as if ‘planned to exculpate or to screen Sir Hudson Lowe from the charges laid against him of inhuman treatment towards the fallen foe’. The Chronicle confirmed that O’Meara had been removed from the list of naval surgeons, ‘and the pretext alleged is that some passages of a very serious nature’ were contained in his letter to the Admiralty concerning Lowe. The newspaper was authorised ‘to contradict the statement that Mr O’Meara had asserted that Sir H. Lowe had made a proposal to him to poison Bonaparte. No such accusation has been made; but Mr O’Meara stated that suggestions against his conscience were made to him.’19
Bathurst had no doubt of the existence of a plot. He had ‘laid out all the despatches concerning the case’ and discussed it with the Prince Regent, who did not attend the European Congress, having sent Lord Castlereagh and the Duke of Wellington instead. Bathurst wrote to inform Lowe that although it was clear that O’Meara and Balcombe were channels of illicit communication, there was not yet sufficient legal evidence ‘to authorize the Adoption of any legal Measures against the parties concerned’. Lowe had received ‘the full Approbation of His Royal Highness’. It was a matter of waiting until the plotters revealed themselves.20
‘The great business of the Congress at Aix-la-Chapelle is now finished,’ announced the Morning Post on 25 November. ‘Happiness is expressed by all at the ascertained fact that BONAPARTE remains in perfect security at St Helena . . . with nothing likely to occur to cause an alteration in the situation . . . He, it is a lamentable fact, has still many adherents in France.’21 But the Congress had concluded with an agreement by the Allied powers that all occupation troops would be removed from that country.
The ex-empress of France, ‘Maria Louisa’, had prevailed on her father, the Emperor of Austria, to support the proposal made at the Congress ‘to remove Napoleon to a climate more congenial to his health’. The motion did not succeed, but Gourgaud’s letters had clearly had some effect, for there was also lobbying from Rome: ‘It is rumoured that the Pope has requested leave to send a priest to comfort Napoleon in his confinement, supposed to be at the instigation of his family resident at Rome.’22
James Perry, editor of the Morning Chronicle, still demanded Lowe’s recall: ‘We wish that we could doubt of the reality of the persecution; however, all who arrive from St Helena unite in bearing testimony to it. But a fallen enemy, who threw himself on the generosity of the nation, is the last who ought to experience inhumanity from us. We may have no regard for the prisoner, but we ought to have some regard for the national character.’23 The Morning Post stated that there was no intention of recalling Lowe, ‘for certainly no man could possibly fill his arduous office more faithfully or effectively than he does . . . In all this, it is quite forgotten that BONAPARTE is a Prisoner and that his escape might be followed by fresh convulsions and wars, in which thousands would again probably perish.’24
At Plantation House, Lowe still fretted that Balcombe seemed to be on such easy terms with the admirals Cockburn and Malcolm and felt so free to speak against him.25 He sent a despatch to Bathurst, requesting that Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt be informed of the behaviour of his protégé.26 Lowe still felt besieged by the continuing accusations made against him. A far wider public than just those of a Whig persuasion believed that he had diminished their country’s honour and had cruelly treated not just Napoleon and his French retinue but also O’Meara, causing him to lose his career in the navy and his pension, simply because he had stood up for what he believed was right. Indeed, O’Meara was to achieve enduring recognition for such steadfastness when Lord Byron devoted a couplet to him in The Age of Bronze:
. . . the stiff surgeon, who maintained his cause,
Hath lost his place, and gained the world’s applause.27