News from St Helena was always welcome to the Balcombes, still living at Plymouth. In mid-August 1819, the Morning Post had two stories which would have delighted them. It noted that General Sir George and Lady Bingham were departing the island for England: ‘Report says that he will soon return as its Governor.’ That was bound to please many islanders too, for the article mentioned that the locals knew ‘nothing of what passes in Europe, as all the newspapers that arrive are obliged to be forwarded to Sir Hudson Lowe, who destroys them after perusal’.
What was particularly delicious was the story of Sir Thomas Reade, the deputy-adjutant-general, who had been ‘desirous of gratifying Lady Lowe with the representation of a naval night action’. He had therefore given directions to the captain of the visiting naval warship HMS Eurydice. ‘Accordingly at ten o’clock at night, the Eurydice, after a brilliant discharge of rockets, blue lights &c commenced a vigorous cannonade, which was answered by a brig, and kept up with great spirit on both sides, to the great admiration of such ladies as were in the secret, and to the consternation of the inhabitants, amongst others, of Admiral Plampin.’ It was astonishing that Plampin, the admiral of the South Atlantic naval station, had not been informed; ‘imagining that the Yankees were endeavouring to land in order to carry off Bonaparte, he sent his Secretary and the signal midshipman galloping down the steep sidepath from the Briars at the risk of their necks, to ascertain what was the matter. Nothing could exceed the confusion amongst the natives, the greatest part of whom flocked to the alarm-posts, where they remained until daylight.’ The article concluded: ‘Nothing further is known about Bonaparte, than that he is on the island.’1
Betsy and Jane and their parents would have wondered about Napoleon’s actual state of health, with rumours that an Italian doctor had now arrived to look after him. That mention of The Briars, still occupied by Plampin, must have caused more than a twinge of heartache and determination to return to the island, especially if the good General Bingham was to be governor there.
The Times of 3 November provided an account of the tribulations of their friend John Stokoe: ‘Our readers will learn with surprise and no doubt with indignation, the disingenuous manner in which Mr Stokoe, Naval Surgeon on board the Admiral’s flag-ship at St Helena, has been treated.’ Stokoe, ‘this most respectable naval surgeon’, had ‘like his predecessor incurred the displeasure of Sir Hudson Lowe’ because of the bulletins he wrote on the ex-emperor’s state of health. He had been allowed to return to England on half-pay, and ‘was received in the most gracious manner at the Admiralty’, then given an order to return to the island and his station on the flagship. ‘No sooner, however, had he arrived at St Helena,’ the report continued, ‘than he was told that a court-martial was to be assembled to try him on several charges, preferred against him by the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, relative to his conduct during his attendance on General Buonaparte! They are such as would, in any other case and situation, be considered frivolous and vexatious; but coming from so high an authority, and supported by the local influence of his enemy, he can have very little hope of relief.’ Because Stokoe had returned with expectations of taking up his old position as flagship surgeon, he had left behind in England ‘the original documents of official correspondence’ which would have supported his case, as well as ‘testimonials of character, which after twenty years of approved service, he had received from every commander under whom he had sailed. The system of terror so powerfully operates in St Helena, that a military officer declined giving Surgeon Stokoe his countenance and assistance, during the trial, on the plea of ill-health.’
The ten charges were extraordinarily petty, even in the view of The Times: ‘The first charge, we understand, was for having held communications with Buonaparte otherwise than in his professional capacity and the last, for having in his official documents designated or described Buonaparte as “Napoleon” and the “Patient” and not as “General Buonaparte”.’2
The outcome was inevitable and merciless. Stokoe was found guilty of all charges and stripped of his naval career. The court-martial judges, ‘in consideration of his former faithful services and his excellent character, recommended him to the Lords of the Admiralty to be placed on the half-pay list’.3 All Stokoe’s fears of angering the governor and Admiral Plampin if he offered Napoleon any medical attention had come to pass. The emperor’s shadow had fallen on him, but looming behind it was the bitter, punitive spectre of Sir Hudson Lowe.
Balcombe was still awaiting the decision of the East India Company regarding his application of February to return to his beloved island. The St Helena Archives still holds the court book with the decisions of the Court of Directors on various applications.4 On 8 December, the directors gave the answer he had hoped for: ‘Resolved. That adverting to the Court’s Resolution of the 24th February last, Mr William Balcombe be permitted to return to St Helena for the purpose of resuming his former situation of Superintendent of Public Sales at that Island.’ Despite his gout, Balcombe might have danced a jig if he had known of that result. Unfortunately, he never did. One week later, before it was communicated to him, the decision was reversed. It was noted in the court book that Lord Bathurst had ‘declined to comply’ with the court’s request for ‘the proposed return of Mr W. Balcombe to St Helena’ and ‘would not consider himself justified in departing from that decision’. The application was refused.5 Whatever friends Balcombe might have had influencing the Court of Directors, Bathurst—who in this instance was going to oblige Lowe—was more powerful.
It was a heavy blow for the whole Balcombe family, particularly for William and his wife. She had first thought of St Helena as ‘worse than Botany Bay’, but had come to love their ‘dear island’, the friends they had there, such as the Bertrands, and most of all their beautiful home, The Briars. Balcombe’s worries were predominantly financial. He had a great deal of money tied up in the Briars property and the brewery; the naval contract alone, for supplying beer and vegetables, was worth £2000 a year to his company.6 Admiral Plampin was still neglecting to pay rent, having apparently seen the fracas surrounding the ‘clandestine letters’ as a justification for not doing so, and only a trickle was coming from Cole and Fowler for the business, through Wm Burnie & Co. in London.
Tyrwhitt was not in a position to help Balcombe financially, having directed all his funds towards his passion, the Plymouth and Dartmoor Railroad, and had taken out a heavy mortgage on it as well. At the same time, he was much occupied in discussions and actual arguments with the Prince Regent. Old King George III was totally delusional, in ever failing health and expected to die at any time. As J.B. Priestley wrote: ‘The idea of the mad old King haunted the Regency like an accusing ghost.’7 The Regent insisted that when he acceded to the throne, he would not have his legal wife, Princess Caroline of Brunswick, as his queen. Tyrwhitt advised that he could not do otherwise, but the Regent said that he had a legal right to annul the marriage if she had proved to be unfaithful. Princess Caroline was living in Italy and there was a rumour that she had a lover. Tyrwhitt may have been asked to go on a mission to ascertain this fact, but if so, he refused. Prince George wanted to marry again. With the death of his daughter Charlotte, he now had no legal heir to the throne. His younger brother Edward, the Duke of Kent, the fourth son of George III, had just that year produced a daughter, the Princess Victoria.8 His other brothers had plenty of illegitimate offspring but no legitimate children, and now a few of them were scrambling among the European princesses to find a wife who would deliver a male heir. The Regent was determined to outwit them.
The Duke of Wellington had no time for any of the King’s seven surviving sons, lumping them all together as ‘the damnedst millstones about the neck of any government that can be imagined’.9 One of those millstones sank soon after: Edward, Duke of Kent, died suddenly on 23 January 1820.
His death was followed six days later by the more expected passing of his father, George III. There was an outbreak of mourning among the English for the late King; they had developed a real affection for their ‘Farmer George’. They feared what would happen to the nation under the rule of his spendthrift, disreputable, roistering eldest son.
George IV acceded to the throne at Windsor Castle, and plans were made, with the help of Tyrwhitt, for his coronation.
Lowe wrote promising news for Bathurst about the new gardener at Longwood: ‘Nothing can exceed the bustle & activity which has been recently displayed by General Bonaparte in giving directions about his Flower Garden & superintending the servants employed in it. He is hemming it in, all round with as bushy trees and shrubs as he can get transported & with rock walls so as to screen himself as far as possible from external observation.’10 For Lowe, it confirmed his belief that there was nothing wrong with the general—he had been malingering all along. Napoleon, who had always been so particular in his dress, was now sometimes seen in the garden in loose blowsy trousers and a Chinese coolie hat. The orderly officer had even sighted him in a dressing-gown!11
As Balcombe was permanently blocked from returning to St Helena and needed to settle various debts, he at last made the decision and mortgaged The Briars, including the Union brewery for £9000, to his agents, William and James Burnie. Balcombe was now in possession of a considerable amount of money, but it had to last for an unforeseeable length of time. He had lost his career and his businesses and was out of official favour. Tyrwhitt, as always, wanted to help him, but was unable to use his influence with government. Bathurst had turned decisively against Balcombe, who was fortunate so far to have escaped legal action and possible imprisonment.
Many people in Balcombe’s situation would have fallen into a state of depression, but his natural ebullience must have helped him through this difficult period. His prospects had collapsed, his affluent life had disappeared, his good name had gone. All he could look forward to was a job obtaining food supplies, with immense logistical difficulty, for a prison in the bleakest place in England. Tyrwhitt still had great hopes that a use would be found for his Dartmoor prison, and a position for Balcombe, now that the railroad was laboriously snaking, one granite sleeper after another, towards Sutton Pool. But most of the time Tyrwhitt was with the new King, trying to dissuade him from his plan to put the Queen Consort on public trial for adultery.
However, at the end of February 1820, Sir Thomas was in a state of shock, as were all members of Parliament. On the twenty-third, a plot was exposed, just before it was enacted, to murder Prime Minister Lord Liverpool, Lord Bathurst, Lord Sidmouth and all the Cabinet ministers. The conspirators, a revolutionary group spurred to action by the Peterloo massacre and the old King’s death, held their meetings at Cato Street, off Edgware Road (near Dr O’Meara’s dental practice, although he of course had nothing to do with it). The conspirators were infiltrated by a government spy, who exposed their plan to use pistols and grenades to kill all the Cabinet members while they were at a dinner, seize key government buildings, and invite all workers, war veterans, farm labourers and the unemployed to join them in revolution. Five members of the ‘Cato Street conspiracy’ were hanged and five others transported to Australia.12
Princess Caroline, the King’s wife returned from her expatriate life in Italy, landing at Dover on 5 June to enjoy her time of glory as the Queen Consort of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Ireland and Hanover. Although few regarded her as saintly, she was seen as being a great deal more so than her rakish, libidinous, grossly overweight husband. The rumour had spread, even among the common people, that George IV had taken some strands of pubic hair from every woman with whom he had had sexual congress and there was said to be enough to stuff a mattress.13
Caroline’s route to London was greeted by welcoming crowds. With public opinion so much on her side, the King’s ministers and Tyrwhitt advised that his insistence on a marriage annulment would rebound. George opposed them and demanded that the House of Lords introduce a ‘Bill of Pains and Penalties’; if passed, it would deprive Caroline of her royal title and her privileges, and if proved that she had been unfaithful, the marriage would be annulled.14 The King postponed his coronation until the case was resolved.15
The preamble to ‘the Trial’ began on 5 July. The evening before it commenced, Tyrwhitt was deputed to present the Queen with the House of Lords Bill. Several newspapers reported what followed: ‘Her Majesty received the Bill with great calmness. The words which she used were not distinctly understood. They were in substance or sound like the following: “I am sorry that it comes so late, as 25 years ago it might have been of some use to His Majesty.” What followed was more audible: “But as we shall not meet in this world, I hope we shall in the next,” (pointing her hand towards Heaven, and then adding with great emphasis) “where justice will be rendered me”. She requested Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, if he had an opportunity, to convey these sentiments to His Majesty. Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt is said to have been much affected on delivering the message to the Queen. He had not seen Her Majesty since she was living in the King’s house.’16
Sir Thomas was obliged to vacate his cottage and other officers of the House of Lords their apartments to make ‘safe houses’ for the foreign witnesses, some of whom had already been threatened by angry mobs after landing in England. ‘On Friday evening,’ it was reported, ‘eleven foreigners were landed out of a boat at Parliament-stairs, and immediately conducted into the apartments. They appeared to be young men, and some of them had a military air. Most of the windows which overlooked the yard are fastened down and the apartments to which they belong kept locked.’17 Some of the men would have been very anxious; by the Act of Edward III, it was ‘high treason to violate the wife of the King of England, even with her own consent, provided the offence be committed either within the territories of the King or by one of his liege subjects’.18
The trial began in mid-August. Within the House of Lords, Tyrwhitt was responsible for all the arrangements. Lady Granville wrote to a friend: ‘The Queen said to Sir Tommy as he led her into the House, “I am sure you would have much greater pleasure in leading me to my coronation.”’19 Caroline attended the trial every day, but sometimes stayed in an adjacent room, playing backgammon, especially when prurient statements from her Italian butler and valets regarding bed stains and alleged intimate relations with her chamberlain Pergami were too demeaning to suffer. The evidence of the prosecution witnesses was damaging for her, but later not one of them was credible under cross-examination by the Queen’s counsel, the Whig politicians Henry Brougham and Thomas Denman.20
The action brought by the dissolute, extravagant, widely hated King against his wife became a focal point for cartoons, broadsides, gross caricatures, petitions, radical demonstrations, and demands for parliamentary reform and even for women’s rights. Petitions with close to a million signatures were sent in from around the country. The Times, which had chosen to support the Queen, doubled its circulation.21 The stability of the throne and indeed of the government seemed threatened; the ‘Cato Street conspiracy’ had been foiled only six months earlier.22
The trial in the House of Lords continued until November, the greatest show in the country, exhibiting the grubby royal linen to the eager press. (As Tyrwhitt controlled who entered as spectators, it is quite possible that he found places for some of the Balcombe family.) There were daily revelations and scandals, but the general public remained steadfastly devoted to Caroline and hostile to the King. In the end the Bill passed in the House of Lords by the narrow margin of just nine votes, which meant it was certain of defeat in the House of Commons. The government withdrew the Bill. The Queen was effectively acquitted: ‘The government, if not the King himself, was throwing in the towel.’ The King reacted with petulance and spite and threatened to ‘retire’ to his Kingdom of Hanover.23
The crowds went wild. Cannon and muskets were fired, bells rang, fireworks exploded and London was illuminated for three days.24 At the height of the celebrations, the poet Coleridge ‘said to a friend he met on the street, “I hope you are a Queenite”. “No,” replied the friend, “only an anti-Kingite.” “Aye,” replied Coleridge, “that’s all I mean”.’25
Patrick O’Reilly, the purser on the Northumberland, was in England in July 1820 and followed up on a bill for £50 made out to him from the firm Balcombe, Cole & Fowler. He wrote to Denzil Ibbetson, the purveyor for Longwood, that he found Balcombe ‘living at Plymouth with his family at an expense which I hope his revenue is adequate to’ and the bill was settled. He had then visited the naval agent Holmes on another matter and asked after Dr O’Meara, as he had heard that he was working on a new translation of Bonaparte’s memoirs. ‘All I could learn was that the latter is at present with Bony’s mother, I believe at Rome, and affects to get from her either a pension or a sum of money. It is very easy to conjecture on what grounds he makes the application—he being out of England is I believe not generally known, at least I should suppose so from the manner in which it was told me.’ Ibbetson passed this information to Lowe, who sent it to Bathurst.26 O’Meara was indeed working on a memoir of Napoleon’s exile on the island of St Helena and his persecution by the governor. No doubt Madame Mère was happy to provide funding for it.
There were rumours about Balcombe travelling abroad. His great-granddaughter Dame Mabel Brookes claimed to have found ‘considerable correspondence’ in the Lowe papers ‘in reference to his actual whereabouts’ at this time: ‘Had he gone to France? It was feared he carried messages to the Bonaparte family on the Continent.’27 However, without evidence, this must remain conjecture.
Many pamphlets and broadsides had circulated in England during the Queen’s trial. One declared that Bonaparte had escaped from St Helena in a hot-air balloon.28 Many people actually believed it. Bathurst knew it was satire, but feared that more practical attempts might be under way. He wrote to Lowe on 30 September: ‘The reports which you have recently made of the conduct of General Buonaparte and of his followers make me suspect that he is beginning to entertain serious thoughts of escaping from St Helena, and the accounts which he will have since received of what is passing in Europe will not fail to encourage him in this project . . . You will therefore exert all your attention in watching his proceedings, and call upon the Admiral to use his utmost vigilance.’29
Bathurst need not have feared. In fact, Napoleon had abandoned all thoughts of escape, and explained why in a secret letter he dictated to Montholon on 1 November: ‘I would not survive six months in America before being assassinated by the comte d’Artois’s contract killers. In America I would be either assassinated or forgotten. I’m better off in St Helena.’30 Napoleon had lost his energy, the old fighting spirit had gone. Nearly all his companions had left, one way or another—Las Cases, Cipriani, Madame de Montholon, O’Meara, the Balcombes, Le Page the chef and Santini. Apart from a few servants, only his faithful remained: Marchand, Montholon and General and Madame Bertrand.
He had made his last visit outside the boundary of Longwood, his last anywhere. Sir William Doveton, a member of the governing council, had extended an invitation and made it known to Lowe that General Bonaparte was welcome to call at his home, ‘Mt Pleasant’ at Sandy Bay, if he wished.31 On 4 October, Napoleon paid a surprise visit with Bertrand and Montholon, suffering to be followed by British officers. They brought a picnic with them and proposed having it on the lawn, with its spectacular view of the ridge and the volcanic pinnacles of Lot, his Wife and Daughters. Sir William and his daughter-in-law joined them for cold pie, potted meat, cold turkey, curried fowl, ham, ‘coffee, dates, almonds, oranges and a very fine salad’. They drank champagne and Doveton’s homemade liqueur, orange shrub. Napoleon asked his host if he ever got drunk and seemed disappointed with the response that he occasionally liked ‘a glass of wine’.
Reporting on the meeting to the governor, Sir William said that he thought General Bonaparte seemed in good health and ‘looked as fat and as round as a China pig’.32 Napoleon was in fact in appalling health, with constant and acute pains in the stomach and frequent vomiting. He found some relief by taking saltwater baths, and his Italian physician, Dr Antommarchi, was in attendance.33 In late November, Lowe had an unexpected sighting of ‘General Bonaparte’, who was riding in his phaeton with Count de Montholon, and reported to Bathurst: ‘He appeared much paler than when I had last seen him, but not fallen away.’34
His lordship admitted to some concern: ‘As the General obstinately persists in refusing the admittance of an English physician, it is very difficult to form a right judgment of the reports which you receive, since they come almost exclusively from persons whom you know to have every disposition to deceive you . . . Still, however, there are many circumstances which now tend to confirm the reports which you have transmitted—not to the extent of apprehending immediate danger, but to the belief of his health really beginning to decline.’ He requested that Bonaparte be told that ‘we are concerned at accounts of his declining health—they have not been received with indifference’.35
On 1 April 1821, the new Italian physician, Dr Antommarchi, asked the English Dr Arnott to see his patient. Arnott reported: ‘I went with him & was walked into a dark room, where General Bonaparte was abed. The room was so dark that I could not see him, but I felt him, or someone there. I examined his pulse & state of skin. I perceived there was considerable debility, but nothing that indicated immediate danger . . .’36 Lowe wrote to Bathurst that he tended to agree with Arnott that much of the prisoner’s illness seemed to be play-acting: ‘Notwithstanding all that Dr Arnott has said to me respecting General Bonaparte’s state being Hypochondria, I have thus refrained from asking anything in the form of a regular Bulletin from him . . .’37
This report was sent just a fortnight before Napoleon’s death.
The patient himself was in the process of dictating his lengthy last will and testament to Count de Montholon. He left 97 legacies, and even remembered the men who had laboured with him in Longwood’s garden: ‘see that those poor Chinese get something’. He especially asked that 10,000 francs should go to Subaltern Officer Cantillon, who had been convicted of attempting to assassinate the Duke of Wellington: ‘Cantillon had as much right to assassinate that oligarch as the latter had to send me to perish upon the rock of St Helena.’
He wrote ‘I have always had reason to be pleased with my dearest wife, Maria Louisa. I retain for her, to my last moment, the most tender sentiments—I beseech her to watch, in order to preserve, my son from the snares which yet environ his infancy.’
His most personal possessions and fondest messages were for his son: ‘I recommend to my son never to forget that he was born a French prince, and never to allow himself to become an instrument in the hands of the triumvirs who oppress the nations of Europe: he ought never to fight against France, or to injure her in any manner; he ought to adopt my motto: “Everything for the French people”.’38
On 5 May, Napoleon breathed his last, surrounded by his remaining loyal companions. Madame Bertrand, for so long the most reluctant of the little company, had sat through long nights with him and was with him at the end. The following day, Lowe wrote to Bathurst: ‘It falls to my duty to inform your Lordship that Napoleon Bonaparte expired at about ten minutes before six o’clock in the evening of the 5th May 1821 . . .’39
When, some weeks later, reports of the death reached an influential gathering in Paris, one of those present exclaimed: ‘Napoleon dead! What an event!’
‘It is not an event anymore,’ murmured the cynical diplomat Talleyrand. ‘It is only an item of news.’40
At about the same time, a courtier brought the information to King George IV: ‘It is my duty to inform your Majesty that your greatest enemy is dead.’
‘Is she, by God!’ exclaimed the King.41