Balcombe’s death was a catastrophe in every imaginable way for his family. He had died bankrupt, owing many creditors. Three weeks after his death, a huge auction was held at his O’Connell Street house, attended by a crowd of sightseers as well as bidders. Part of the drawcard was Napoleon Bonaparte: buyers thought there was a chance to own a chair upon which the great warmonger might have sat (although the Balcombes had in fact brought no furniture from St Helena) or put their lips to a cup from which he had drunk.
At the auction’s conclusion, the accoutrements of the Balcombes’ comfortable, elegant lives had been dismantled. But that was not all. Even the remaining lease of their house was up for sale. Then it was over and the waiting horse-drawn carts took away the family’s worldly possessions. Jane, Betsy and her daughter were left to stare at each other in a daze in empty rooms that were no longer theirs to occupy.
As the eldest son and heir (to a lot of debt), William took charge of the family’s affairs. Having just turned 21, he was able to undertake legal responsibilities, and would have been closely involved with his father’s solicitor in meeting obligations to redeem debts now threatening the family’s future. He might well have possessed the necessary business skills. Today it seems astonishing that from the age of sixteen he had been in the bush by himself, managing two large farms, overseeing the work and welfare of a dozen or so convict labourers. However, it was simply the case that in the nineteenth century the adult world began much earlier: a boy of twelve could be transported or hanged for theft.
His brother Thomas had gained some farming experience from his job as a superintendent with the Australian Agricultural Company at Port Stephens. Drought had impacted on the massive pastoral company, which could explain why Thomas was released and in 1829 began work in Sydney as a clerk at the Commissariat. The previous year, the youngest brother, Alexander, had been dismissed from there for ‘negligence’,1 but he was now working as a clerk in the Office of the Chief Justice, probably out of Forbes’s kindness. All the children except William had been living in the O’Connell Street house, and all would now have to move. It is understandable that after their father’s death and given the penury of their womenfolk, the sons were emotionally disturbed at this time.
It certainly appears that Balcombe had intended to set up his sons as pastoral landholders. His initial request to the governor in 1824 for a 2000-acre grant was meant for himself, Thomas and Alexander. Because William junior was sixteen in 1824, he had commenced management of his father’s Bungonia property after tenure was granted. Balcombe’s purchase in 1825 of 4000 acres at Molonglo was undoubtedly made with Thomas and Alexander in mind as well, once they were old enough to join William in learning to farm the estates. Balcombe’s additional purchase of 560 acres at Bungonia was another useful increment of the better quality land across Yarralaw Creek from his own holding. In his own small way, Balcombe can be credited as one of the early pioneer pastoralists of New South Wales. His endeavours in managing the 6500 acres under his control could have led to great prosperity for the family, but for the terrible drought years of 1827 to 1829.
Balcombe’s Bungonia and Molonglo properties were advertised for auction on 13 June, to be sold ‘for the benefit of those who have claims on the estates’. However, insufficient money resulted from the land and stock auction to pay off all the creditors. So Mrs Balcombe petitioned the governor for a pension. On 28 July, the executive council considered her petition and agreed to write to London ‘in consideration of the state of utter destitution of herself and family, that she be allowed a quarterly allowance of thirty pounds’.
Jane Balcombe, Betsy and her daughter then moved out of town. They possibly went to young William’s land in Bungonia, where he had a simple dwelling, or else to the home of their kind neighbours the Reids, who may have insisted they stay with them.
However, good news was on its way. Some months before her father’s final illness, Betsy had written to Admiral Sir George Cockburn, by then First Naval Lord in the Wellington ministry, hoping that he could help with a land grant. She wrote: ‘I have had stock left me by a friend who died lately, and, not having any land of my own, my father at present takes care of my stock for me; if I was fortunate enough to procure a grant of land I should wish it to be near my father’s in the County of Argyll.’2 (The ‘friend’ may have been her father, giving her stock before his creditors closed in.) When Cockburn received Betsy’s request he promptly wrote to Viscount Goderich, then Secretary of State, saying that it would be a special favour to him to accede to the request. The response came from the new minister, Sir George Murray, urging approval to Darling, who subsequently informed Betsy that he was able to grant her 1280 acres in the Argyle district near Bungonia.3 Betsy was delighted, but anxious not to have the land registered in her own name, for fear that Edward Abell might return to the colony to make a legal claim on it. It was agreed that it would be registered in the name of a trustee, Attorney-General Alexander Baxter.
But good news was followed by yet another blow. In February 1830, Jane Balcombe was sent news that her petition for a pension had been rejected in London.
In the Argyle district that year, bushrangers were menacing farms and travellers on the road. It may have been for this reason that Betsy, her mother and daughter moved closer to town. They settled into one of the church cottages at Glebe Farm, about three miles out of town on the main road to Liverpool. Soon after they were there, they experienced the robbery they had feared in the country. In late March 1830, according to reports, three ‘ruffians’ made an attack ‘on the dwelling of Mrs. Balcombe’: ‘They did not ill-use Mrs. Balcombe. Mrs. Abell was absent.’4
In Sydney, the middle Balcombe son, Thomas, had applied to become a draftsman in the surveyor general’s department. With his artistic talent, the appointment turned out to be a boon for him. Work as a draftsman was akin to attending an art school, with the demands on his nascent drawing abilities to provide sketches and maps of topographical features, under the tutelage of competent draftsmen who were often also artists. Robert Hoddle, with whom Thomas worked on surveying trips beyond the colony’s boundaries, was one such accomplished mentor.
Alexander was not doing so well. In early 1831, he left the chief justice’s office, deciding that he did not care for clerical work. He went to live with his brother William at Molonglo Plains.
William had obviously learned some lessons about astute dealing from his father. Not only had he secured a grant for himself of 1280 acres at Molonglo, but somehow the 4000-acre property that had been his father’s and some of Balcombe’s stock became his also. Exactly how this was accomplished is unclear—but it may simply have been part of William’s inheritance once his father’s equity in it was paid to the government, leaving the heavily mortgaged farm to himself. He sent a few of his assigned convicts to mind his sister’s sheep and cattle, given to her by her mysterious ‘friend’, on her grant of 1280 acres in Bungonia.
Betsy was uncomfortable with the fact that Attorney-General Baxter was the trustee for her land, for she disliked him and gathered that the feeling was reciprocal. Now that she was living in Sydney again, she sometimes saw his wife Maria, who had been beautiful at first, but had become drawn and haggard. One day when they met, Maria tried to hide her face with a veil. Betsy was shocked when her friend confessed, weeping, that her husband had knocked out her teeth. He was often drunk and angry, and would then become violent. Betsy insisted that she make an official report. The two women went to the office of the lawyer Roger Therry, a big-hearted man and a social reformer. There Maria made a formal deposition about the brutality of her husband, and went to stay with Betsy and her mother. Therry presented the deposition to Chief Justice Forbes, who requested that police chief Rossi lay charges against the attorney-general.
Baxter went berserk. He raged that his wife was a liar, and wrote in a letter to the Colonial Office that Maria ‘had the assistance of a number of demi-monde Ladies—among the most remarkable of whom for everything connected with vice and blackguardism is the Daughter of the late Colonial Treasurer, Mrs Abell, formerly of St Helena celebrity’.5 Betsy had become his bitter enemy and he would stir up scandal about her if he could.
Fortunately, Darling considered Baxter incompetent and a drunk, and wrote an official despatch stating that Mr Baxter’s ‘disreputable habits’ had become ‘notorious . . . his Conduct has been disgraceful in the extreme, having been almost constantly in a state of inebriety’.6 Baxter was asked to resign and Colonial Secretary Macleay spelled out some of the reasons: ‘His Excellency laments that your treatment of your Wife, as stated in a deposition of which the enclosed is a copy made by her before two Magistrates on the 17th of last month, and the general notoriety of your irregular and disreputable habits more especially of late, together with the fact of your having been declared Insolvent’ rendered it highly inappropriate that Baxter should continue in his important office.7
Betsy decided that if she and her mother were not to live as paupers, they must travel to England, to ask influential friends to help plead their case. It was a rather desperate and expensive journey. The Nancy departed Sydney on 13 February 1831. The women were returning to a Europe they had not seen for more than seven years and that would be all new to eight-year-old Bessie.
In July of the previous year there had been a revolution in Paris against Charles X. It had been brutally crushed, and a new king, Louis Philippe, from the house of Orléans, had been installed on the French throne. However, the seemingly indestructible Letizia Buonaparte, aged 80, never flagged in her ambitions for her family. She was convinced her grandson in Vienna would inevitably become Emperor Napoleon II.
Meanwhile, reports of Darling’s unpopularity continued to reach London, and the Whigs warned that there would be more ‘serious disturbances’ in the colony ‘if the tyranny of General Darling is allowed any longer to continue’. Secretary of State Goderich wrote a despatch in March 1831 which reached Sydney in July. Darling was shattered by the totally ‘unexpected communication’ that his appointment at the colony of New South Wales was terminated.8
On 9 December there was a large headline in the Australian: ‘REPORTED LOSS OF THE NANCY’. A French ship had found the vessel stricken off the West African coast, ‘waterlogged and deserted’. The Gazette also had the report.9
This must have been the most terrifying time in the lives of Jane Balcombe, Betsy and her daughter. They would have been far from shore, for ships to England never hugged the African coast, and in grave danger of drowning. The passengers had abandoned the ship in lifeboats and, after what must have been days in the baking sun, perhaps with little food and water, had all come to shore somewhere on the barren south-western coast of Africa (today’s Namibia). It seems they waited for up to two weeks for the Nancy to be towed and repaired, while accepting the hospitality of the local people.
When the ship’s captain was confident of taking the Nancy to sea again they set sail, only to make an unexpected call at St Helena, presumably for resupplies of food and water and to ascertain that the repairs were holding. The emotions of Betsy and her mother must have been in turmoil to see their beloved home The Briars. The upper floor now extended right across the building with at least six bedrooms. The house was surrounded by mulberry trees, ripe with red berries. They learned that the East India Company had purchased the property for £6000 from the merchant Solomon in August 1827, to establish a mulberry plantation for feeding silkworms.10 The production of silk was to be St Helena’s new industry, and like most other ventures it was doomed to failure.
They must have visited Napoleon’s tomb, the willows shading it almost denuded by tourists breaking off souvenirs. But what would have come as the greatest shock was to ascend the mountain (perhaps even taken by the governor in his carriage) to see Longwood. It was a wreck, having reverted to being a barn and granary. There was a threshing machine in the drawing room where Napoleon had died, his billiard room was filled with potatoes and straw and his bathroom was a stable.11
Bessie, aged eight, had heard stories about St Helena and Napoleon as long as she could remember and now vivid images were engraved on her mind. Later, as a young woman, she would complete a few sketches for her mother’s Recollections. In the appendix to the third edition, published after her mother’s death, she wrote: ‘I will only remember that my family ever loved the Buonaparte dynasty, that the first Napoleon loved us, and that we loved and love his nephew.’12
Jane, Betsy and her daughter arrived in London towards the end of August 1831, two or three weeks later than the Nancy had been due. The women had to find influential support for Jane’s petition for a pension. Their main hope was Balcombe’s old patron and the family’s loyal friend, Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt. But they were devastated to discover that he had resigned on 7 August as Black Rod in the House of Lords, because of his poor health and huge debts: the failed Plymouth and Dartmoor Railroad had bankrupted him. They learned that he had already left the country; he had retired to a small town in northern France—to Saint-Omer, no less. The women had no family to accommodate them in London, so they booked into a hotel in St James to keep up appearances. A petition was sent to the Colonial Office in Jane Balcombe’s name. Because of her mother’s ill health after the appalling voyage, it is likely that Betsy assisted with the poignant document: ‘The humble Petition of Jane Balcombe, Widow of the late William Balcombe, Colonial Treasurer of New South Wales’, which concluded that she and her family were ‘in a state of absolute destitution and your said Petitioner being far advanced in life and in infirm health, she therefore must humbly pray . . . that your Lordship will take her case into your consideration’.13
Betsy made a personal visit to the Colonial Office and was politely rebuffed by Under-Secretary Hay. She then wrote to an MP, Lord Marcus Hill (whom she had perhaps met through Tyrwhitt), ‘imploring Your Lordship’s favourable consideration to my poor Mother’s petition. Indeed did your Lordship only know how utterly destitute my Father’s death has left my Mother you would I am sure take her case into your benevolent interest . . . Earnestly my Lord I entreat and supplicate you not to decide unfavourably upon her petition for her case is one of utter destitution.’14
The women waited for a reply; they had no option other than to wait, lacking funds to return to Sydney. They probably barely had funds to survive, for it took almost a year for the wheels of the great bureaucracy to turn and issue a result.
Meanwhile, Betsy was saddened to read in the newspapers of the sudden death, on 22 July 1832, of Napoleon’s only child, the handsome young Duke of Reichstadt, at the age of 26. He had ‘caught a chill’, which became pneumonia.
By coincidence, two days before his death, a certain ‘Comte de Survilliers’ sailed from Philadelphia in the United States, bound for London. He was Joseph Bonaparte, elder brother of the former emperor. Joseph had lived for many years in America as the rich Comte de Survilliers. But his cover was not very successful: the authorities there and in Britain, and the newspapers too, knew perfectly well who he was—the former puppet king of Spain during his brother’s empire, who had stolen the Spanish crown jewels as he fled. In London he learned of the death of his nephew, whose rights he had come to defend.
Joseph was still banished from France by order of King Louis Philippe and so he decided to stay in London for a time. His new plan, now that Napoleon’s son was dead, was to summon his three remaining brothers and his nephew Louis Napoleon to London, ‘for a conference to determine the future course of the Bonaparte dynasty’.15 Joseph’s presence in London was mentioned in the newspapers and Betsy managed to contact him, probably expressing her condolences for the death of his nephew. Once Joseph saw the name ‘Betsy Balcombe’ he knew exactly who she was.
Bessie (writing later as Mrs Jane Elizabeth Johnstone) recalled: ‘How well I remember going with her to see Joseph Buonaparte, then in England after a sojourn in America.’ She enjoyed hearing him praise her mother’s ‘really exquisite and remarkable beauty’. He sat Bessie on his knee and she was overwhelmed to be in the lap of royalty, as the former king of Spain continued to question Betsy about his late brother’s life on St Helena. As they bade Joseph farewell, he took a cameo ring from his finger and gave it to Betsy; it was of a robed woman leaning against an urn. It looked classical Grecian, but he said it had been found by a soldier in a pyramid during the Egyptian campaign and had once been worn by Napoleon. He was happy to give it to her, ‘whose family possessed so strong a claim upon the Buonaparte family’.16
A decision had been made at the Colonial Office. On 1 May 1833, Viscount Goderich sent a despatch to the new governor of New South Wales, Richard Bourke: ‘Having lately had under my consideration the peculiar circumstances connected with the late Mr. Balcombe, whose appointment to the situation of Colonial Treasurer at New South Wales resulted from claims which he had upon this Department in consequence of certain transactions which occurred at St Helena during the period of Napoleon Buonaparte’s detention there.’
The mysterious and perhaps deliberately obfuscating wording could refer to confidential information that Balcombe may have offered Lord Bathurst, via Tyrwhitt, at least during the early period of Napoleon’s captivity. Goderich advised that a gratuity of £250 should be granted by Treasury, ‘to enable her to return with her family to New South Wales, where two of her sons appear to be at present residing, and with whom she is desirous of passing the remainder of her days’. An attached Memorandum from Under-Secretary Hay suggested a clerk position might be found for her son Alexander: ‘If the above can be done for Mrs Balcombe, she will quit England with her Daughter Mrs Abel for ever, not only perfectly satisfied but full of gratitude to Lord Goderich and the Government.’17
That was unlikely to be the case. There was no mention of a land grant or a pension for the widow. So that was that. The women had come halfway around the world and endured a near-drowning to gain little more than the ‘privilege’ of having their passages reimbursed.
Betsy, her mother and ten-year-old Bessie boarded the small 352-ton Ellen, which sailed on 13 October 1832.18
Edward John Eyre, a young gentleman aged seventeen, was on board, coming to Sydney as an unassisted immigrant. He would later become famous for his explorations across vast tracts of the Australian continent. He was soon enchanted with the 30-year-old Mrs Abell. Eyre’s Autobiographical Narrative was edited and annotated by Jill Waterhouse, who noted: ‘On the voyage he seems to have cherished a youthful ardour for Mrs Lucia Elizabeth Abell, if the space he devotes to her in comparison with that given to any other lady is to be taken as proof.’19
Eyre described Betsy as being ‘in the prime of life, regular and pretty in features, commanding in person, a good figure, stylish in her dress and having a strange mixture of high polish and dash in her manner which was very captivating. She had beautiful hair—a rich nut-brown, shot with gold, in unusual profusion and of an extraordinary length. She had travelled a good deal, seen much of the world, was a linguist and sang ballad music with great sweetness and pathos. In her teens I can well imagine she must have been a lovely girl, for she was still most attractive and had a singular power of fascinating all those who came within her influence. Altogether she was likely to prove a lively, cheerful and pleasant compagnon du voyage—if she did not set us all by the ears in our rivalry to obtain her notice and patronage, for she was full of fun and very fond of mischief.’20
Eyre encouraged Betsy to tell him her memories of Napoleon, and offered to write them down as her ‘amanuensis’. He was astonished by the lines of poetry she could quote, and very rarely misquoted, ‘from Byron, Milton, Cowper and Shakespeare, chosen by Mrs Abell to embellish her chapters’. It would seem that she started composing her Recollections during that five-month voyage, although it took her ten more years to complete them. The Ellen put into port at Hobart on 20 March 1833. Eyre noted that ‘Mrs Abell, who seemed to know everybody . . . was made much of during her stay’—so much so, indeed, that she was dancing at a ball on the evening the ship was ready to depart and ‘was very nearly losing her passage, having only returned on board just before we got under weigh’.21 The Ellen arrived in Sydney Cove on 28 March, and it would seem young Edward Eyre was sorry to be losing Betsy Abell’s company.
For a time after their return, Jane, Betsy and Bessie lived with William at his property on the Molonglo Plains. Alexander was still staying with William; he had taken to country life and become adept at farming, supervising some twenty men working on the property.22 But the remote Molonglo Plains district, with its harsh winters, was not Alexander’s kind of country and he suspected that he would do better one day, perhaps when he was married. On his trips into Sydney he always called by Bungonia to visit Inverary Park. He was forming a special friendship with Dr Reid’s daughter Emma.
At the end of May, Betsy drove their two-horse gig in to Sydney with her mother. They missed the society of their friends. It was a mad, almost impossible journey of at least seven days, stopping at friendly farms or inns. Near Liverpool, their way was blocked by two men who had ‘a brace of pistols’ pointed straight at them. They wore black masks entirely covering their faces except for holes for their eyes. One man held their horses while the other took their purses, containing seven pounds in cash, and the rings on their fingers.23 While according to newspaper reports Mrs Balcombe and Mrs Abell were uninjured, the terror of this encounter was just about the end for them in New South Wales.
In late July, the mail brought distressing news from England. Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt had died earlier that year, on 24 February. Jane grieved for the man who had been so very good to them. William grieved too. He had grown up in an English boarding school at Plymouth, under the care of Sir Thomas, virtually his grandfather. William had had a different experience of the world to the rest of the family. He had been born on St Helena and remembered with vague affection his early childhood at The Briars, but that was in the past. The rest of the family talked endlessly about Napoleon Bonaparte, but he had never met him.
William was a loner who never married. He emerges from the relatively few records as a classic bushman, possessing all the toughness and endurance that characterised early Australian settlers. He was a genuine pioneer, not only on the frontier world of the Molonglo Plains, but also later in the even more remote and wild country of Krawarree, south of the town of Braidwood.
A hard basic life seemed to suit William, but it did not remotely appeal to his mother and sister. It has been observed of the colonial period in Australia: ‘The English women came and stayed because they had to. Their children were here and stayed because they wanted to.’24
With no means of survival, except as dependants, life was humiliating for Mrs Balcombe and Betsy. In the patriarchal society that was colonial New South Wales, there was no place for gentlewomen without a protector. To stay in the colony was to drop out of the society of the people they knew, for they had lost their status with Balcombe’s bankruptcy and death. Young Bessie would grow up unschooled and would never meet a presentable suitor. It was an unthinkable future for them.