Recollections of Napoleon at St. Helena/Chapter 13
CHAPTER XIII.
ANECDOTE OF LIEUT. C———.—JOURNEY UP PEAK HILL.—NAPOLEON UPON ELEMENTARY CHEMISTRY.—CAPT. WALLIS.—THE EMPEROR'S NEW YEAR'S GIFT.—NAPOLEON'S SOLICITUDE ABOUT CAPT. MEYNELL'S HEALTH.
Napoleon, was very anxious about hearing any gossip relative to picnics, balls, or parties, that took place at St. Helena, and always made me recount to him what we did, who we met, and who were my partners. He once asked me who danced the best at the governor's balls; and on my replying Mrs. Wilks, the governor's lady, he was anxious to know what sort of dances were the fashion there. I described our quadrilles and country dances, which had been introduced by a Mr. C———, the greatest beau that over came to St. Helena. This youth was such an exquisite, that he would sit with his feet elevated considerably above his head for an hour before dressing for dinner, that he might squeeze them the more readily into tight shoes; he wore his epaulette nearly down to his elbow; and his sword belt was embroidered with golden oak leaves. The same kind of embroidery confined his silk stocking round each knee, where it resembled the order of the garter. His disgust was very great at finding the St. Helena ladies understand nothing but kitchen dances, and reels; and he immediately began to drill, and, after much toil, succeeded in instructing them in the mysteries of the quadrille figures. Once, whilst he was figuring away in the capacity of dancing master, my mother very unceremoniously put her foot on his heel, because he stood bending before her, and nearly extinguishing her eye with the swallow tails of his uniform coat. The perplexity this occasioned him was considerable, from the difficulty he had in thrusting his foot again into its tiny case.
Napoleon was so amused with our description of young C———, that he begged us to bring him to Longwood, if he could get a pass; one was accordingly procured; and as the emperor's eye rested on him, putting on a most comical look, he told him that he had heard from Miss Betsee that he was a great dandy,—which was any thing but pleasing intelligence to the young hero, who began to think he was indebted for the honour of his interview with the great man to the circumstance of his being considered a sort of tom-fool. Napoleon, suiting his conversation (which, as I have before said, he always did) to his company, began admiring the cut of his coat, and said, "You are more fortunate than myself, for I am obliged to wear my coat turned;" this had really been the case, as no cloth could be procured on the island of the shade of green worn by Napoleon and his suite. Young C———'s interview with the great man, however, ended very satisfactorily to both; for, although a little too conceited, he was very gentlemanly, spoke French fluently, and left a pleasing impression on the exile of Longwood.
One morning, my father told me he was going to Longwood, and had been requested by the emperor to bring myself and sister to see him, as he had something curious to show us. We were only too happy to obey his wishes; and the next day saw us at Longwood. He reproached us for having so long neglected to pay him a visit, and wished to know why we had absented ourselves so much from him: on my telling him, I had but just recovered from a slight attack of coup de soleil, he was quite cheering in his sympathy. I told him it had been occasioned by my walking with Captain Mackey and my sister to call on Mrs. Wilks, and that our way led over the high mountain at the back of the Briars, called Peak Hill. It was certainly a tremendous undertaking for one so young to attempt. The mountain is not accessible to four-footed animals, and is 2000 feet in height, and nearly perpendicular. Imagine, therefore, our toiling to its summit, and de-scending to the deep valley beneath, crossing Francis Plain, and ascending two mountain ridges, before terminating our expedition! We arrived at Plantation House worn and weary; but when once there, the kindness of the lady governess, and the care and attention of her amiable and lovely daughter, soon made us forget our fatigues; and at noon of that same day we started for Sir William D———'s lovely valley of "Fairy Land." I described all our adventure, and the kind-ness we had received from Mrs. Wilks at Plantation House, and from Miss D——— at Fairy Land. A few days after Napoleon invited the former lady, with her husband and daughter, to Longwood, but from political reasons the honour of the interview was declined. The wonderful exhibition we were invited to see, was the process of turning water into ice by one of Leslie's machines, sent out to Napoleon for that purpose; he explained the process to us, and tried to enlighten me as to the principle upon which air-pumps were formed; he advised me, moreover, to get a book upon elementary chemistry, for my amusement and improvement; and finished, as usual, by turning to my father, recommending him to enforce a lesson every day, and directing the good O'Meara, as he called his doctor, to be my examiner. After making a cup of ice, he insisted upon my putting a large piece into my mouth, and laughed to see the contortions it induced from the excessive cold. It was the first ice that had ever been seen at St. Helena; and a young island lady, Miss De F———, who was with us, would not believe that the solid mass in her hand was really frozen water, until it melted and streamed down her fingers. I recollect ending the morning's diversions by cutting from Napoleon's coat an embroidered bugle, and running away with it as a trophy. I now regret that I did not keep it; but, like most other relics and valuable mementos, I gave it away—it was attached to the coat he wore at Waterloo.
The emperor asked me one day, whether I was acquainted with Captain Wallis, who commanded the "Podargus;" and on my replying in the affirmative, he said, somewhat abruptly, "What does he think of me?" It so happened, that, in the case of this officer, the prejudice against Napoleon (and indeed against every thing French, at that time common to all Englishmen) was sharpened, upon the whetstone of painful experience, into the acuteness of rancour and bitter hatred; perhaps the word prejudice is hardly a fit term to apply to that particular mania which then existed,—a feeling which, first instilled into our infant minds by our nurses, "grew with our growth, and strengthened with our strength," until it fully ripened into that settled jealousy, which was but too apparent in all the transactions which took place between the individual inhabitants of the hostile countries. It was, therefore, not without the assistance of all my small stock of girlish assurance that I ventured to answer, "Oh! he has the most abominable opinion of you in the world; he says that you shut him up for ten years in the Temple; and there is no end to the barbarities that he lays to your charge. He declared to us, that, on one occasion, they removed him from one cell to another, which had been just vacated by the corpse of a man who had shot himself through the head, and that he met the body on the way. Moreover, his gnolers had not the decency to wash away the dead man's brains, which had been scattered on the wall, but left then there for the special annoyance of the living occapant. Besides that, he accuses you of nearly starving him to such an extent did he suffer from want of food, that he and Captain Shaw, a fellow-sufferer, once tore a live duck to pieces, and devoured it like cannibals."
The emperor observed, that it was not to be wondered at that Captain Wallis was so inveterate against him, as he was the lieutenant who, together with Wright, had been convicted of landing spies and brigands in his territories, for which they were afterwards reported to have been murdered by his (the emperor's) orders. The conspiracy of Georges, Moreau and Pichegru, in which Captains Wright and Wallis were supposed to have been mixed up, has been so often described, and so ably discussed, that there are few who have taken an interest in the history of Napoleon, but must be well acquainted with all the circumstances connected with it. I remember being greatly interested with Wallis's narrative of his escape from prison, as it was told to us by him. Although years have passed since I heard it, still it is as freshly graven on my memory as when first my wondering ears listened to the exciting history. After ten long years of dreary captivity, urged by that powerful stimulus which hope builds upon despair, with the assistance of a rusty knife which he had contrived to conceal from his gaoler, he succeeded in moving one of the bars from his prison windows. The first great obstacle being removed, he found he had to overcome another, not less formidable. A hundred feet beneath the aperture which his patience and skill had succeeded in making large enough for his egress, flowed the still, dark waters of the Seine. As a drowning man catches at a straw, so did he seize upon whatever was likely to break his fall; and with a rope of no greater length and thickness than he was able to make out of his linen, he lowered himself as far as it would reach. The leap was fearful, but the very walls he touched gave him a convulsive shudder, when they brought to his mind the horrors of captivity and its concomitant evils, of which starvation was not the least. The splash of his fall into the water was loud enough to rouse the sentinels; he was senseless from its stunning effects for some seconds, and when he came to himself, struck out for the opposite bank. The bullets whizzed round him in all directions, but the darkness of the night was sufficient protection, and he gained the friendly shore in safety. By the aid of an accomplice, he obtained a pedlar's dress, in which, after numberless hair-breadth escapes, he reached the coast, and was taken on board an English frigate. He was afterwards appointed to the Podargus, and sent to cruise off St. Helena, he being, naturally enough, supposed to be the best guard to set over one, whom he hated as deeply as he did Napoleon.
We always made a point of riding to Longwood every New Year's day, to wish the emperor a happy new year, and we dined with him or Madame Bertrand, though more frequently with the former. I recollect one New Year's day I had been anticipating a present from the emperor all the morning, and as the day wore on, my hopes began to wax faint, and I was beginning to make up my mind to have nothing new and pretty to feast my eyes upon, when Napoleon himself waddled into Madame Bertrand's room, where my sister and I were seated, and perhaps rather enviously viewing some elegant souvenirs of which the emperor had made the countess a present that morning. In his hand were two beautiful Sévres cups, exquisitely painted, one representing himself in Egypt, in the dress of a Mussulman; upon the other was delineated an Egyptian woman drawing water. "Here, Mesdemoiselles Betsee and Jane, are two cups for you; accept them as a mark of the friendship I entertain for you both, and for your kindness to Madame Bertrand." Oh! how delighted I was with my beautiful gift; I would not trust it out of my hand, but rode with it wrapt in cotton all the way home, for fear of its being injured. It always brought a smile to Napoleon's countenance, whenever he gave pleasure to the young around him.
One day, before the emperor had left my father's, we were walking with him down the Pomegranate Walk which led to the garden, when suddenly the voices of strangers were heard, and he began running away as fast as he could towards the garden gate, but found it locked from within. The strangers steps approached nearer and nearer, and Napoleon had nothing left for it, but to jump over the garden fence, which, unfortunately, was defended on the top by the prickly pear, a plant covered with thorns. When he found himself on the top, there he stuck, the thorny bush preventing his extricating himself. At length, after a considerable struggle, torn clothes, and with his legs much scratched, the discomfited emperor descended on the garden side of the hedge, before the advancing company surprised him. The wounds he received that day were of no trifling nature, and it required a little of Dr. O'Meara's skill to extract the thorns which the prickly pears had deposited in his imperial person.
Napoleon always evinced great kindness and interest for those who were ill, and his sympathy was much excited in the case of Captain Meynell who had a very severe and dangerous illness during the time he was stationed at St. Helena. I recollect perfectly whilst he was ill, under my father's roof, that Napoleon's maître d'hôtel, Cipriani, came every day to inquire after him. When we saw the emperor, a few days after Captain Meynell left us, we told him that he had been moved to Plantation House, where he would have more room and better attention than at our cottage, and that he was so ill as to be obliged to be removed in his cot; he had a relapse, and his life was despaired of. The emperor begged, when next we saw Lady Lowe, we would send him word how the brave Captain was.