Recollections of Napoleon at St. Helena/Chapter 16
CHAPTER XVI.
ARRIVAL OF "THE CONQUEROR."—NAPOLEON'S ABUSE OF THE ISLAND.—NAUSEOUS BON-BONS PRESENTED BY MY BROTHER TO THE EMPEROR, ETC., ETC.—HIS FIRST SERIOUS ILLNESS AT ST. HELENA.
I recollect being at Longwood one beautiful day; the atmosphere had that peculiar lightness and brilliancy which in a great measure constituted the charm of the climate of St. Helenn. The sea lay glistening in the sun like a sheet of quicksilver, the little merry waves bursting in sparkling foam at the foot of the stupendous rocks, and the exquisite soft verdure immediately surrounding Longwood formed a very pleasing contrast to the stern features of the rest of the island. It was one of those days in which the past and the future are alike disregarded; anxious thought is suspended for a moment, and the present alone is felt and enjoyed. I remember bounding up to St. Dennis and asking for Napoleon; my joyousness was somewhat damped by the gravity with which he replied, that the emperor was watching the approach of the "Conqueror," then coming in, bearing the flag of Admiral Pamplin. "You will find him," he said, "near Madame Bertrand's, but he is in no mood for badinage to-day, Mademoiselle." Notwithstanding this check, I proceeded towards the cottage, and in a moment the whole tone of my mind was changed from gaiety to sadness. Young as I was, I could not help being strongly impressed by the intense melancholy of his expression; "the ashes of a thousand thoughts were on his brow;" he was standing with General Bertrand, his eyes bent sadly on the 74, which was yet but a speck in the line of the horizon. The magnificent ship soon grew upon our sight, as, beating up to windward, silently yet proudly she pursued her brave career. "Sailing amid the loneliness, like a thing endowed with heart and mind," she seemed the very impersonation of majesty! Byron thought the ocean, with a single vessel moving over it, the most poetical object in nature; perhaps its utter loneliness is the cause. The thought has since occurred to me, that Napoleon might then have gazed upon that ship as typical of his own fortunes, so lordly, yet mastered, and impelled by some unseen resistless power towards that wild shore destined to be the tomb of all his daring hopes and mad ambition. Such spirits are undoubtedly sent into the world by an omniscient Providence for a beneficent and merciful purpose; their fiery course is run; they would still urge on, but their headlong rashness may be made the instrument of their ruin, and the stern hand of death arrest them before they have tasted of that earthly glory for which they toiled; their deeds, however, still live, and become often benefits to mankind, though springing from an evil source.
The emperor, after a long silence, commented on the beautiful management of the vessel. "The English are kings upon the sea," he said, and then, smiling somewhat sarcastically, added, "I wonder what they think of our beautiful island; they cannot be much elated by the sight of my gigantic prison walls!" His natural prejudice against th island rendered him blind to the many beauties with which it abounded; he beheld all with a jaundiced eye: thus ever do our views of life take their colouring from our feelings and the nature of the circumstances in which we are placed. "Our eyes see all around in gloom with hues of their own, fresh borrowed from the heart." He would frequently rail at the island in no measured language; I always defended it in proportionate terms of praise. Sometimes he laughed at my impertinence, and at others he would pinch my ear, and ask me how I could possibly dare to have an opinion on the subject.
The emperor had that great charm in social life, of being amused and interested in matters of triffing import. It seems to me to be an attribute of his countrymen, from which, no doubt, they derive that vivacity and talent de société generally possessed by them, but which, from our inherent reserve and national shyness, would sit awkwardly on us, English. It would be something like the statue of Hercules in the National Gallery stepping from his pedestal and taking Cerito's place in the "Pas de l'Ombre." Napoleon was very fond of extracting from me my little store of knowledge, acquired from, I fear, rather desultory reading. However, being fond of books, and having a retentive memory, I could apparently chain his interest for some hours. "Now, Mademoiselle Betsee," he would say, "I hope you have been goot child and learnt all your lesson;" which he said purposely to annoy me, as I was anxious to be thought full grown, and, like most young ladies of my age, scorned the idea of being called a child, deeming myself fully competent to embark upon the troublous sea of life, and to battle with its storms without the rudder of experience. He was much interested in a favourite study of mine, namely, the account of the discovery and colonization of St. Helena by the Portuguese, and he would listen attentively while I repeated it, for I had it almost by heart.
My young brother, Alexander, had a pet goat, of which he was very fond, and the animal used to draw him about in a little carriage. One day Napoleon had given him a little box, made by Piron, full of bon-bons: when my brother had eaten all his sugar-plums, and was grieving over his exhausted store, he unluckily chanced to espy a pill-box, which, with other medicines, had been inadvertently placed on a bench in the garden; he carefully put some of its contents into his bonbonnière, and gravely walking up to the emperor, presented it. Napoleon, always good-natured to the child, and supposing them to be sugar-plums, helped himself to one, and began eating it. I need not say how soon it was ejected, and what coughing and nausea ensued, when my little brother's mischievous trick was divulged, and it was found that pills of a very unpalatable nature had been offered to and swallowed by the emperor. The poor little fellow got soundly whipped by my father, to whom his naughty conduct had been made known by Las Cases, who witnessed the joke and inımediately reported it; he knew my father to be too severe a disciplinarian to over-look even a trifling fault.
My father had been suffering from a very violent attack of gout, which prevented his riding to Longwood, as was his daily habit. When he saw Napoleon after his recovery, the emperor began laughing at him, and told him, if he sat a shorter time after dinner, he would have fewer attacks of gout. He asked him what remedies he had resorted to to be cured. My father replied, he had taken "Eau medicinale," upon which Napoleon laughingly remarked, had he drank more pure water and less wine he might have dispensed with the eau medicinale. He told him he was too young to want physic, as remedies ought only to be resorted to by the old. In speaking of his own abstemious habits, he observed that he drank very little wine; however, the little he did drink was absolutely taken medicinally, and he always found himself better after it, feeling convinced that if he left it off, he should soon become ill. One of his principal specifics was a warm salt water bath. Mr. O'Meara told us that having recommended Napoleon a dose of medicine, soon after he came to St. Helena, he answered him by a slap in the face, and told him if he were not better on the morrow, he should have recourse to his own remedy—abstinence and a bath. He was very fond of asking anatomical questions, and often fancied he had disease of the heart, and made O'Meara count its pulsations. He constantly complained of illness from the exposed situation of Longwood, the wind continually beating in his face, or the sun scorching his brain; he used to observe, when at the Briars, that he never suffered any ailment, for there he had shady and sheltered walks. Certainly Longwood was very bleak, and scarcely any vegetables would grow upon it, except a kind of coarse cow-grass, which even horses refuse.
A long interval frequently elapsed between our visits to the emperor. A few months previously to our leaving St. Helena he had been very ill, and from Mr. O'Meara's account we feared he might never rally from the state of prostration of mind and body into which he had sunk. He was obstinate in refusing to take exercise, disliking the strict watch kept over him on the occasion of his walking abroad; and he declared he would rather die at once than use the only means recommended of alleviating his disorder. Mr. O'Meara entreated permission to call in a brother surgeon, that in the event of his complaint continuing obstinate, blame might not be attached to him for trusting solely to his own opinion. I recollect hearing Mr. O'Meara repeat the emperor's reply, which was to this effect; "that if all the physicians in the universe were collected, they would but repeat what you have already advised me—to take constant exercise on horseback. I am well aware of the truth of what you say, but were I to call in Mr. ———, it would be but like sending a physician to a starving man, instead of giving him a loaf of bread. I have no objection to your making known to him my state of health, if it be any satisfaction to you; but I know that he will say—exercise. As long as this strict surveillance is enforced I will never stir out."
It was in vain, Dr. O'Meara again and again urged the subject, his invariable reply was, "Would you have me render myself liable to be stopped and insulted by the sentries surrounding my house, as Madame Bertrand was some days ago?" It would have made a fine caricature in the London print shops,—Napoleon Bonaparte stopped at the gate by a sentinel charging him with fixed bayonet. How the Londoners would have laughed! The only one of his suite who appeared careless of these restrictions was General Gourgaud; he had been stopped, Napoleon observed, fifty times. Once, when at the Briars, he said, he had been treated rather unceremoniously by a sentry, and complaints being made to the Admiral, that officer was really displeased about it, and took every precaution to prevent a recurrence of such annoyance.
When we saw Napoleon after this illness, the havoc and change it had made in his appearance was sad to look upon. IIis face was literally the colour of yellow wax, and his checks had fallen in pouches on either side his face. His ancles were so swollen that the flesh literally hung over his shoes; he was so weak, that without resting one hand on a table near him, and the other on the shoulder of an attendant, he could not have stood. I was so grieved at seeing him in such a pitiable state, that my eyes overflowed with tears, and I could with difficulty forbear sobbing aloud. He saw how shocked we were, and tried to make light of it, saying, he was sure the good O'Meara would soon cure him; but my mother observed, when we had left, that death was stamped on every feature. He, however, rallied from this attack, to pass nearly three more years in hopeless misery; for it became more evident to him that the anticipation in which he indulged (on first coming to St. Helena) of quitting the island, became fainter as health declined, and time wore on.
The emperor expressed much curiosity to be introduced to a Mr. Manning who had arrived at St. Helena on his voyage to England from China, which country he had visited after exploring the unknown, and at that time, untravelled, kingdom of Thibet. Napoleon said he had a great curiosity to hear something relating to their mode of worshipping the Grand Lama, as he was induced to believe most of the accounts he had read and heard of it were fabulous. I described the impression Mr. Manning had made on me by his imposing appearance; his dress was like that of a Mandarin, and he wore a long black beard which reached to his waist. He had, during the war, been a prisoner in France, and had been treated with great clemency by Napoleon; thus was each party anxious to see the other. Mr. Manning had brought many very curious presents for Napoleon, which he had collected in his travels. He obtained a pass to see the emperor; he said he had been presented to the Lama, who was a very intelligent boy of seven years old; that he had gone through the same forms as the other worshippers who were admitted to the celestial presence. Napoleon asked him if he were not afraid of being seized as a spy. The traveller did not seem pleased that the emperor should have thought that his appearance could have conveyed such an impression; but he laughingly pointed to his beard and dress, and seemed much diverted with his interview. He could not think how they, jealous as they were in their religious rites, should have admitted an unbeliever into their sacred temple, and have permitted him to approach the Lama. Mr. Manning said he honoured and respected all religions, as did Napoleon.
The emperor wished to know if he had passed for an Englishman, as the shape of his nose was too good for a Tartar. Mr. Manning replied, that he had been taken for a Hindoo, which, from the regularity of his features and fine eyes, might easily have been the case. Napoleon told him that travellers were privileged to tell marvellous stories, and he hoped he was not doing so in relating the wonders of Thibet. He wanted to know if it were true that the revenues of the Grand Lama were derived from the gifts of the multitudes that daily flocked from all parts to worship at his shrine, as well as from priestly extortion. Manning told the emperor it was quite true, and complimented him upon being as well informed as the traveller himself. The Lama was subject to the Chinese; he never married, neither did his priest; the body into which, according to their belief, the spirit passed, was found out by the priests from certain signs. Napoleon's conference with the traveller lasted some time; he asked a thousand questions respecting the Chinese, their language, customs, &c. When the interview was concluded, he observed it had given him greater pleasure than he had experienced for many long months.