The friendship between that towering anti-hero of the nineteenth century – Napoleon Bonaparte – and an impertinent schoolgirl named Betsy Balcombe astonished the public then and continues to intrigue readers today. And for good reason – there was something about this pretty prankster that evoked surprisingly indulgent responses from a man who was otherwise notorious for his ruthless violence and wild mood swings.
This unlikely friendship began shortly after Napoleon was imprisoned on the rocky island of St Helena in 1815 and was initiated by Bonaparte, who insisted that he reside with Betsy’s family while his official accommodation was under repair. Soon after, Betsy’s father, an affable if somewhat gouty merchant, was appointed ‘provisioner’ for Napoleon and his entourage. It was a role that was to insinuate Betsy and her family within a sphere of influence that earned them many alliances and perhaps just as many enemies.
Anne Whitehead offers a new explanation for Napoleon’s interest in the Balcombes which she traces to a well-known rumour that Betsy’s father was the illegitimate brother of the Prince Regent. Such a connection, Whitehead argues, encouraged Napoleon to cultivate this association with the hope that it might result in his liberty. Balcombe certainly had friends in powerful places and for a while these protected him from the island’s governor, who Whitehead sketches as a petty tyrant intent upon Napoleon’s psychological ruin. Balcombe’s real or imagined lineage also helped to counter the colonial secretary’s ire after he was linked to several furtive enterprises, including what may have been a plot to liberate Napoleon.
However, this is not, Whitehead reminds us, simply another book about Napoleon. It is the story of the Balcombe family and their adolescent daughter whose playful antics brought respite to the world-weary emperor during the first years that he was, to paraphrase Napoleon himself, attached like Prometheus to the rock of St Helena. Whitehead follows the Balcombes to Georgian-era London after they were forced to leave St Helena, then to Restoration France where the family tried to conceal Betsy’s early pregnancy and her failed marriage to a Regency rake. From there, the Balcombes travelled to New South Wales where Betsy’s father was appointed colonial treasurer in 1824 and the family became friends with a group of wealthy free settlers known as ‘the Fashionables’. Finally, we witness ‘the interesting Mrs Abell’ as an enterprising single mother who not only negotiated the social nuances of Victorian London but also published a popular, if highly embellished memoir about her encounter with the one time ‘Emperor of the French’.
Whitehead has travelled widely and read deeply, deftly managing an abundance of primary sources including a swathe of official records and numerous diaries and letters written by Napoleon and his associates – many of which could only be read in French. She shows considerable skill in managing a cast of characters who were intent upon confuddling the authorities with their intrigues. She also does a fine job of demonstrating how the exalted cult of Napoleon existed in stark contrast to the conditions he experienced on St Helena, where rats were said to infest his bedroom, and both his mattress and his poultry were considered ‘impossibly thin’.
Whitehead also recounts her own adventures as an intrepid history detective who travelled to St Helena, Madras in India, Paris and Saint-Omer in France, as well as Scotland, Sussex and ‘bleak Dartmoor’. In St Helena, Whitehead found Napoleon’s grave empty and much of Betsy’s childhood home greatly changed or stiffly memorialised. Nonetheless, by tracing the towns and streets once inhabited by the Balcombes, the author provides us with a potent sense of the residue of the nineteenth-century British world and how it continues to exert a presence even now.
The English publication of Whitehead’s book bears a title that points to one of the methodological challenges associated with retrieving women from the archive. The Emperor’s Shadow reminds us that historical sources are such that a woman’s story is often garnered from the well-documented men in her life. It is, therefore, easy for women to be overshadowed by their better-known male counterparts. Even when a woman has left letters and diaries – or a memoir as Betsy did – these are likely to have been so carefully fashioned that they conceal as much as they reveal. Those determined to adhere strictly to historical method can find their ability to develop character and progress the plot hampered by such limitations, and all too often they must resort to caveats and qualifications that then obscure the central characters and clog up the narrative pace.
In his comparison of Whitehead’s careful historical study and Thomas Keneally’s recent novel on the same topic, Philip Dwyer makes a similar point – observing how Keneally’s fictional rendering allows for the unfurling of Betsy’s personality in a way that Whitehead, the careful historian, could not.Footnote1 Clearly, Betsy had a scintillating personality and was adept at charming and disarming those she met, but while we hear much about this in Whitehead’s book, we rarely encounter the flesh and blood Betsy ourselves. The ‘Interesting Mrs Abell’ remains at one remove in a way that is indicative, I think, of how historical method can rob female historical figures of their depth and dimension. This is no fault of Anne Whitehead who has done an admirable job in retrieving and collating these extensive sources into a story, but it does suggest that there is scope for greater creativity when it comes to female biography.
Notes
1 Philip Dwyer, ‘Napoleon on St Helena Review: Anne Whitehead’s History and Tom Keneally’s Novel,’ Sydney Morning Herald, 9 November 2015.