Farmer Legg and his wife stared in shock. Napoleon stumbled back to the garden, choking with laughter. Between splutters, Betsy admitted that she used to be afraid of him as well. ‘When I made this confession, he tried to frighten me as he had poor little Miss Legg, by brushing up his hair and distorting his features; but he looked more grotesque than horrible, and I only laughed at him.’21

Betsy’s good looks, remarked upon in most memoirs produced from the exile (while they have little to say about her less advantaged sister Jane), no doubt allowed more tolerance of her wayward personality. In a plainer girl her behaviour would have been viewed as mere vulgarity—as it was by Las Cases, impervious to her appeal. Indeed, there may have been a sexual element to Napoleon’s attraction. Her youth would not necessarily have forbidden such thoughts—his own mother had married at fourteen years of age.22 But his relationship with Betsy remained chaste.

She was at that teetering stage of adolescence, her starched pinafore taut, her eyes bright with curiosity and impudence, not yet cautious from setbacks and disappointment, not too knowing from experience. There is just one likeness of her from that time, and it is barely a likeness at all, a French lithograph of her and her sister, almost certainly drawn by Marchand. The girls, in pale flowing dresses with long pantaloons underneath, offer flowers to Napoleon. The face of the shorter one is obscured by a large straw hat trailing ribbons.23

The portrait of Betsy that is commonly reproduced—and is displayed for tourists at The Briars Pavilion—is of a conventionally beautiful young woman with a heart-shaped face and large blue eyes, her golden hair elaborately arranged, ringlets brushing her shoulders. Her dark dress is daringly décolleté. It is not the portrait of an adolescent girl, and nor was it painted by Catherine Younghusband, as has been suggested.24 It was adapted from a photograph of Betsy taken by G.W. Melliss in 1857, when she was Mrs Abell, a matron of 55.25 In a sketch from the photograph, her pose, dress and coiffure are almost identical. The portrait may have been executed by the Victorian artist Alfred Tidey, who also painted The Music Party in the 1850s, portraying Mrs Abell and her daughter at the piano in their London house.26

Admiral Cockburn despatched two warships to take possession of the bare and unpopulated Ascension Island to foil any rescue attempt from there. He wrote to Croker at the Admiralty that he was impatient for the work at Longwood to be completed, as General Bonaparte had ‘expressed himself more dissatisfied with the lot decreed him than he did before . . . nothing shall ever be wanting on my part to render the General’s detention here as little afflictive and irksome to him as possible, so long as the paramount object of his personal security be not compromised’.27

A large tent or marquee was pitched on the lawn at The Briars’ Pavilion to add more living space; it abutted against the permanent building as an extension of it and could be entered directly through one of the doors. It was a gift from Colonel Bingham, a veteran of the Peninsular War, Wellington’s lieutenant and now commander of all the troops on the island. Bonaparte was pleased: ‘One soldier understands another.’

Cipriani the butler moved up from Jamestown, and he and Marchand spent the morning rearranging furniture. The marquee was divided into two compartments as study and dining room. The pavilion was assigned as Napoleon’s bedroom, containing the campaign bed and the silver washbasin on a stand opposite. The Las Cases father and son were now crammed together at night in one of the tiny loft spaces, and Cipriani was in the other.

Cipriani, a fellow Corsican, had a long connection with the Buonaparte family; his wife was currently in Rome with the matriarch, Madame Mère, while his son was in service to Madame’s brother, Cardinal Fesch. Cipriani had been in exile with Napoleon on Elba and had helped facilitate his escape. A man of few words, alert and watchful, he occupied a special position in the household and was generally believed to be his master’s personal spy. He visited the shops and taverns and picked up information. Napoleon had complete confidence in him and showed it in a way that aroused jealousy among some of his courtiers.28

At last Napoleon was in a position to entertain. Betsy and Jane were to be the first dinner guests. The girls arrived at the marquee on the stroke of nine and found Las Cases and Emmanuel standing stiffly to attention. The emperor entered with a formality that astonished Betsy, the star of his Légion d’Honneur flashing in the candlelight.29 Once seated, Napoleon began teasing the girls about their nation’s fondness for roast beef and stodgy plum pudding.