The puzzle most frequently posed is why he was allowed to join Napoleon in exile in the first place. The usual answer is that it had something to do with his wife.

Albine Hélène de Montholon was not in the first flush of youth: at the age of 35 she was three years older than her husband, but still attractive, with a heart-shaped face, dark eyes and fluttering lashes. However, she lacked the court manners and refinement of Madame Bertrand, and her décolletage may have been considered ill-advised for a morning visit in the country. The news had travelled around the island that Madame de Montholon had divorced two husbands already, and some speculated that—given the boredom of island life—she might sever from the third. She still grieved for her baby left in France, but was known to be pregnant again. Some whispered that Bonaparte was not averse to her charms and that she recognised advantage in encouraging him.

The visitors had to leave by mid-afternoon to be back in Jamestown for the curfew. But Napoleon walked around the garden with Gourgaud, who wrote later in his journal that ‘we discussed women. He maintains that a young man should not run after them.’18 After they had all gone, Napoleon, according to Betsy’s Recollections, fell into a pensive mood, absorbed with the new miniature. He asked her to pass on his apologies to her mother: if Madame Balcombe ever found him staring at her, it was because she reminded him so much of Josephine.

Writing her memoir thirty years later, Betsy sometimes invested her younger self with a suspiciously mature understanding and word-perfect memory. While a biographer has noted that ‘Napoleon, when deeply moved, always wished to confide his emotions to some patient female ear’,19 one cannot always credit the authenticity of conversations we are told he had with Betsy, such as the one concerning his former wife. ‘Anything she wore,’ he purportedly told her, ‘seemed elegant, she was grace personified. She never acted inelegantly during the whole time we lived together. She was the very best of women.’ As for the divorce, nothing would have induced him to do it, he said, except for political motives. He did it for the good of the French nation. No other reason could have persuaded him to separate from a wife whom he loved so tenderly. But he thanked God she had died in time to prevent her witnessing his last misfortune.20

He seemed lost in thought, then asked Betsy whom she regarded as the most beautiful woman on the island. ‘I told him I thought Madame Bertrand superior, beyond all comparison to any one I had ever seen . . . Napoleon asked me if I did not consider Madame Montholon pretty. I said “No”. He then desired Marchand to bring down a snuff-box, on the lid of which was a miniature of Madame Montholon. It certainly was like her, and very beautiful. He told me it was what she had been, when young.’21

Betsy was a Miranda on Prospero’s island, or even a sprightly Ariel, or else she was a court jester, a Shakespearean Fool, goading a tormented Lear across a blasted heath. She delighted in St Helena’s savage grandeur, and when Napoleon railed at its ugliness, calling it a hideous bare rock, she put up a passionate defence: ‘His natural prejudice against the island rendered him blind to the many beauties with which it abounded; he beheld all with a jaundiced eye.’22 He asked how she dared to contradict his opinion, laughed at her impudence and pinched her ear (an annoying habit of his). But he was happy to take long walks at this time, despite being followed by the English guard. Betsy would often accompany him on these rambles, sometimes with Jane and always shadowed by Captain Mackay.

As they walked, Napoleon encouraged her to tell him stories about the island’s history: how a top-heavy Portuguese carrack had almost foundered on its rocks in 1502, and its commander, João da Nova Castella, had claimed the uninhabited island for Portugal and named it Santa Helena in honour of the Emperor Constantine’s mother. The sailors had come ashore and filled barrels from a stream, clubbed the tame seals, caught slow-moving birds, turned turtles on their backs, and gathered aromatic herbs and sweet-tasting plants. Then they left, dumping some goats and pigs, provisions for future visits. Over the years, Portuguese carracks called in for the sweet mountain water and easily slaughtered game.