In the period before Waterloo he had been quartermaster-general to the Allied armies (British, Prussian, Belgian and Dutch) in the Low Countries, and was therefore in a position of considerable military influence in Europe—for commissariat, billeting and armaments—until the arrival of the Duke of Wellington. He had also commanded a regiment on Corsica that fought on Britain’s side against the French.27 When this latter qualification became known to Bonaparte, he expressed contempt for the commander of a bunch of mercenaries and turncoats.

Unfortunately, Sir Hudson Lowe had a stiff conversational manner and little sense of humour and, at the time of his appointment, he was unmarried. A wife was always an asset for a governor on an isolated station. This latter deficiency was repaired on 30 December when he married Susan Johnson, the pretty and lively widow of a colonel with two adolescent daughters. She was well connected and was said to be ‘a very captivating woman’ with ‘a fine face, laughing eyes’.28

Once his appointment became known, Lowe was lionised by London society figures, particularly by those aristocratic Whigs, led by Lord and Lady Holland, who professed admiration for Napoleon; they hoped to persuade the new governor to treat his prisoner with dignity and compassion and to permit them to send books and newspapers. Lowe was invited to dine at Holland House on eight separate occasions, meeting other ‘Napoleonists’ there, including Lord Byron and his wife Annabella. Byron took an immediate dislike to Lowe: he asked him whether Napoleon’s ‘dispositions were those of a great General’, and Lowe answered disparagingly that ‘they were very simple’. ‘I had always thought,’ Byron wrote to a friend, ‘that a degree of Simplicity was an element of Greatness.’

Other distinguished people sought other favours. On 8 December, while still in London, Lowe received a letter under the House of Lords seal with a pressing request from Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod:

My dear Sir

I believe Sir G. Cockburn has written home to advise the Government to make an agreement with Mr Balcombe (my young Friend at St Helena) for the supply of Napoleon’s Table at a percentage. Will you be kind enough to ascertain this fact, and should it turn out there is such a recommendation, it may be brought to maturity before you leave us. In order that I may stand acquitted of any mistaken partiality for Mr Balcombe I enclose you a letter which I have lately received from Captain Browne [sic] of the Ulysses who brought home the last India Fleet, by which it will appear Mr B’s charges will fully justify my solicitude for his welfare.29

Captain Samuel Brown, whom Tyrwhitt pointedly mentioned as endorsing the good opinion of his ‘young Friend’, was a greatly admired figure in the Royal Navy.30 Lowe promptly approved the recommendation that Balcombe become providore to Napoleon and his court and be granted a handsome percentage from the allocated annual budget of £8000.

On New Year’s Day 1816, Napoleon gathered his companions together for breakfast in the garden. ‘A year ago,’ he told them, ‘I was at Elba.’31 The thought saddened him and he said they must live together as a family: ‘We are but a handful in one corner of the world, and all our consolation must be our regard for each other.’32

If the companions were a family, Tolstoy would have recognised them as unhappy in their own way: fractious, jostling and competing for their father’s attention. They were suspicious of a new ‘family’ member who had arrived from England just three days earlier on the storeship Cormorant. Captain Charles Frédéric Piontkowski was a 30-year-old Polish officer who had been with Napoleon on Elba. After the defeat at Waterloo he had joined the devotees at Malmaison and on the flight to the port of Rochefort. He had sailed with them to England on HMS Bellerophon, but despite his pleas, he was not one of the designated companions chosen to join the Northumberland. Some of the group thought it suspicious that after three months the British had granted leave for Piontkowski, and only him, to join them. Piontkowski was given a tent in the courtyard and was appointed horse-equerry under Gourgaud. He found him a hard taskmaster.

In order to oversee the catering, Balcombe was a regular visitor at Longwood. In mid-January, according to Gourgaud, he brought news: ‘Balcombe informs me that Prince Joseph Bonaparte has arrived in America. The Emperor, overhearing these words, stops his reading, remains in thought for a moment, then expresses his satisfaction.’33

Soon afterwards, Balcombe brought his wife and daughters. They found Napoleon sitting on the steps of the green-latticed porch, chatting with young Tristan de Montholon. When he saw them he came forward: ‘Running to my mother, he saluted her on each cheek. After which fashion he welcomed my sister; but, as usual with me, he seized me by the ear, and pinching it, exclaimed, “Ah! Mademoiselle Betsee, êtes-vous sage, eh eh?”—“Are you being good, eh?”’

He took them on a tour of his ironically dubbed ‘palace’, leading them first to his bedroom, which she found small and cheerless. The walls were covered in fluted nankeen fabric and the only decorations she observed were the different portraits of his son and the Empress Marie Louise which she had seen before. ‘His bed was the little camp bedstead, with green silk hangings, on which he said he had slept when on the battlefields of Marengo and Austerlitz. The only thing approaching to magnificence in the furniture of this chamber, was a splendid silver wash-basin and ewer. The first object on which his eyes would rest on awaking, was a small bust of his son, which stood on the mantelpiece, facing his bed, and above which hung a portrait of Marie Louise. We then passed on, through an ante-room, to a small chamber, in which a bath had been put up for his use, and where he passed many hours of the day.’34

They proceeded to the stone-flagged kitchen, where Napoleon asked Pierron the confectioner to create creams and bonbons for the girls; he then led them into the garden.