She was led into the middle of the room, whirled about, and the game began.

Someone crept up and gave her nose a sharp tweak. She knew who that was and darted forward, almost succeeding in catching him, but he eluded her grasp. ‘I then groped about, and, advancing again, he this time took hold of my ear and pulled it. I stretched out my hands instantly, and in the exultation of the moment screamed out, “I have got you! I have got you, now you shall be blindfolded!”’

He ducked out of the way and it was to her sister that she found herself clinging. Napoleon crowed that, as she had named the wrong person, she had to continue blindfolded.47

‘Time,’ declared Napoleon, ‘is the only thing of which we have a superfluity.’ He had been renowned for his economic handling of time and now that efficiency was useless. ‘Our days,’ wrote Las Cases, ‘passed as may be imagined, in a great and stupid monotony. Ennui, memories, melancholy, were our dangerous enemies; work was our great, our only refuge. The Emperor followed with great regularity his occupations: English had become an important matter.’48

Since early in 1816, Napoleon had taken the study of English seriously, working at it for some hours every afternoon; he practised in the bath, but his lessons under Las Cases’ tutelage never advanced far, as a scrap in his own handwriting testifies: ‘Since sixt wek, y learn the english and y do not any progress. Sixt week do fourty and two day. If might have learn fivty word, for day I could know it two thousands and two hundred . . .’49

However, with the aid of a dictionary he was managing to read English newspapers. Every three or four weeks they received a large bundle of papers and journals from Europe, passed on to them by the admiral. Las Cases said that ‘they were like a prod which aroused us and excited us very much for several days, when we discussed and appraised the news, and then we fell back once more, insensibly, into the morass’.50 Everyone at Longwood was shocked in early February to learn of the death of Marshal Murat, Napoleon’s brother-in-law and the former King of Naples. By order of the reinstalled monarch, Ferdinand IV, he had been executed by firing squad. They heard a rumour of a military revolt against Louis XVIII, but nothing came of it. They were startled and hopeful when unidentified ships in James Bay were fired upon by a cruiser and soldiers in the camp were called to arms. It turned out to be merely a failure of a visiting ship to respond to a signal.

A mysterious letter, delivered by clandestine means, assured Napoleon that his position would be much improved when Princess Charlotte, the twenty-year-old daughter of the Prince Regent, ascended the British throne.51 Charlotte’s mother, Caroline of Brunswick, was a cousin of Catherine of Württemberg, who had married Napoleon’s youngest brother, Jerome, formerly King of Westphalia. Perhaps because of this family connection, Princess Caroline was said to have a ‘fanatical admiration’ for Bonaparte.52

Escape plans were whispered and stories circulated of rescue attempts being mounted by Joseph Bonaparte in America; after all, he had the ill-gotten crown jewels of Spain to finance a venture. They heard there was much enthusiasm for Napoleon in the United States and that a group of French émigrés were concocting schemes. The St Helena Archives holds correspondence relating to various ingenious plans foiled by the British, including one that involved a boat that ‘will be in the shape of an old cask but so constructed that by pulling at both ends to be seaworthy and both boat and sails, which will be found inside, will be painted to correspond with the colour of the sea’.53 Gourgaud wrote in his journal: ‘In the morning, while out riding, we discuss our position. We should have been better off in the United States. I consider that the Prince Regent, yielding to public opinion, could get us brought back to England. We are also fortunate in that Princess Charlotte, on her accession to the throne, will wish to have us back.’54

It would not have been far from their minds that if the elusive rumours about William Balcombe were true, Princess Charlotte could possibly be his half-sister.

CHAPTER 11

THE NEW GOVERNOR

The charabanc tour of the Napoleonic sites ended in the grounds of Plantation House, an elegant Georgian mansion of 35 rooms, the official residence of St Helena’s governors for over two hundred years. Napoleon never went there but always complained that it should have been made available for him and his suite.

Its front lawn extends as a level green field, a delightful location for garden parties, terminating in an abrupt shelf with a view of the vast grey Atlantic. We saw huddled in the grass five giant tortoises, celebrities for visitors. The most notable of them was the elderly Jonathan. Although it has been said that he is a living link with Bonaparte, that is not the case. He was a gift from the governor of the Seychelles and arrived in 1882 as a mature tortoise aged at least fifty, making him over 180 years old. The Times has claimed that he is the oldest animal in the world.1 I tried to become acquainted with Jonathan but he regarded me blearily—he is blind in one eye and almost so in the other.

On 14 April 1816, the island’s new governor, General Sir Hudson Lowe, Knight Commander of the Bath (KCB), arrived on the frigate HMS Phaeton.