wished to know what kind of bed I had had, and I took him to the next
room and shewed him a mattress on the floor. The same kind of
attention had been bestowed upon our food. “I mention these things to
you,” said I, “because you have asked me; but, for my part, I do not
care about them.” He then grew very angry with the person to whom he
had intrusted the superintendence of our establishment here, and sent
us our meals from his own table at Plantation House, although a
distance of two leagues, and continued so to do until our wants were
regularly provided for.
It became necessary to devise some occupation in our new prison, to
enable us to bear the weight of time. I divided our hours so as to
fill up our days: I regularly gave lessons in history and mathematics
to my son; we read, and, during our intervals of leisure, we walked
about our enclosure. The place was agreeable enough for St. Helena, it
contained some verdure and a few trees. A great number of common
fowls, which were rearing for the consumption of Longwood, were kept
there, as well as some Guinea fowls, and other large birds, which we
soon rendered tame: prisoners are ingenious and compassionate. In the
evening, we used to light a fire, and then I related to my son some
family stories; I informed him of my family concerns, and mentioned to
him, and made him take down the names of those persons who had shewn
themselves kind to me during the course of my life, or had rendered me
any service. In short, our life was dull and melancholy, but so calm
that it was not devoid of a kind of pleasurable feeling. One idea
alone was exceedingly painful, and haunted us continually: the Emperor
was there almost within sight, and yet we inhabited two distinct
worlds; we were separated only by a short distance, and yet all
communication had ceased! There was something horrible in this
situation; I was no longer with him, and I was not with my family,
which I had left to follow him. What then remained to me? My son
shared in these feelings: urged by this situation, and by the
enthusiasm of youth, the dear boy offered to me, in a moment of
excitement, to take advantage of the darkness of night, to elude the
vigilance of our guards, descend the numerous precipices, and scale
the steep heights which parted us from Longwood, see Napoleon, and
bring me back some news from him, which he engaged to do before
day-light. I calmed this zeal, which, even had it rendered the attempt
practicable, would have produced no other result than a feeling of
personal satisfaction, and might have occasioned the most serious
consequences. The Emperor had conversed with me so often and so fully
that I did not suppose there was any thing he might wish to inform me
of; and if such an attempt by my son had been discovered, what a noise
it would have made, what importance would have been attached to it by
the Governor, what absurd stories he would have invented and produced!
&c.
MY RESOLUTION.—MY LETTERS TO SIR HUDSON
LOWE, &C.
From Sunday December 1st, to Friday December 6th.—The days of our
imprisonment were slowly succeeding each other, and the Governor,
although he continued to visit us frequently, did not mention any
thing concerning our situation: he had merely hinted to me that my
residence in the Island and my confinement might be protracted, until
instructions were returned from London.
Eight days had nearly elapsed without producing the least approach
towards any result whatever. This state of inactivity and passiveness
could not agree with the nature of my disposition. The health of my
son was at times most alarming. Deprived of all communication with
Longwood, I was left alone to meditate by myself. I reflected upon the
situation in which I was thus placed, fixed upon a plan, and took a
resolution. I chose it, extreme in its nature, thinking that, if it
was approved by the Emperor, it might be useful, and that it would be
very easy to retrace my steps if he wished it. I therefore wrote to
the Governor the following letter:
“SIR,—In consequence of a snare laid by my servant, I was on the 25th
ultimo torn from Longwood, and all my papers were seized, for having
infringed your restrictions, to which I had previously submitted. Had
you trusted the observance of these restrictions to my word or to my
delicacy, I should have considered them as sacred; but you chose to
guard them by attaching penalties to their violation, and I chose to
run the risk of encountering them. You have applied those penalties at
your own discretion, and I have made no objection to it. All this, as
far it goes, is perfectly regular; but the measure of punishment
should not exceed the measure of the offence. What is now the case?
Two letters have been delivered for transmission without your
knowledge: one of them contains the relation of the events that have
occurred to us, written for Prince Lucien, and which would have passed
through your hands, if you had not informed me that the continuation
of my correspondence and the style of my letters would cause my
removal by you from the person of the Emperor. The other letter was
merely a letter of friendship. However, this circumstance has placed
all my papers at your disposal, you have seen them all, even to the
most secret. I have myself so much facilitated your researches that I
have consented to allow you to peruse solely upon your word, that
which was known only to myself, which is as yet a mass of undigested
ideas, undetermined, and liable at every moment to be corrected, or
modified; in a word, the secret, the chaos of my thoughts. In so doing
I have wished to convince you, and I appeal to your candour, when I
say that I hope I have convinced you that, in the multitude of papers
which you have hastily looked over, there is nothing that could be
considered as tending to interfere with the high and important part of
your functions: no plot, no plan, not even a thought relating to
Napoleon’s escape. You could not find any, because none existed. We
are of opinion that his escape is impossible, and we do not think of
it. Yet I will not deny that I should willingly have attempted to
effect it, had I seen the possibility of success. I should willingly
have sacrificed my life to restore him to liberty. I should have
fallen a martyr to my zeal, and my memory would have lived for ever in
all noble and generous hearts. But I repeat it, nobody considers the
attempt practicable; and nobody thinks of making it. The Emperor
Napoleon’s plans and wishes are still those which he formed when he
repaired _willingly and in good faith_ on board the Bellerophon, that
is, to go and seek a life of tranquillity in America, or even in
England, under the protection of the laws.
“These points settled, I protest with all my might against your
reading henceforward, I might say all my private papers, but I confine
myself to what I call my _Journal_. I owe it to the great respect
which I entertain for the august personage whose name fills its pages,
I owe it to the respect due to myself, to state my solemn objection to
your so doing. I therefore demand either that those papers may be
immediately restored to me, if you think conscientiously that their
contents are foreign to the grand object of your administration; or
if, from what you have read of them, you consider that certain parts
should be laid before the British Ministers, I demand that you will
forward them all to England, and send me with them. You, Sir, are so
often alluded to in those papers that delicacy imperatively commands
you to adopt one of those two alternatives. You cannot possibly
endeavour to avail yourself, more than I have allowed you, of this
opportunity to read in them what concerns you personally, lest you
expose yourself to the conclusions that will be drawn by induction
from this abuse of your authority, lest the circumstance be thought
connected with the trap laid for me, and with the great stir that has
been made about such a trifle. As soon as I shall have arrived in
England with these papers, I shall ask the Ministers in their turn,
and I shall appeal to the whole world, whether any importance can be
attached, in the eye of the law, to a document recording day by day,
with all the negligence warranted by strict privacy, the conversation,
the words, and perhaps even the gestures, of the Emperor Napoleon? I
shall ask them particularly whether I have not a right to demand of
them the most inviolable secrecy concerning every part of a Journal,
which is only the rough draught of my thoughts, which properly
speaking does not exist, which contains only materials yet undigested;
which I might without scruple disavow in almost every particular, as
being as yet far from being settled in my own mind, and in which it
happened to me, every day, to have to correct by the tenor of a new
conversation the errors of a former one, errors that must be
unavoidable and of frequent occurrence both with respect to the man
who speaks without knowing that he is observed, and to the man who
collects without considering himself bound to warrant the authenticity
of his information. As for what concerns you, Sir, in those pages, if
you have frequently had occasion to complain of the opinions I have
pronounced, or the facts I have stated, it is very easy to point out,
between man and man, the errors into which I may have fallen. You
cannot possibly afford me a greater pleasure than by giving me an
opportunity of being just; and whatever be the opinion in which I
persist, after your explanation, you will at least be obliged to
acknowledge my candour and sincerity. Be that as it may, Sir, and
whatever be your intentions with respect to me, I from this moment
withdraw, in as far as my present position will admit, from the state
of voluntary subjection in which I had placed myself towards you. When
I entered into that engagement, you told me that I remained at liberty
to retract it at any time; and I therefore, from the present moment,
desire to be restored to the common class of citizens. I place myself
once more under the operation of your civil laws; I appeal to your
tribunals, not to implore their favour, but their justice and their
judgment. I presume, General, that you have too much respect for the
laws, and too much innate justice in your heart, to make it necessary
for me so far to insult you as to observe, that you would become
responsible for all violations of the law that may be exercised
against me directly or indirectly. I do not suppose that the _letter_
of your instructions, which might induce you to detain me a prisoner
here or at the Cape during several months, could shelter you from the
_spirit_ of those same instructions, appealed to by the power, the
superiority, the majesty of the laws.
“Those instructions, if I have rightly understood them, in ordering
you to detain every person having belonged to the establishment at
Longwood, during a certain time before you restore them to liberty,
have only for their object, no doubt, to derange the communications
that might have been held with that horrible prison, and to let some
time elapse after their cessation. Now the manner in which I have been
torn away has been sufficient to attain that end. It was impossible
for me to bring away any idea of the moment. I was, as it were, struck
with sudden death. Besides, if I am sent to England under accusation,
and submitted to the operation of the laws, they will, if I am found
guilty, sufficiently obviate the inconvenience which it has been
sought to avoid. If I am not guilty, I shall still be exposed to the
provisions of the Alien Act; or, if that is not enough, I here give
beforehand my voluntary assent to all precautions, however arbitrary
they may be, which it may be thought proper to adopt against me on
this occasion.
“Without yet knowing, Sir, what your intentions may be with respect to
the disposal of my person, I have already imposed upon myself the
greatest of all sacrifices. I am still very near to Longwood, and
perhaps I am already separated from it by eternity; horrible thought,
that harrows up my soul, and will continue to haunt my imagination!...
But a few days ago, and you would have brought me to submit to the
greatest sacrifices, by the fear of being removed from the Emperor’s
person; to-day, it is not in your power to restore me to him. A stain
has been affixed upon me, by arresting me almost within his sight, I
can no longer be a source of consolation to him; he would only see in
me a being dishonoured, suggesting painful recollections. And yet his
presence, the attentions which I delighted to pay him, are dearer to
me than my life. But perhaps, some pity will be shewn to me from afar!
Something tells me that I shall return; but by a purified channel,
bringing with me all that is dear to my existence, to assist me in
surrounding with pious and tender cares the immortal monument placed
at the extremity of the universe, and slowly consuming by the
inclemency of the climate and the perfidy and cruelty of mankind. You
have spoken to me, Sir, of your own afflictions; we do not suspect
that you have mentioned all the tribulations with which you are
assailed; but every one knows and feels his own misery only. You do
not suspect, on your side, Sir, that you keep Longwood covered with
the veil of mourning. I have the honour,” &c.
A correspondence being once established with Sir Hudson Lowe, I did
not remain idle. The following day I wrote to him again, to tell him
that, in consequence of my letter of the preceding day, I now
officially and in due form demanded my removal from St. Helena and my
return to Europe. On the following day, I took up the same subject,
and treated it with reference to my situation, as affecting my
domestic concerns.
“In my two preceding letters,” said I to him, “both relating to my
political situation, I thought it improper and unbecoming to introduce
a single word touching my private affairs; but now that I consider
myself as belonging once more to the mass of common citizens, I do not
hesitate, as an accidental inhabitant of your island, to represent to
you all the horrors of my private situation. You are aware of the
dangerous state of my son’s health: it must have been reported to you
by the medical men. Ever since he has seen the dear and sacred tie
which bound us to Longwood dissolved, all his ideas, all his wishes,
all his hopes, are ardently turned towards Europe, and his disease
will be increased by impatience and the power of imagination. Such is
_his_ physical situation, which renders _my_ moral situation still
worse, if possible. I have to contend at one and the same time against
the feelings of my heart and the uneasiness of my mind. I cannot
consider, without a feeling of terror, that I am responsible to myself
for having brought him hither, and for being the cause of his being
detained here. What should I answer to his mother, who would ask me
for her son? What should I reply to the multitude of idlers and
others, who, though indifferent to the circumstances, are ever ready
to judge and condemn? I say nothing of my own health, it is of little
importance amidst such emotions, and such causes of anxiety. And yet,
I find myself in a most deplorable state; for, since I have no longer
before my eyes the cause which kept the faculties of my mind in
action, my body sinks under the dreadful havoc produced by eighteen
months’ struggles, agitations, and afflictions, such as the
imagination can hardly dwell upon. I am no longer near the august
personage for whom I cheerfully endured them, and I am nevertheless
also separated from my family, whose absence has caused me so much
sorrow. Deprived of both objects, my heart is torn between them; it
wanders in an abyss; it can no longer endure this situation. I leave
you, Sir, to weigh these considerations. Do not sacrifice two victims.
I request that you will send us to England, to the source of science
and of every kind of assistance. This is the first demand of any kind,
that I have made either of yourself or your predecessor. But the
deplorable state of my son’s health overpowers my stoicism; will it
not awaken your humanity? Several motives may tend to influence your
decision: they are all contained in my letter of 30th November. I
shall merely add here that an opportunity now offers for you to give a
great and rare example of impartiality, in sending thus to your
Ministers one of your adversaries.“
After having received these two letters, Sir Hudson Lowe called upon
me, and with reference to the first, he immediately denied having laid
any trap for me through the medium of my servant. He however admitted
that appearances warranted my suspicions.
Sir Hudson Lowe, afterwards, went on to discuss verbally some passages
of my letters, dwelling particularly upon certain expressions, which,
he represented to me in a friendly manner, could not but be unpleasant
to him. He found me not only on this, but on several other occasions
of the same nature, perfectly accommodating. My answer to his
observations was generally to take up the pen immediately, and erase
or modify the expressions that displeased him.
I omit a pretty voluminous correspondence upon the same subject; I
shall merely state that, in general, Sir Hudson Lowe avoided giving a
written answer, and that his custom was to come, as it has just been
seen, to converse with me respecting the letters he had just received,
and obtain some erasures, after which he retired, saying that he would
soon give a circumstantial answer: this he did not do at the time, and
has never done since; but, as I have been informed from England, he
now pays periodical papers, or occasional libellers, to abuse my work,
and to revile its author.
As, in the numerous verbal discussions to which my letters gave rise,
Sir Hudson Lowe did not, with the exception of the erasure of a few
expressions, obtain any important concession, or attain any of the
objects which he had in view; he would, on leaving me, represent me as
a man of deep cunning, and, as he affirmed, very much to be feared:
for with him a man was very cunning, very crafty, and very dangerous,
who had sense enough not to yield blindly to all his views, or to fall
into his snares. However, the following is the only trick I ever
played him. The idleness and rigour of captivity sharpen the
invention; besides, it was all fair between us: the incontestable
right of a prisoner is to endeavour to deceive his gaoler.
I said, at the beginning of this work, that the Emperor at the moment
of our departure for St. Helena, had secretly intrusted me with a
necklace of diamonds of very considerable value.
The habit of carrying it about me for such a length of time had
brought me to think no more about it, so that it was only after
several days of seclusion, and quite by chance, that I thought of it.
Closely watched as I was, I could not see any possibility of being
able to restore it to the Emperor, who had no doubt forgotten it as
well as myself. After having thought a great deal on the subject, I
contrived to make use of Sir Hudson Lowe himself for that purpose. I
requested to be allowed to bid my companions farewell, and wrote the
following letter to the Grand Marshal:—
”SIR,—Torn from the midst of you all, left to myself, deprived of all
communication whatever, I have been obliged to found my decisions on
my own judgment and my own feelings. I have addressed them officially
to Sir Hudson Lowe, on the 30th of November. In return for the liberty
which I am allowed, I abstain from saying a single word about it, and
rely upon the delicacy of the high authorities to communicate to you
the whole of my letter, if any part of it should ever be mentioned or
alluded to—I resign myself to my fate.
“It only remains for me to request you will lay at the Emperor’s feet
the assurance of my respect, veneration, and affection: my life is
still entirely devoted to him. I shall never enjoy any happiness but
near his august person.
“In the unfortunate state of penury to which you are all reduced, I
should have most ardently wished to leave behind me some of my wife’s
jewels ... a necklace ... the widow’s mite! But how shall I venture to
offer it?... I have often made the offer of the four thousand louis
which I possess in England at my disposal, that offer I now again
renew; my position, whatever it be, cannot produce any alteration in
my intention. I shall henceforward be proud to be in want! Once more,
Sir, assure the Emperor of my entire devotion to his person, of my
fidelity and unshaken constancy....
“And you, my dear companions of Longwood, let me ever live in your
recollection! I know the privations and afflictions to which you are
exposed; and my heart bleeds for you. With you, I was of little
importance; far from you, you shall know my zeal and my tender
solicitude, if they have humanity enough to allow me to exercise them.
I embrace you all very affectionately, and request you will add for
yourself, Sir, the assurance of my respect and consideration.
“P.S. This letter has been ready for you some time; it was written
when I thought I was going to be removed hence. To-day the Governor,
in giving me permission to send it to you, informs me that I am to
wait here, until answers shall have arrived from England. Thus I shall
be for months at St. Helena, and yet Longwood will cease to exist for
me; a new species of torment which I had not thought of!”
Sir Hudson Lowe, to whom I delivered this letter open, for such was
his condition, read it, approved it, and was kind enough to undertake
to deliver it himself, a circumstance which had the effect of exciting
the Emperor’s attention, and which contributed, in a great measure,
though indirectly, to cause the deposit to be restored to Napoleon.
A register was made of all letters from my London friends, in order to
ascertain in the public offices whether any had arrived by indirect
modes of conveyance. I had commenced a second letter to Prince Lucien;
the Governor laid particular stress upon it. It was in vain I
represented to him that it was full of erasures, and crowded with
pencil notes almost effaced; that it had not been written, and did not
therefore exist in reality; that I might disown it without scruple;
that it was impossible to make any _legal_ or _honest_ use of it: he
persisted in having some parts of the letter copied; God knows for
what purpose!
He was much puzzled by a note of the Lieutenant-Governor’s lady. On
quitting St. Helena for England, she had told us that the law forbade
her taking charge of any letter; but that she would have great
pleasure in being useful to us in any other way. I had sent to her,
for my London friends, some articles which had been used by the
Emperor, or which had come from himself. A small silver inkstand, I
believe, some words in his hand-writing, perhaps some of his hair; I
know not what. These I called precious relics. Mrs. Skelton had
replied that she would treat them with all the respect they deserved,
but that she must confess to me she had not been able to resist the
temptation of taking a small portion of them.
Sir Hudson Lowe could not account for my being either unable or
unwilling to state what those precious objects were. I should be
mortified if they should have brought any disagreeable consequences on
this lady. I had merely kept the note in memory, and in token of
respect for her. Mr. and Mrs. Skelton were a moral and virtuous
couple, whom we had much injured, though undoubtedly against our wish;
but their politeness and attention to us had constantly increased with
the harm we did them. Our arrival in the island had caused their being
dispossessed of Longwood, losing their situation, and being sent back
to Europe, where they must be without a provision.
At last, after a time, the famous clandestine documents came out in
their turn: my letter to Prince Lucien, and the one to my London
acquaintance. Sir Hudson Lowe had caused them to be carefully copied,
but with many chasms, from not having been able to read all, certain
words being found effaced upon the satin, owing to the documents
having been accidentally wetted since I had parted with them. I
carried my complaisance and good nature so far as to restore them; and
then a sort of interrogatory commenced.