THE APOLOGY FOR SIR HUDSON LOWE. On the 15th of July 1815 Napoleon was received on board the "Bellerophon." On the thirty-first the letter of Lord Melville was read to General Buonaparte, announcing his future destination. On the 15th of October in the same year the "Northumberland" arrived at St. Helena. On the 5th May 1821 the captive died. To fill up the details of the events marked by these dates, Mr. Forsyth has compiled the work before us. The History of the Captivity of Napoleon at St. Helena, from the Letters and Journals of the late Sir Hudson Lowe. By WILLIAM FORSYTH, M.A. 3 Vols. 8vo. Murray, 1853. unwittingly, fallen into the tone and manner of an advocate. Never, surely, did an author so deceive himself as to the tone of his work as Mr. Forsyth has done. There is not a book in the language which displays a more laborious subtlety, a more constantly-sustained bending of small facts towards a foregone conclusion, or a more manifest contempt for the understanding of its readers. It is just such a case as a bold advocate might venture before a Parliamentary Committee, or as a barrister might address to a jury while the judge is out of Court. The abuse of O'Meara is overdone, and the proofs against him overstated: the little Court at Longwood is, it is true, shewn to have been guilty of constant prevarication and a good deal of lying; the deposed emperor is convicted of a hundred acts of petulance at times when contemptuous submission would have been more majestic; and the whole band of Sir Hudson's prisoners are seen engaged in a constant conspiracy to magnify their grievances, in order to mortify their gaoler and to gain for themselves sympathy in Europe. All this, if not very dignified, is not very startling. It was Napoleon's business to get away from the island if he could; it was Lowe's duty to keep him there; and these two objects were much too conflicting to render a good understanding between the emperor and the baronet very easy to be kept up by the latter. Nothing but a very enthusiastic abstract love of truth could induce any one to resuscitate a controversy so old, so stale, and so exhausted, as is that upon the treatment of Napoleon. Every one resident upon the island, except only Sir Hudson Lowe, has written his own account of what occurred there. The French have a formed conviction that their captive emperor was tortured to death by petty annoyances, small discomforts, and constant insults. The English had, before Mr. Forsyth opened his defence, an almost equally settled persuasion that the prisoner was undignified and querulous, insensible to such kindness as a gaoler could shew, and ever upon the watch for grievances. But while the French can speak and write of Sir Hudson Lowe only as a vulgar ruffian, the English believed him to have been a zealous officer, but a splenetic and ungentle man, ill chosen for his office, and unfitted to its delicate duties, yet not unwilling to treat his captive as courteously as he could with security. The Whigs of 1820 used to declaim about the sufferings of Napoleon, as though he had been a martyr-" with a thiefcatcher ferreting his dirty linen, harrassed by a hideous complaint, and tortured by insults." The French of the present day represent him in their writings and upon their stage as opposing a calm dignity to all the outrage and petty persecutions of a mean-minded tyrant. History, however, was gradually accumulating the atoms that went to make up a decision, and was gradually arriving at the conclusion that Napoleon was treated with no greater severity than was absolutely necessary for the object proposed-impossibility of evasion-but that these precautions might have been disguised with more tact, and conducted with more delicacy, than they were by Sir Hudson Lowe. This conclusion is not fortified by the very elaborate apology now put forth by Mr. Forsyth; for that gentleman, although he disclaims the character of a partisan, has, perhaps To those who have read the works of O'Meara and Las Cases these three bulky volumes will afford nothing new, except a lengthy and tedious amplification of the topics there discussed; a defence, sometimes successful and sometimes very unsatisfactory, of the charges brought against the governor; constant abuse of O'Meara; and a secret correspondence between O'Meara and Mr. Croker, now for the first time brought to light. This last topic is one of very great interest, and is worthy of a much more impartial consideration than that bestowed upon it by Mr. Forsyth. In his "Voice from St. Helena " O'Meara says he had the following conversation with Napoleon :-"Napoleon asked,' Are you to be my surgeon, or surgeon d'une galère; and are you expected to report what you observe or hear?' I answered, 'I am your surgeon, d'une and not a spy, and one in whom I hope you may place confidence: I am not surgeon galère, nor do I consider it imperative on me to report any thing which is not contrary to my allegiance as a British officer, &c.'" Two years later, in his report of a conversation with Lowe, O'Meara tells us, that when Sir Hudson Lowe said to him he did not think a person under a pledge to Napoleon Buonaparte ought to be received into company, he replied, "I was under no other pledge to Napoleon than one which was tacitly understood in every society of gentlemen." Mr. Forsyth insists that one of these statements must be false. We do not think so. If we are to trust O'Meara's statement ("Voice," vol. i. p. 47), Napoleon said to him, "All I want of you is to act as a galant uomo, and as you would do were you surgeon to Lord St. Vincent. I do not mean to bind you to silence, or to prevent you from repeating any bavardage you may hear me say; but I want to prevent you from allowing yourself to be cajoled and made a spy of, unintentionally on your part, by this governor." This seems to us to amount to exactly that tacit understanding which O'Meara mentioned. So far as the governor was concerned, O'Meara appears to have acted properly. He told him indifferent matters, but utterly refused to answer interrogations, or to be used as a mouton, or spy. Sir Hudson Lowe was much enraged, turned him out of his room, and threatened to expel him the island Mr. Forsyth thinks his hero was right, but he takes what we think a most unfair and even unjustifiable advantage of the mere verbal discrepancy between the accounts given by O'Meara of his understanding with Napoleon. O'Meara relates the scene thus: "My refusals to disclose Napoleon's conversations caused me to be treated in an outrageous manner. The governor followed me out of the room, vociferating after me in a frantic manner, and carried his gestures so far as to menace me with personal violence." Lowe's account, in his despatch home, is not very different, although he, of course, omits the tone of voice and the gestures.* Mr. Forsyth's commentary is as follows: O'MEARA'S PLEDGE TO NAPOLEON. The interview thus briefly alluded to, and summarily dismissed, deserves a fuller notice. It was not to be expected that O'Meara would give a faithful account of it. He might, indeed, with no greater dishonesty than he has exhibited throughout his book, have garbled it to suit his purpose; but it was more convenient not to attempt any detail of a conversation which covered him with disgrace. For he confessed to the governor on that occasion, after much hesitation, and with great reluctance, that notwithstanding his frequent spontaneous communications to himself, and his series of gossiping and garrulous letters to Mr. Finlaison, from May 1816 to December 1817, a period of nearly twenty months, he was, during the whole of that period, under a pledge to Napoleon not to reveal the conversations that passed between them, unless they related to his escape! The disputes between O'Meara and the governor will be found best detailed in the correspondence printed in the Appendix to Mr. Forsyth's second volume, p. 469. Major Gorrequer was desired by the governor to take a note of the expressions used by O'Meara, and he put them down in the following words :: "Mr. O'Meara says he pledged his word to Napoleon Bonaparte not to reveal the conversations that passed between themselves, except they had a tendency to his (Napoleon Bonaparte's) escape, last May was a twelvemonth." He then shewed O'Meara what he had written, who read it, and said it was what he had expressed, and, if required, he would give it in his own handwriting. The governor then said, What, Sir! and you have thus thinking proper to apprise me of it until now; and you pledged yourself without consulting me about it, or even do not blush to avow it!" O'Meara answered, "I beg your pardon, Sir; I told you of it." This the governor immediately denied, and O'Meara did not persist in the assertion. Sir Hudson Lowe afterwards asked, "If you engaged your promise not to reveal any thing that passed in conversation between Napoleon Bonaparte and yourself, except what had a tendency to his escape, how came you to versations which had no tendency whatever to escape?" repeat to me all that you have mentioned of those conHe answered," Because you have asked me, and I thought they might be interesting to Government; but though I told you some parts, I did not tell you all: besides, I thought I might in some things depart from it [i.e. the promise] without impropriety.' The governor said that a person who had made such a promise was not fit to remain in such a situation; and after, in warm language, pointing out the impropriety of his conduct, which he characterized as dishonourable and uncandid towards Government and himself, he told hìm he did not wish him to remain in the house any longer, and desired him to quit it. It will however, I think, be generally felt that O'Meara was more to blame for than for making it in the first instance. The promise systematically violating his promise, when once made, might be an error of judgment; the breaking it was the deliberate breach of a solemn engagement. Now we submit that this is special pleading; and very bad special pleading. O'Meara had pledged himself to Napoleon not to act the spy upon him, and Napoleon had replied, "I don't bind you to secrecy: repeat what gossip you please, but act like a man of honour." Therefore O'Meara was quite right in repeating what gossip he thought unimportant, and also quite right in stating that he was pledged to submit to no questioning. A further imputation remains. Although O'Meara did not play the spy for Lowe, did he not do so for Lowe's masters? Mr. Forsyth continues thus: On the 23d, O'Meara wrote a long letter to Sir Hudson Lowe, which is nowhere noticed in his printed works. The reason of this no doubt was, that it would have been very difficult to do so without revealing to the world that he had given the pledge of secrecy to Napoleon which he so repeatedly violated. After saying that his principle was "to forget the conversations he held with his patients on leaving the room, unless as far as regarded his allegiance as a British officer to his sovereign and country;" and that, if he had consented to report to the governor verbatim his conversations with Bonaparte, he would have acted "a most base and dishonourable part," and, in fact, been "a spy," and a "mouton ;" and that "such conduct would cover his name with wellmerited infamy, and render him unfit for the society of any man of honour;" he thus proceeded to develope Lis conception of the duties of his office: "He who, clothed with the specious garb of a physician, insinuates himself into the confidence of his patient, and avails himself of the frequent opportunities and facilities which his situation necessarily presents of being near his person to wring, under the pretence of curing or alleviating his infirmities, and in that confidence which has been, from time immemorial, reposed by the sick in persons professing the healing art, disclosures of his patients' sentiments, for the purpose of afterwards betraying them, deserves most justly to be branded with the appellation of "mouton." To this sentence of condemnation upon the physician who violates his trust no exception can be taken; and out of his own mouth shall O'Meara be judged. We are lost in amazement at the effrontery of a man who could so write after he had deliberately, during the whole period of his residence at St. Helena, broken, not merely the implied agreement which, according to himself, tacitly subsists between the physician and his patient, but his express promise to Napoleon. So far from "forgetting conversations with his patients on leaving the room, he used to hurry to his apartments, where he was seen noting down in his journal all that had occurred. Moreover, he did not scruple afterwards to publish to the world the sayings of Napoleon, which he had heard from him solely through means of the access which he had to his privacy in the character of physician; and from time to time he sent off his narrative of conver sations with the exile, of the most confidential kind, to his friend at the Admiralty, to be by that friend communicated to the ministers of the Crown; so that it was clear to demonstration that either he had constantly and deliberately been in the habit of violating it. And here it may be convenient to mention, that not long afterwards Sir Hudson Lowe was officially made acquainted with the fact that O'Meara continued to forward his Mr. Goulburn wrote thus to Sir Hudson Lowe: Lord Bathurst thinks it proper that you should be informed letters to Mr. Finlaison; for on the 23d of January 1818 that this correspondence is still kept up; and that it is so with his lordship's knowledge; for as the letters received from Dr. O'Meara are regularly submitted to Lord Bathurst's perusal, he has thought it advisable not to do any thing which, by driving Dr. O'Meara to seek another channel of correspondence, might deprive Lord Bathurst of the knowledge of its contents, and of the objects with which it is evident that his communications are made." Now, albeit not accustomed to interfere in a quarrel between two Irishmen-for both O'Meara and Sir Hudson Lowe were natives of the emerald isle-we feel strongly impelled to take up the cudgels for the surgeon. In the first place, we must admit that he did write gossiping and garrulous letters to Mr. Finlaison, and that he knew that the details therein given were intended for the amusement of the Prince Regent and the English aristocracy. Mr. Wilson Croker (whose name, by some fatality, always crops out whenever any secret mine of official dirtiness is discovered about this time) appears to have been the instigator and manager of the correspondence. On the 3d July 1816 Mr. Finlaison writes to O'Meara thus : "Your letters of the 16th of March and 22d of April came duly to hand, and furnished a real feast to some very great folks here. I also received a letter from you on your first arrival, which was considered very interesting: not a line of any thing you have written to me since you sailed was ever made public. The moment your letters came they were given to Mr. Croker, who considered them extremely interesting, and circulated copies among the cabinet ministers; and he desires me to assure you that they never have been, nor shall they ever hereafter be, seen by any other person. I conjecture, also, that your letters have even amused His Royal Highness the Prince Regent: they are written with that discrimination, good sense, and naïveté, that they could not fail to be acceptable; and I am quite sure that they have done you a great deal of good at the Board, a proof of which is, that Captain Hamilton of the Havannah, and Sir E. Thornborough, reported in a public letter that, a few hours after the ship's arrival, a letter was inserted in the Portsmouth paper about Bonaparte, and that it had been traced that you were the author of it. Mr. Croker sent for me, and desired me to request you to be careful in respect to your private letters to any other person, as every thing now-a-days gets into the papers; but to me he repeated his hopes that you would write in full confidence, and in the utmost possible detail, all the anecdotes you can pick up, resting assured that none but the Government ever will see them, and to them they are and must be extremely interesting, as shewing the personal felings of your great state prisoner." Mr. Forsyth quotes no more of this letter, but we learn from one of the Governor's despatches that it concludes with a request to procure a scrap of Bonaparte's handwriting for Mr. Croker, "and, on the whole, manifests a kind of interest in every thing relating to the extraordinary personage referred to, which, if communicated to him, could not fail, I think, of proving in a certain degree flattering to him; and, with a personage of his artifice, lead, through Dr. O'Meara, to communications for the ear and observations of the Prince Regent himself." Of the conduct of Mr. Croker and his superiors there can, we conceive, exist but one opinion. They, at any rate, thought that they were suborning a spy who was to jot down for them all the agonies of their illustrious prisoner, and serve them up as a real feast," to gratify the miserable appetites of "very great folks:" and all this amusement was to be obtained for them by a sordid breach of the most sacred confidence. O'Meara's object, however, does not appear to have been one of such unmixed baseness as Mr. Forsyth wishes to make out. It probably had a threefold purpose: first, to obtain better appointments for himself from the ministers; secondly, to annoy and injure Sir Hudson Lowe, whom he and everybody hated; thirdly, to insinuate to the Prince Regent and the ministers the causes of complaint which Napoleon had. When he wrote the following, he doubtless had the first object in view : - "In fact, if the Government does not choose to give me what Bonaparte offered me himself, viz. 12,000 francs, and repeated once in a letter from General Montholon, which has been forwarded to the Admiralty, I must decline holding the situation any longer. If I must be a prisoner, it is only the hopes of emolument which will induce me to continue in this cage. You will perceive that the greatest part, if not the whole, of this letter would be unfit to meet the public eye, perhaps would not be altogether agreeable to the Government also: however, of this you are, of course, the best judge. I merely tell you in confidence of what really happened." In the long letter which O'Meara wrote to Finlaison on the 29th December 1816 he detailed Napoleon's desire to be allowed to reside in England-his inclination to drop his pretensions to a royal title, and to take a nom de voyage-his resentment at the governor having come in person to convey him news which he thought would afflict him, and to enjoy his torment. O'Meara then goes on to detail the new restrictions adopted by Sir Hudson Lowe, and proceeds :-"Since these new restrictions have been put in force, Bonaparte has never been out on horseback. For the last six weeks he has not stirred out of the house, except one evening for about ten minutes, and rarely quits his room or dines at table with the rest. This confinement has had a visible effect upon his health and appearance; and I have no doubt that if he persists in it, his existence will be closed in a few months, either by hydrothorax or apoplexy." He vindicates the emperor from all knowledge of the plot attributed to Las Cases; he repeats the emperor's fears lest the governor should seize upon his manuscripts; he states that Napoleon said, when he saw the governor and his staff surrounding the house, "Il me parut voir les anthropophages des iles de la mer de midi, qui dansent autour de leurs victimes avant de les devorer;" he mentions, with a somewhat hypocritical show of defending the governor, that that functionary had caused Napoleon great anxiety by detaining the papers of the emperor that were among those of Las Cases, not to examine them, but because he was too busy to think of returning them; and he ends this long letter of sixteen pages thus :— "I must confess that I am one of those who think that a great deal of unnecessary rigour has been practised towards him, as you may yourself conceive from the nature of the restrictions; and I know that such is the opinion of every officer on the island, except Sir Hudson's personal staff. Sir Hudson himself, indeed, appears to be conscious of it; within a few days he has taken away his prohibition against speaking, removed some of the sentinels, and rescinded his order about persons not being able to make use of the same pass to speak to any of his staff, and allow them to hold converse with him. Bonaparte asks that things should be put upon the same footing they were in Sir George Cockburn's time. Few, I believe, will doubt Sir George Cockburn's capacity and capability of placing him in as secure a position as any governor would desire. In fact, he was then just as secure as he is now, and was not tormented with unnecessary, frivolous, and annoying restrictions. "Sir Hudson has repeated again to me his prohibition of communication, during which, he obesrved that none of the ministers had any business to know what was going on about Bonaparte, except the one with whom he corresponded; and that such correspondence should go through him, and him alone; adding, that he had written to Lord Bathurst, to acquaint him that I had been in the habit of corresponding with you, and that I had furnished you with every information respecting Bonaparte, in order that he might take steps to prevent the same, adjoining [adding?], however, that he had done it in such a manner as not to do me any mischief. "By this you will be able to judge how requisite it must be not to make known to his Lordship that I still am a channel of communication; though it appears a little strange and unaccountable to me that Sir Hudson should be so dreadfully alarmed at the idea of His Majesty's ministers being made acquainted with the truth of what occurs with respect to a man who has made so much noise in the world, while at the same time he sends Pioutkowski and three others to disseminate, not only the truth, but gross exaggerations blended with it, through all Europe. Until I came to Saint Helena I never was aware that the ministers were not to be put in possession of whatever might regard state prisoners." Now there is not one word in this letter which Napoleon would not have wished to go forth to England; and although O'Meara is very importunate with his correspondent to prevent it getting into the papers, lest Napoleon should see it, it is by no means impossible that Napoleon saw the letter, or knew the purport of it, before it was sent. The same remark occurs upon a subsequent letter, wherein O'Meara transmitted to Croker the substance of a letter which Count Montholon wished him to have conveyed to Europe for publication. In a letter published in the Morning Chronicle" of the 3d of March 1823, Mr. Finlaison, speaking of a letter which he had received from O'Meara in July 1815, said, "Some expressions in this letter led me to doubt the prooffered to me by Mr. O'Meara, without the authority of priety of entertaining a correspondence of the nature my official superiors: I therefore thought proper to communicate the letter to Mr. Croker, who declined authorising such a correspondence without consulting Lord Melville. His Lordship, on being referred to, said that he saw no reason why I should not receive the letters which Mr. O'Meara might choose to write to me, and that it might even be advantageous to hear from an impartial and near observer the situation of Bonaparte and his suite. But in order that no duplicity should be practised on Mr. O'Meara, I was desired to apprise him that his letters would be seen by the ministers.' O'Meara refused to retain the letter, but read it. "I told Sir Hudson, this day, that Montholon had done so, and that he had given me the letter. He was very much displeased at the idea of its being made known, and also with me for having read it, so that I was obliged in my own defence to make known to him that I was authorised to make communications respecting Bonaparte to the Admiralty. He appeared surprised and annoyed at this, and said that it was not proper; that the Admiralty had nothing to do with what took place respecting him; that he did not communicate it to the • We say to Croker; for although Mr. Forsyth makes a quibble upon the subject, there can be no dispute that Croker was the real correspondent who received these letters, any more than there can be that he was the writer who afterwards so savagely attacked O'Meara in the Quarterly, and called him a spy. THE APOLOGY FOR SIR HUDSON LOWE. Duke of York; that it ought not even to be made known to any of the Cabinet Ministers, except the Secretary of State, with whom he corresponded himself; and that he would make some arrangements accordingly. He added, that my correspondence ought to go through him. I replied very respectfully, that as I had been in the habit of obeying those received from the Board of Admiralty, under whose orders I naturally was, I had not thought it improper to communicate to them such information and anecdotes as I thought they might be pleased with, submitting to him that it would be much better for me to resign the situation, which I was ready to do. To this he replied, he was far from desiring such a step, and said that the subject altogether required some deliberation, and thus the matter rests. Until, however, I have received directions from you not to correspond, I will continue to do so, or will, as I told him, resign a situation always delicate, and now peculiarly and embarrassingly so. The paltry gaoler and the prying spy, The staring stranger with his note-book nigh: Vain his complaint-my lord presents his bill; His food and wine were doled out duly still: Vain was his sickness-never was a clime So free from homicide-to doubt 's a crime. And the stiff surgeon who maintained his cause Hath lost his place, and gain'd the world's applause. Yet now that Mr. Forsyth's book has apThe present peared, we wonder to find that at least some portion of all this was true. generation had tacitly agreed to disbelieve O'Meara altogether. Exaggeration and malice We opened this work were patent in his book. with the full conviction that we should find a complete defence of the national honour, and a decisive answer to all the stories of the day. Upon the whole, we think that Mr. Forsyth Yet we find Mr. Forsyth-not indignantly has failed signally in his elaborate attempt to denying that any restriction was ever placed O'Meara did upon the quantity of food provided to the emdestroy the credit of O'Meara. peror-but proving that the French ladies and not love the French attendants of the emperor, but he seems to have succumbed to the in- gentlemen who had accompanied their master into captivity were gluttons and wine-bibbers fluence exerted over all around him by Napoleon. Prudence, lest he should be seduced-defending his hero by shewing that even beyond safe limits, or fear, lest the Montholons and Bertrands should learn his secret, might have kept him from shewing his letters to Napoleon; but the letters to Finlaison were written altogether in the interest of the prisoner his patient. "He frequently breaks out into invectives against the English Government for sending him to this island, which he pronounces (with some reason) to be the most Behold the English detestable spot in the universe. Government,' said he, gazing around at the frightful and This is their stupendous rocks which encompassed him. liberality to the unfortunate, who, confiding in what he so blindly imagined to be their national character, in an evil hour gave himself up to them.'" It was by his agency that exclamations such as these reached the ears of the Prince Regent and his ministers. O'Meara used the licence which the emperor gave him, and, quoad Napoleon, we think he used it fairly. He repeated what, in his opinion, the emperor would not have objected that he should repeat. Mr. Forsyth is not less unsuccessful in his defence than he has been in his attack. He has succeeded in disproving, what no temperate man ever believed-stories of threatened violence, of studied insult, and of compelled hunNo one seriously credited that Sir Hudson ger. Lowe, in the presence of a captive, put his hand upon his sword as a gesture of menace: no one gave much faith to the stories of the bust of young Napoleon, to the tale of the snuff-box, or to the complaint that the necessaries of life failed at Longwood. It was abandoned to the poets to believe and sing about O'Meara thought they used too many pounds of |