Dr Anne Whitehead used her visit to St Helena
to obtain records from the St Helena Government archives which helped in her research. 

My wonderful week in St Helena in late August this year is now – some weeks later and back in Australia – more than vividly alive to me. Hundreds of digital photos of archive documents sit in my computer slowly being transposed into text to reveal more about the life and times of the man and his family who, for some years now, have captured my imagination.

In a frantic week’s research in the Archives, aided by my partner Allan who acted as a forward scout, and supported by the guidance of Lacosta McDaniel and Ricky Fowler, I photographed page after page of archival documents revealing aspects of life on St Helena in the early 19th century.

The story of William Balcombe and his family directly connects St Helena to Australia. Balcombe was a distinctive figure on the island, first in 1805 as a trader in Jamestown (initially in partnership with William John Burchell) and then in 1807 he was appointed Superintendent of Public Sales for the Honourable English East India Company. By a stroke of extraordinary fortune he played host to Napoleon Bonaparte for eight weeks at the Briars, while Longwood was being made ready. During this time his younger daughter Betsy, pretty, impudent, with an irrepressible sense of humour, formed a famous friendship with the exiled emperor, who found her boldness amusing and occasionally alarming. In December 1815 Balcombe became purveyor to the French entourage at Longwood, a role which gave him unprecedented access and which continued until his departure from the island in March 1818. He left ostensibly because of his wife’s ill health but under suspicion of being too partisan with the French. Later in the year Governor Hudson Lowe intercepted correspondence which he claimed as evidence of this and Balcombe was not welcome to return to the island.

It took William Balcombe five years to restore his standing with the British Government, exerting every connection he had. Rumours persisted that he was the illegitimate son of the Prince Regent who, in 1820, was crowned George IV. Certainly Balcombe had an influential patron in Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, who formerly had been private secretary to the Prince and for many years was Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod in the House of Lords.

Balcombe’s rehabilitation was so astonishingly successful that in 1823 he was appointed the first Colonial Treasurer of the fledgling colony of New South Wales. The family (including Betsy, by then a deserted wife with a baby daughter) arrived in Sydney in April 1824. Balcombe was favoured by the colonial government with a handsome house in Sydney and an extensive land grant at Bungonia, some 120 miles to the south-west. However, two years later he was embroiled in a scandal involving his deposit of Treasury funds in the insecure Bank of NSW. He received a formal rebuke from Whitehall which contributed to his declining health. He died in March 1829.

Betsy made a brief trip to England to petition the British government for a pension for her mother, but failed in the attempt and came back to Sydney. Finally, in 1834, she and her daughter returned to live in London while her three brothers remained all their lives in Australia. William worked land south of Sydney with convict labour, Thomas gained distinction as an artist and Alexander became a successful farmer and country squire, part of the colonial establishment of the new state of Victoria.

In London, Betsy – Mrs Lucia Elizabeth Abell - received visits from the former emperor’s brother, Joseph Bonaparte, and his nephew Louis Napoleon. In 1844 she published a memoir, Recollections of the Emperor Napoleon During the First Three Years of His Captivity on the Island of St Helena. A charming, whimsical and sometimes historically unreliable story, it was something of a bestseller and went through three editions. But by 1852, when her former young visitor claimed the French throne as Napoleon III, she was living in genteel penury. She sought his help and the Emperor offered her the dubious gift of a thousand acres of land in the French colonial conquest, Algeria, in gratitude for her kindness to his uncle in exile. She never visited it.

It has to be said that Betsy’s father, William Balcombe, occupies only a small niche – as a trader and East India Company official – in the long, colourful history of St Helena, although he takes on a larger – and still ambiguous - role during three years of Napoleon’s captivity.

However, in an odd way he also played a part in both St Helena’s and South Africa’s natural history because of his connection with the young botanist, William John Burchell. It was at Balcombe’s instigation that Burchell came to St Helena in 1805 in an unlikely business partnership. The commercial and personal relationship soon failed; Burchell became the island’s schoolteacher, but his passion was his study of the indigenous flora of St Helena and he undertook various scientific and agricultural experiments with Governor Beatson’s support. In 1810 he moved to the Cape Colony and in 1811-12 made intrepid expeditions north to the edge of the Kalahari Desert, collecting and classifying literally thousands of birds, plants and insects and, as a talented artist, sketching many of them. He was the first to describe a species of zebra which was named in his honour and his Travels in the Interior of Southern Africa became a famous text.

The final chapter of William Balcombe’s life was enacted in Australia, but he never forgot his connection with and affection for the island of St Helena and for his former beautiful home and garden just a mile and a half up the Sidepath from Jamestown. He called his farm in NSW at Bungonia ‘The Briars’. His youngest son, Alexander Beatson Balcombe, gave the same name to his farm near Melbourne, and while Thomas the artist perversely insisted on calling his house ‘Napoleon Cottage’, ‘The Briars’ name was taken up again for the home of  his son William in Sydney.

Balcombe’s great-granddaughter, Dame Mabel Brookes, brought the tradition full circle when in 1957 she visited St Helena. She purchased the Briars site (though the main house had been destroyed by termites) and the Pavilion where Napoleon had stayed and, in 1959, in a ceremony at Malmaison in Paris, she deeded it to the French nation. It is now one of the French Domains of St Helena along with Longwood House and the Tomb; I was delighted during my visit to meet their custodian, the French Honorary Consul and Napoleonic scholar, Michel Dancoisne-Martineau.

In turn ‘The Briars’ at Mount Martha near Melbourne, the farmhouse of Alexander Beatson Balcombe, was bequeathed by his descendants to the people of Victoria as a National Trust property. Today it is a museum of Napoleonic and early Australian colonial history, managed by a small staff and an active and dedicated group of volunteers. In March 2006, during the Commonwealth Games held in Melbourne, they enjoyed playing host at The Briars to a visit from the official athletic team of St Helena, a long distance runner and two shooters accompanied by Mr. Gilbert Yon.

My time has run out and work on my Balcombe book awaits, including more deciphering of the historical treasures from the Jamestown Archives. But what will stay with me for life are my pleasurable memories of my visit to St Helena, the warm welcome from Barbara and Basil George, the vividness and majesty of the island’s landscape and the kindness and generosity of its people.

Related Information

Member Reports May 2003

Member Reports October 2003

Member Reports January 2004

Member Reports April/May 2004

Member Reports August 2004

Member Reports February 2005

Member Reports July 2006

Member Reports December 2006

Member Reports March 2007