This book, one of a series of 12, is only available from the Longwood House souvenir shop on the island of St Helena. It contains parallel French and English text, as well as numerous pictures, newspaper cuttings and historical documents. The author rivals Napoleon in his capacity for hard work, and has over the years done a tremendous amount of research on his subject, rather more than is normal for such a book, as the 369 footnotes testify.
From relatively humble origins, Lowe received the job of guarding the most illustrious person of his age, and probably of many ages, and this gave him an inflated sense of his own importance. He came to believe that he was at least Napoleon’s equal, and perhaps his superior. With an undistinguished military career, Lowe had gained for himself a reputation for good foreign language and writing skills. His promotion was based on his abilities as an administrator and an observer, on his loyalism and obedience, and on the fact that nobody of suitable rank could be found to carry out such an assignment.
The author provides an apt judgement on why Sir Hudson Lowe was such a good choice for the Lord Bathurst and the British Government.
“.. the man Bathurst needed to subject Napoleon to the petty restrictions, even humiliations, he wished to inflict on him, without exposing himself to the opprobrium of opposition and history. Two centuries after the events, the appointment of a civil servant reputed to be meticulous, undiscerning, quarrelsome, vain, petty, zealous and stubborn looks like a fool’s bargain. If one had to decide who was to blame, one should probably look to those who invited him to the table of the great and powerful.”
The book reveals a sound knowledge of the British or more accurately English society from which Lowe sprang: a highly ordered, corrupt society dominated by a small oligarchy, ruthless in its suppression of dissent and desirous of turning back the ideas of the French Revolution of which Napoleon had become the symbol. It correctly identifies Lowe as an ultra-loyalist Tory, whose political views would have been reinforced by his association with the absolutist continental rulers to whom he was often attached during the wars against Napoleon. He was in short the most loyal of subjects of George III and the Prince Regent, and of the aristocratic world in which he thought he had secured a foothold. In his entourage on St Helena he sought people with similar views to himself, and was most suspicious of those known to be sympathetic to the Whigs and to Napoleon.
The study takes issue with those who see Lowe as a vindictive gaoler as well as those who see him as the victim of cruel manipulation by Napoleon and his entourage. It paints a picture of a well meaning but flawed man, appointed to a job for which he was not suited, who let his sudden promotion rather go to his head, and who was never able to free himself from the delusions acquired from his appointment. Much of the material is new, particularly for the period after his return from St Helena when Lowe was never able to get a senior position that matched the St Helena appointment, and had to withstand increasingly unpleasant and often public shows of unpopularity, which the author describes as “mobbing”.
The most astonishing revelation of this study was the amount of wealth that Lowe gained from his five years in charge of Napoleon, despite losing a significant amount from fraud. As this book explains, this helped reinforce the delusion which was a feature of his conduct both on St Helena and after. In 1824 he continually changed his mind as to whether to accept the post of Governor of Antigua, and his frequent changes often appeared to be related to decisions of the local Assembly to lower and then raise the salary. Despite not taking the job he still submitted an account for £302 for expenses, around £27,000 in 2018 money! The author also reveals Lowe’s attempts to get back-pay from the East India Company as well as pay for the year after he left the island. The Company resisted, but for some reason the British Government in the person of Lord Bathurst acceded to his wishes.
Perhaps the most telling and amusing part is the account of his ten months long ostentatious overland journey with his family from Paris to Ceylon to take up his appointment as Lieutenant Governor, in the forlorn expectation that he would shortly thereafter receive the appointment as Governor. During the whole of this trip Lowe basked in the temporary title the Govt had given him of Lieutenant General of His Gracious Majesty, but he was not always as well received as he wished in the capitals of Europe. In Vienna the Emperor Franz refused to see him, and Metternich encouraged him to leave the city where Napoleon’s son then resided!
Among the belongings auctioned after his death was a lock of the King of Rome’s hair, the subject of over 1000 pages of correspondence while he was on St Helena, which had supposedly been destroyed. There were also other articles bearing inscriptions “N” and “Emperor” which would have got anyone severe penalties had they been written by anyone on the island during Lowe’s term as Governor.
Finally, I have learned a new word from this book, antonomasia, the use of a proper name to describe the characteristics of a person. According to Hazlitt (1826) a “Sir Hudson Lowe” is someone who appears
“ so much the creatures of the head and so little of the heart, they are so cold, so lifeless, so mechanical, so much governed by calculation, and so little by impulse …”.Such was Lowe’s reputation that the term was even used in the House of Commons during Lowe’s lifetime.
This is an important, well researched book. It is a pity that it is so difficult to obtain.
ps. I also learned that Sir Hudson Lowe was a couple of centimetres shorter than Napoleon! The British propaganda about Napoleon's height is a subject I have often referred to over the years!.
