The Tragedy of St. Helena | Page 8

who had completely governed the destinies of Europe for twenty years. Napoleon with his eagle eye and penetrating vision measured the man's character and capabilities at a glance. He said to his friends, "That man is malevolent; his eye is that of a hyena." Subsequent events only intensified this belief.
Perhaps the best that can be said of Lowe is that he possessed distorted human intelligence. He was amiable when he pleased, a good business man, so it is said, and the domestic part of his life has never been assailed; but it would be a libel on all decency to say that he was suited to the delicate and responsible post he was sent to fulfil. In fact, all his actions prove him to have been without an atom of tact, judgment, or administrative quality, and his nature had a big unsympathetic flaw in it. The fact is, there are indications that his nature was warped from the beginning, and that he was just the very kind of man who ought never to have been sent to a post of such varied responsibilities. His appointment shows how appallingly ignorant or wicked the Government, or Bathurst, were in their selection of him.
He was a monomaniac pure and simple. If they thought him best suited to pursue a policy of vindictiveness, then their choice was perfect, though it was a violation of all moral law. If, on the other hand, they were not aware of his unsuitableness, they showed either carelessness or incapacity which will rank them beneath mediocrity, and by their act they stamped the English name with ignominy. And yet there is a pathos at the end of it all when he was brought to see the cold, inanimate form of the dead monarch. He was seized with fear, smitten with the dread of retribution, and exclaimed to Montholon, "His death is my ruin."[4]
Forsyth has done his utmost to justify the actions of Hudson Lowe, but no one can read his work without feeling that the historian was conscious all through of an abortive task. He reproduces in vain the instructions and correspondence between Lowe and his Government, and the letters and conversations with Napoleon and members of his household, and deduces from these that the Governor could not have acted otherwise than in the manner he did. It is easy to twist words used either in conversations or letters into meanings which they were never intended to convey, but there are too many evidences of cold-blooded outbursts of tyrannical intent to be set aside, and these make it impossible to regard Sir Hudson Lowe in any other light than that of a petty little despot.
He had ability of a kind. Napoleon said he was eminently suited to "command bandits or deserters," and tells him in that memorable verbal conversation which arose through Lowe requesting that 200,000 francs per annum should be found as a contribution towards the expenses at Longwood: "I have never heard your name mentioned except as a brigand chief. You never suffer a day to pass without torturing me with your insults." This undoubtedly was a bitter attack, and the plainspoken words used must have wounded Lowe intensely. Probably Napoleon himself, on reflection, thought them too severe, even though they may be presumed to be literally true, and it may be taken for granted that they would never have been uttered but for the spiteful provocation.
A more discerning man would have foreseen that he could not treat a great being like the late Emperor of the French as though he were a Corsican brigand without having to pay a severe penalty. An ordinary prisoner might have submitted with amiable resignation to the disciplinary methods which, to the oblique vision of Sir Hudson Lowe, seemed to be necessary, but to treat the Emperor as though he were in that category was a perversion of all decency, and no one but a Hudson Lowe would have attempted it. It is quite certain that the dethroned arbiter of Europe never, in his most exalted period, treated any of his subordinates with such airs of majesty as St. Helena's Governor adopted towards him.
Lowe seems to have had an inherent notion that the position in which he was placed entitled him to pursue a policy of unrelenting severity, and that homage should be paid as his reward. He thirsted for respect to be shown himself, and was amazed at the inordinate ingratitude of the French in not recognising his amiable qualities. It was his habit to remind them that but for his clemency in carrying out the instructions of Bathurst and those who acted with him, their condition could be made unendurable. He was incapable of grasping the lofty personality of the persecuted guest of England.
The popular, though erroneous, idea that