A biscuit's throw from the foot of the ladder, and facing the public gardens, stands the sedate, old-fashioned house where Napoleon spent the first few nights after his arrival on the island. It is a prim, two-story residence, the sombreness of its snuff-coloured plaster relieved by white stone trimmings and window-sills—just such a place, in fact, as the British colonists built by the hundreds in our own New England towns. By one of the most remarkable coincidences of which I have ever heard, Napoleon was given the same bedroom which had been occupied by the Duke of Wellington—then Sir Arthur Wellesley—on his homeward voyage from India only a few years before.
Leaving Jamestown in its gloomy, rock-walled ravine, we followed the incredibly rough high-road which bumps and jolts and twists and turns and climbs back and up onto the table-land which forms, as it were, the roof of the island. The deeper we penetrated into the interior the more luxuriant the vegetation became. The dry, barren, soilless, lichen-coated rocks of the coast zone gave way to grassy valleys abloom with English gorse and broom and dotted with the bright green of willows and the dark green of firs, and these merged, in turn, into a land of bamboos and bananas, of oranges and lemons and date-palms, where the vegetation was so luxuriant and tropical as to give it almost the appearance of a botanic garden. I know, indeed, of no other place in the world where one can pass through three distinct zones of vegetation in the course of an hour's drive, the first few miles into the interior of Saint Helena being, so far as the scenery is concerned, like a journey from the rocky, desolate shores of Labrador, through the pine forests and fertile farm-lands of New England and New York, and so southward into the essentially tropical vegetation of lower Florida.
The road wound on and on, uncovering new beauties at every turn. Cheerful, low-roofed bungalows peeped out at us from gardens ablaze with camelias, fuchsias, and roses; through the vistas formed by fig, pear, and guava orchards we caught glimpses of prosperous-looking stone farm-houses whose thick walls and high gables showed that they dated from the Dutch occupation; passing above a tiny sylvan valley, our driver pointed out the rambling Balcombe place, where the Emperor lived for some weeks while Longwood was being prepared for his occupancy, and in the box-bordered gardens of which he made quiet love to his host's pretty daughter. In the same valley, not a pistol-shot away, are the whitewashed, broad-verandaed quarters of the Eastern Telegraph Company's force of operators—tennis-courts, cricket-fields, and a swimming-pool set in a lawn of emerald velvet serving to make the enforced exile of these young Englishmen, who relay the news of the world between Europe and the Cape, a not unpleasant one.
Steeper and steeper became the road; scantier and less luxuriant the vegetation, until at last we emerged upon a barren, wind-swept table-land. A farm-yard gate barred our road, but at the impatient crack of the driver's whip a small brown maiden hastened from a near-by lodge to open it, curtseying to us prettily as we rattled through. Three minutes' drive across a desolate, gorse-covered moor, and our driver pulled up sharply at a gate in a scraggy privet hedge surrounding just such a ramshackle, weather-beaten farm-house as you find by the hundreds scattered along the coast of Maine. “Longwood,” he remarked laconically, pointing with his whip. Convinced that I could not have heard aright, I asked him over again, for, despite all the accounts I had read of the mean surroundings amid which the Emperor ended his days, I could not bring myself to believe that this miserable cottage, with its sunken roof and lichen-coated walls, could have sheltered for more than half a decade the conqueror of Europe, the master of the Tuileries and Fontainebleau and Versailles, the man whose troopers had stabled their horses in every capital of the Continent.
Longwood House is an old-fashioned, rambling cottage, only one story high, unless you count the quarters improvised for the members of the Emperor's suite in the garret, which were lighted by means of small windows cut in the shingle roof. The house is built in the form of a T, the entrance, which is reached by four or five stone steps and a tiny latticed veranda, being represented by the bottom of the letter, while the dining-room, kitchens, and offices are represented by the top. Originally the dwelling of a peasant farmer, at the time Napoleon reached the island it was being used as a sort of shooting-box by the lieutenant-governor, the present front of the house being hastily added to form a reception-room for the Emperor. In addition to this salle de réception, where you are asked to sign the visitor' book by the old French soldier who is the official guardian of the place, there is a drawing-room, a dining-room, the Emperor's study, his bedroom, bath, and dressing-room—all small, ill-lighted, damp, and cheerless. Practically the entire lower floor of the house was used by Napoleon, the members of his entourage—marshals, ministers, and courtiers, remember, who were accustomed to the life of the most brilliant court in Europe—being accommodated in tiny, unventilated cubby-holes directly under the eaves. With the exception of two or three small pier-glasses, the house is now quite destitute of furniture, though in other respects it is kept religiously as it was in Napoleon's time, even the faded blue wall-paper, sprinkled with golden stars, having been carefully preserved. On the walls of the various rooms are notices in French and English indicating the purposes to which they were put during the imperial occupancy. Between two windows of the reception-room, where the Emperor's bed was removed from his bedroom a few days before his death because of the better light, stands a marble bust made from the cast taken immediately after his death, which, barring the one made by Canova during his life, is the only likeness of Napoleon admittedly correct. Without the house is the small and unkept garden in which the Emperor walked and sometimes worked, the arbour under which he spent so many hours, and the cement-lined fish-pond which he built with his own hands. Inside or out, there is not one suggestion of colour, of comfort, or of cheer: it is a prison-house and nothing more.
Near the bottom of the brown and windy hill on which Longwood stands is Geranium Valley, which contains the tomb, or rather the cenotaph, of the Emperor. It was by Napoleon's own wish that his body was buried in this exquisite spot, close beside the spring at which he so often used to drink and amid the wild geraniums of which he was so fond. The famous willow-tree still overshadows the little grave-space, which is enclosed by a high iron railing and a carefully trimmed hedge of box, while masses of flowers give brightness to a spot hallowed by many memories, for it was in this shady glen that the Emperor passed the most peaceful hours of his exile and it was here that he rested for twenty years until France brought him back in triumph to his final resting-place under the great gilt dome of Les Invalides.
Longwood House. “This miserable cottage, with its sunken roof and lichen-coated walls, sheltered for more than half a decade the conqueror of Europe.”