A Freemasons’ Lodge, Enfants de Mars, was opened and worked at Tiverton about 1810, of which the first and only master was Alexander de la Motte, afterwards Languages Master at Blundell’s School. The Masons met in a room in Frog Street, now Castle Street, until, two of the officers on parole in the town escaping, the authorities prohibited the meetings. The Tyler of the Lodge, Rivron by name, remained in Tiverton after peace was made, and for many years worked as a slipper-maker. He had been an officer’s servant.
The next writer, the Baron de Bonnefoux, we have already met in the hulks. His reminiscences of parole life are among the most interesting I have come across, and are perhaps the more so because he has a good deal of what is nice and kind to say of us.
On his arrival in England in 1806, Bonnefoux was sent on parole to Thame in Oxfordshire. Here he occupied himself in learning English, Latin, and drawing, and in practising fencing. In the Mauritius, Bonnefoux and his shipmates had become friendly with a wealthy Englishman settled there under its French Government at l’Île de France. This gentleman came to Thame, rented the best house there for a summer, and continually entertained the French officer prisoners. The Lupton family, of one son and two daughters, the two Stratford ladies, and others, were also kind to them, whilst a metropolitan spirit was infused into the little society by the visits of a Miss Sophia Bode from London, so that with all these pretty, amiable girls the Baron managed to pass his unlimited leisure very pleasantly. On the other hand, there was an element of the population of Thame which bore a traditional antipathy to Frenchmen which it lost no opportunity of exhibiting. It was a manufacturing section, composed of outsiders, between whom and the natives an ill-feeling had long existed, and it was not long before our Baron came to an issue with them. One of these men pushed against Bonnefoux as he was walking in the town, and the Frenchman retaliated. Whereupon the Englishman called on his friends, who responded. Bonnefoux, on his side, called up his comrades, and a regular mêlée, in which sticks, stones, and fists were freely used, ensued, the immediate issue of which is not reported. Bonnefoux brought his assailant up before Smith, the Agent, who shuffled about the matter, and recommended the Baron to take it to Oxford, he in reality being in fear of the roughs. Bonnefoux expressed his disgust, Smith lost his temper, and raised his cane, in reply to which the Baron seized a poker. Bonnefoux complained to the Transport Office, the result of which was that he was removed to Odiham in Hampshire, after quite a touching farewell to his English friends and his own countrymen, receiving a souvenir of a lock of hair from ‘la jeune Miss Harriet Stratford aux beaux yeux bleus, au teint éblouissant, à la physionomie animée, à la taille divine’.
The populace of Odiham he found much pleasanter than that of Thame, and as the report of the part he had taken in the disturbance at Thame had preceded him, he was enthusiastically greeted. The French officers at Odiham did their best to pass the time pleasantly. They had a Philharmonic Society, a Freemasons’ Lodge, and especially a theatre to which the local gentry resorted in great numbers, Shebbeare, the Agent, being a good fellow who did all in his power to soften the lot of those in his charge, and was not too strict a construer of the laws and regulations by which they were bound.
Bonnefoux made friends everywhere; he seems to have been a light-hearted genial soul, and did not spare the ample private means he had in helping less fortunate fellow prisoners. For instance, a naval officer named Le Forsiney became the father of an illegitimate child. By English law he had to pay six hundred francs for the support of the child, or be imprisoned. Bonnefoux paid it for him.
In June 1807, an English friend, Danley, offered to take him to Windsor, quietly of course, as this meant a serious violation of parole rules. They had a delightful trip: Bonnefoux saw the king, and generally enjoyed himself, and got back to Odiham safely. He said nothing about this escapade until September, when he was talking of it to friends, and was overheard by a certain widow, who, having been brought up in France, understood the language, as she sat at her window above. Now this widow had a pretty nurse, Mary, to whom Bonnefoux was ‘attracted’, and happening to find an unsigned letter addressed to Mary, in which was: ‘To-morrow, I shall have the grief of not seeing you, but I shall see your king,’ she resolved upon revenge. A short time after, there appeared in a newspaper a paragraph to the effect that a foreigner with sinister projects had dared to approach the king at Windsor. The widow denounced Bonnefoux as the man alluded to: the Agent was obliged to examine the matter, the whole business of the trip to Windsor came out, and although Danley took all the blame on himself, and tried to shield Bonnefoux, the order came that the latter was at once to be removed to the hulks at Chatham.
In the meanwhile a somewhat romantic little episode had happened at Odiham. Among the paroled prisoners there was a lieutenant (Aspirant de première classe) named Rousseau, who had been taken in the fight between Admiral Duckworth and Admiral Leissegnes off San Domingo in February, 1806. His mother, a widow, was dying of grief for him, and Rousseau resolved to get to her, but would not break his parole by escaping from Odiham. So he wrote to the Transport Office that if he was not arrested and put on board a prison ship within eight days, he would consider his parole as cancelled, and would act accordingly, his resolution being to escape from any prison ship on which he was confined, which he felt sure he could do, and so save his parole. Accordingly, he was arrested and sent to Portsmouth.
Bonnefoux, pending his removal to Chatham, was kept under guard at the George in Odiham, but he managed to get out, hid for the night in a new ditch, and early the next morning went to a prisoner’s lodging-house in the outskirts of Odiham, and remained there three days. Hither came Sarah Cooper, daughter of a local pastry-cook, no doubt one of the dashing young sailor’s many chères amies. She had been informed of his whereabouts by his friends, and told him she would conduct him to Guildford.
The weather was very wet, and Sarah was in her Sunday best, but said that she did not mind the rain so long as she could see Bonnefoux. Says the latter:
‘Je dis alors à Sara que je pensais qu’il pleuvrait pendant la nuit. Elle répliqua que peu lui importait; enfin j’objectai cette longue course à pied, sa toilette et ses capotes blanches, car c’était un dimanche, et elle leva encore cette difficulté en prétendant qu’elle avait du courage et que dès qu’elle avait appris qu’elle pouvait me sauver elle n’avait voulu ni perdre une minute pour venir me chercher. . . . Je n’avais plus un mot à dire, car pendant qu’elle m’entraînait d’une de ses petites mains elle me fermait gracieusement la bouche.’