Napoleon--Dr Barry O'Meara | Autograph letter signed, reporting Napoleon's conversation, to Sir Pulteney Malcolm, 1817

Dr Barry O'Meara, surgeon to Napoleon on St Helena

Autograph letter signed, to Admiral Sir Pulteney Malcolm

reporting Napoleon's account of his last conversation with Admiral and Lady Malcolm in which he attacked Sir Pulteney for taking the side of Sir Hudson Lowe, 2 pages, 4to, Longwood, 23 June 1817, ink smudge

"General Bonaparte...told me that he had a very long conversation with you about the Governor's conduct towards him, but said "I found the Admiral was one of [the Governor's] most zealous defenders. That he supposed him in every measure. That you had even had endeavoured to justify him in all his measures and went so far in doing so that he had told you that you were like all the rest of the English, too much an Egotist, and that not being himself an Englishman he had no justice to expect from the English".

Admiral Malcolm had left St Helena on the expiration of his command in June 1817. Malcolm had treated Napoleon with considerably more courtesy and sympathy than Hudson Lowe, but this had evidently failed to win him the respect of the Emperor. It seems that the Admiral could do no right with Lowe either; see lot 116, where the same conversation is discussed.

PROVENANCE:

Lazarus collection; Sotheby's, London, 15 May 1996, lot 243