Exploring an island and its post-Waterloo prisoner

The first time Napoleon was defeated, the victorious powers sent him to the island of Elba, just off the Italian coast. With more than a touch of mockery, they permitted the former emperor to “rule” over an island a tiny fraction the size of his native Corsica. After his daring escape from Elba and triumphant comeback, it is hardly any wonder that the British decided to take no chances after his defeat at Waterloo. This time, he was consigned as a prisoner to the truly isolated island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic. Here, the 46-year-old former emperor lived out the remaining half-dozen years of a life that was ended either by stomach cancer or arsenic poisoning.

To the British -- and the others who had fought so hard to stop his expansionist warfare -- Napoleon Bonaparte was “a monster.” Yet, he was also a man of enormous intelligence, courage and charisma. To this day, he inspires much of the love (and hate) he did in his own time. He brought order to a France shattered by the excesses of revolution, and because he shared many of the revolutionary ideals, he was a staunch opponent of slavery and a champion of religious tolerance.

Yet, by such undemocratic acts as proclaiming himself emperor, he lost the allegiance of former admirers like Beethoven, who furiously rubbed out the dedication to him on the cover of his “Eroica” Symphony. Napoleon also had a habit of putting his relatives on foreign thrones he had recently made vacant. Back home in France, he had a secret police keep tabs on political dissent. Judged by modern liberal standards, he may look flawed. Yet in his own time and for many decades after his death in 1821, Napoleon embodied the ideal of the self-made man of genius bursting through the confines of tradition and caste.

Brooks Hansen’s novel “The Monsters of St. Helena” draws on the well-known story of Napoleon’s last exile and the friendship that sprang up between him and Betsy Balcombe, the younger daughter of a local family who played host to him during the months when his permanent abode, Longwood, was being readied for him. The 14-year-old Betsy, who would later write a memoir, “Recollections of the Emperor Napoleon,” under her married name, Mrs. L.E. Abell, seems to have been rather a hoydenish girl whose candor, impulsiveness and lack of politesse the former emperor found refreshing.

This is an innately engaging story, and Hansen tells it appealingly. Like the other islanders, Betsy is initially horrified and fascinated at the prospect of getting to see the “monster” Bonaparte. Ever since she was a little girl, she’s imagined him as “a gangly giant in a black cocked hat, long arms and legs, and a little body like a spider ... a great long nose and one eye in the middle of his forehead, shooting flame. She knows this isn’t how he really looks, but ... she can’t help thinking of it, this monstrous, spiderlike creature who’d cast a spell on all the French, and they had simply followed him, like the rats of Hamelin.” The island’s adults think much the same. Only the frail, elderly, arthritic Mr. Huffington, tutor to Betsy’s two little brothers, nurtures a secret worshipful passion for the emperor, whom he regards as a champion of liberty, equality and the abolition of prejudice.

From the moment she sets eyes on the exiled leader, Betsy’s view is changed utterly: “She has never seen anything, or anyone, so noble and imposing.... But it is his expression that entrances her. He looks at them ... directly, his features perfectly cold, immovable, and yet prowling behind them is something she recognizes instantly: play.... His clear blue eyes catch hers, and she sees it again -- he smiles. He has a very sly smile, but it lights the pallor of his face like a lamp. And this light seems to light the room.” His effect on the worshipful Huffington is even more powerful: “Their eyes meet, releasing such a sudden burst of adrenaline through the tutor’s aged frame, he swoons. His knees buckle. But for his grasp upon the cane he would surely crumple to the ground.”

Before long most of the other inhabitants of St. Helena are, if not equally smitten, certainly quite charmed by the man they once thought a monster. Napoleon is even more gracious toward the island’s population of Africans, Javanese and Malays, many of them slaves. Toby, the Balcombes’ capable and dignified Javanese gardener, becomes a particular object of his attention: Bonaparte dreams -- unrealistically, alas -- of setting him free. Meanwhile, within Napoleon’s own entourage of valets, stewards, cooks and the handful of titled folk who have accompanied him, petty rivalries and discontent are brewing.

Hansen’s ambition is not simply to offer a fictionalized rendering of a minor episode in the life of a major historical figure. Focusing only on the first few months of Napoleon’s exile, he seems less interested in Napoleon per se than in the encounter between him and the islanders -- and the story of the island itself: its geological history; its discovery in 1502 by a Portuguese commodore; and the legendary fate of its first “monster,” Fernando Lopez, a 16th century Portuguese condemned as a traitor, punished by mutilation and consigned to St. Helena.

Lopez’s legend has taken hold of the imaginations of the island’s slaves, some of whom believe they have seen him. His story has passed into local lore, ritually reenacted by Javanese shadow puppets in clandestine gatherings among the slaves, who understandably do not wish to upset the local clergy by calling attention to their “heathenish” ways. Hansen’s rendition of the shadow puppet play is adroit and poignant, but his portrayals of the nonwhite islanders are thin, flat and lifeless.

Resounding through this novel is the plangent theme of isolation. It’s not only that the island is so far from anywhere else or that its human inhabitants -- exiles, prisoners, slaves and even the prosperous British expatriates -- feel cut off from the world. Contra John Donne, in this novel almost everyone is an island and even love and devotion are not enough to surmount the problem. Napoleon’s loyal followers are not boundlessly loyal; Huffington’s plan to help the emperor escape exists only in his own confused mind; and Betsy, girlishly convinced that she is the only one to “understand” the emperor, has mistaken infatuation for comprehension. A commendable book in many ways, “The Monsters of St. Helena” is still a little closer to being a graceful literary exercise than a fully realized work of art.