Landed at Jamestown on 17 October 1815, he refused to sleep in the town, where crowds had gathered to see him. Riding inland, he caught sight of a terraced garden on the flank of a ravine, with pomegranates and roses: the property of William Balcombe, an East India Company agent. He asked to stay in the garden pavilion rather than in an official house.
He remained there from 18 October to 10 December 1815, in two rudimentary rooms, while Longwood was being fitted out. Those two months were the least unhappy of the exile. The younger Balcombe daughter, Betsy, thirteen, spoke a little French, was not afraid of him and teased him; he played along, played cards and blind man's buff, let her hide his sword. She published her recollections in 1844.
The Balcombes paid for that familiarity. Suspected by Hudson Lowe of acting as an intermediary, William Balcombe was expelled from the island with his family in 1818. Betsy ended her life in Australia, where a town bears the name of the property.
The main house burned in the nineteenth century, but the garden pavilion survives. In 1959 the Balcombe-Dallas family gave it to France; it is now managed, like Longwood and the Valley of the Tomb, by the French consul on Saint Helena, and houses a small museum. It is the third and most discreet of the French properties on the island.
