Making Napoleonic Memory in Australia: The Dame Mabel Brookes Collection with Dr Emma Gleadhill

The Briars homestead and wildlife sanctuary on the Mornington Peninsula has an unusual connection to Napoleon. As the story goes, following his defeat at Waterloo in 1815, Napoleon spent the first two months of his captivity in the home of East India Company official William Balcombe and his family, known as The Briars on St Helena. In 1824, the family moved to Australia following Balcombe’s appointment as treasurer of NSW. The son, Alexander, settled on the Mornington Peninsula naming this estate ‘The Briars’. The daughter, Betsy, drew upon her friendship with Napoleon as a young girl to write Recollections of the Emperor Napoleon (1844), her account of the playful man behind the Emperor.

In the 1950s, the Alexander’s granddaughter, socialite Dame Mabel Brookes (1890–1975), purchased objects associated with her ancestors’ time with Napoleon to restage her family’s past, casting herself in the role of Betsy. Through Brookes’ story, a different Napoleon emerges; one suitable to associate with a conservative career-driven woman operating in 1950s Australia. Brookes situated the emperor in the domestic sphere and – rather than a fearless tactician – he appears as a ‘captive lion’, tamed by her great aunt. Brookes bequeathed over 380 items – including paintings and prints, letters, books, furniture and accoutrements – to the NGV, but they had difficulty housing her idiosyncratic collection. This was not her intention; she hoped leave behind a female-focussed family history embedded in Australia’s national story and world history. This talk is about Dame Mabel Brookes and her collection.

Emma Gleadhill is a historian and watercolour artist based in Melbourne, Australia. She is interested in women’s history, travel, and accessing new dimensions of the female experience through souvenir culture. Emma’s book Taking Travel Home: The Souvenir Culture of British Women Tourists, 1770-1830 (Manchester University Press, 2022) uncovers the souvenir culture British women developed to realise their ambitions in the arenas of connoisseurship, friendship and science.

Emma’s current research project, with historian Ekaterina Heath, concerns the Napoleonic souvenirs women brought to Australia, including objects associated with Napoleon and willow trees purported to descendants from those near his grave on St Helena. This presentation is based on Emma and Katja’s recently published book chapter ‘Making Napoleonic memory in Australia: the Dame Mabel Brookes collection’ in the edited book Napoleonic Objects and their Afterlives: Art, Culture and Heritage, 1821-present (Bloomsbury, 2025).

 Your ticket includes tea or Market Lane coffee served before the presentation, and time to browse our exclusive range of books, gifts, and homewares at TJC Emporium.

This event is presented on-site at The Johnston Collection. Please see your ticket for details. NOTE: Tickets for this event do not include access to our house museum, Fairhall. Guided tours of the current exhibition can be booked separately.

This event is supported by The Colin Holden Charitable Trust.

Image: Napoleon & Betsy c 1818 from Mrs Balcombe Griffiths, c.1815. State Library of New South Wales.