A Family Affair

The Rosebud book has an interesting back story which started with my grandfather, who had emigrated in the 1880's from St. Helena (where Napoleon was exiled after Waterloo) to South Africa where he ended up as the station master of a whistle-stop station in the Great Karoo desert - a pretty humble position.

When Grandfather lay dying in 1953 he called for my father to give him his last words which my father (the only son to go to college) passed on to me although I was only 12. The Knipes had not always been an insignificant family, Grandfather told my dad. Once upon a time back in Saint Helena they had been touched by greatness.

Maybe Grandfather went into more detail about what “touched by greatness” entailed but if he did my father, a Victorian gent and school headmaster, didn’t pass it on to me. In 1950’s South Africa decent people didn’t boast about a family member being someone’s mistress no matter how famous this person was.

I wish I had discovered the Rosebud legend before my dad passed away in 1996 so I could have grilled him on what he knew! It was only quite recently, like many people getting on in years, that I became curious about my ancestors, particularly about my grandfather’s "touch of greatness" claim. That it involved Napoleon was fairly obvious - a large print of the emperor had pride of place in my grandfather's living room. So I researched the Saint Helena branch of the family online and soon struck gold - or pay dirt if you like. My great-great-grandaunt Charlotte Knipe, said to be the most beautiful girl on the island at the time, is on record as being part of Napoleon's entourage and rumored to be his mistress.

Napoleon called her Rosebud.