Aftermath

Abstract

Following his expulsion from Madagascar, Lyall and his family sailed to Mauritius, reaching Port Louis in July 1829. Lyall initially tried to maintain his status as British Resident Agent in Madagascar, about which he compiled second-hand reports based on those he received from Freeman. However, in November 1829, Freeman also left Madagascar, initially for Mauritius, but then sailing to Cape Town. Not only was it clear that Lyall could no longer maintain the pretence of supplying up-to-date reports on Madagascar to the British authorities, but the latter demanded repayment of advances made to Lyall to fund his Madagascar mission. Lyall also became embroiled in disputes involving a female slave who committed suicide, and Morgan, who alleged ill-treatment. Lyall presented papers on sugar cane cultivation to the local Natural History Society, which was the recipient of some of his Malagasy collection, and he aspired to pay his debts and maintain a respectable lifestyle by becoming a plantation owner. However, malaria, contracted in Madagascar, steadily weakened him, and he died on 23 May 1831. Only then do the archives reveal the personality of Mary, his widow, who refused the government’s offer of a trip back to Britain for her and her six children, and argued repeatedly for an official pension to enable her to continue to live comfortably on Mauritius—where the cost of living was notoriously high. The Governor of Mauritius offered her a temporary allowance of £200 a year until mid-1832, when she received news that the Colonial Office in London had agreed to cancel Lyall’s debt, and to grant her a pension of £100 a year payable from local Mauritian colonial revenues. Mary and her family appears to have still been on Mauritius in mid-1833, but thereafter largely disappear from the record. However, Lyall’s reputation as a botanist lives on, notably in the collection of Malagasy flora recorded at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.