A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan - The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2)

A >> A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan >> The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2)

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35

At half-past eleven on the night of August 15th, the boats, which had
assembled alongside the flag-frigate "Medusa," shoved off together;
but the distance which they had to pull, with the strong, uncertain
currents, separated them; and, as so often happens in concerted
movements, attacks intended to be simultaneous were made
disconnectedly, while the French were fully prepared. The first
division of the British arrived at half-past twelve, and after a
desperate struggle was beaten off, Commander Parker being mortally
wounded. Two other divisions came up later, while the fourth lost its
way altogether. The affair was an entire failure, except so far as to
show that the enemy would be met on their own shores, rather than on
those of Great Britain. The British loss was forty-four killed, and
one hundred and twenty-eight wounded.

Nelson returned to the Downs, bitterly grieved, but not greatly
discouraged. The mishap, he said, was due to the boats not arriving at
the same moment; and that, he knew, was caused by conditions of
currents, which would ever prevent the dull flatboats of the enemy
moving in a concert that the cutters of ships of war had not attained.
"The craft which I have seen," he wrote, "I do not think it possible
to _row_ to England; and sail they cannot." As yet, however, he had
not visited Flushing, and he felt it necessary to satisfy himself on
that point. On the 24th of August, taking some pilots with him, he
went across and inspected the ground, where the officer in charge of
the British observing squadron was confident something might be
effected. Nelson, however, decided otherwise. "I cannot but admire
Captain Owen's zeal in his anxious desire to get at the enemy, but I
am afraid it has made him overleap sand-banks and tides, and laid him
aboard the enemy. I could join most heartily in his desire; but we
cannot do impossibilities, and I am as little used to find out the
impossibles as most folks; and I think I can discriminate between the
impracticable and the fair prospect of success." By the 27th of August
he had returned to the Downs, where, with a brief and unimportant
intermission, he remained until the cessation of hostilities with
France in October.

Satisfied that invasion was, for that year at least, an empty menace,
Nelson fell again into the tone of angry and fretful complaint which
was so conspicuous in the last weeks of his stay in the Baltic. To
borrow the words of a French admirer, "He filled the Admiralty with
his caprices and Europe with his fame." Almost from his first contact
with this duty, it had been distasteful to him. "There is nothing to
be done on the great scale," he said. "I own, my dear Lord," he told
St. Vincent, "that this boat warfare is not exactly congenial to my
feelings, and I find I get laughed at for my puny mode of attack." As
usual, he threw himself with all his might into what he had to do, but
the inward friction remained. "Whilst I serve, I will do it actively,
and to the very best of my abilities. I have all night had a fever,
which is very little abated this morning; my mind carries me beyond my
strength, and will do me up; but such is my nature. I require nursing
like a child."

That he was far from well is as unquestionable as that his distemper
proceeded largely from his mind, if it did not originate there. "Our
separation is terrible," he writes to Lady Hamilton; "my heart is
ready to flow out of my eyes. I am not unwell, but I am very low. I
can only account for it by my absence from all I hold dear in this
world." From the first he had told St. Vincent that he could not stay
longer than September 14th, that it was beyond his strength to stand
the equinoctial weather. The veteran seaman showed towards him the
same delicate consideration that he always had, using the flattering
urgency which Nelson himself knew so well how to employ, in eliciting
the hearty co-operation of others. "The public mind is so much
tranquillised by your being at your post, it is extremely desirable
that you should continue there: in this opinion all His Majesty's
servants, with Sir Thomas Troubridge, agree. Let me entreat your
Lordship to persevere in the measures you are so advantageously
employed in, and give up, at least for the present, your intention of
returning to town, which would have the worst possible effect at this
critical juncture. The dispositions you have made, and are making,
appear to us all as the most judicious possible." "I hope you will
not relinquish your situation at a moment when the services of every
man are called for by the circumstances the Country is placed in, so
imperiously that, upon reflection, I persuade myself you will think as
I, and every friend you have, do on this subject." Nelson admitted, in
a calmer moment, that "although my whole soul is devoted to get rid of
this command, yet I do not blame the Earl for wishing to keep me here
a little longer." "Pray take care of your health," the latter says
again, "than which nothing is of so much consequence to the Country at
large, more particularly so to your very affectionate St. Vincent."
"Your health is so precious at all times, more particularly so at this
crisis."

St. Vincent tried in vain to conjure with the once beloved name of
Troubridge, whom Nelson used to style the "Nonpareil," whose merits he
had been never weary of extolling, and whose cause he had pleaded so
vehemently, when the accident of his ship's grounding deprived him of
his share in the Battle of the Nile. From the moment that he was
chosen by St. Vincent, who called him the ablest adviser and best
executive officer in the British Navy, to assist in the administration
of the Admiralty, Nelson began to view him jealously. "Our friend
Troubridge is to be a Lord of the Admiralty, and I have a sharp eye,
and almost think I see it. No, poor fellow, I hope I do him injustice;
he cannot surely forget my kindness to him." But when the single eye
has become double, suspicion thrives, and when tortured by his desire
to return to Lady Hamilton, Nelson saw in every obstacle and every
delay the secret hand of Troubridge. "I believe it is all the plan of
Troubridge," he wrote in one such instance, "but I have wrote both him
and the Earl my mind." To St. Vincent, habit and professional
admiration enabled him to submit, if grudgingly, and with constant
complaints to his _confidante_; but Troubridge, though now one of the
Board that issued his orders, was his inferior in grade, and he
resented the imagined condition of being baffled in his wishes by a
junior. The latter, quick-tempered and rough of speech, but true as
his sword, to use St. Vincent's simile, must have found himself put to
it to uphold the respect due to his present position, without wronging
the affection and reverence which he undoubtedly felt for his old
comrade, and which in the past he had shown by the moral courage that
even ventured to utter a remonstrance, against the infatuation that
threatened to stain his professional honor.

Such straining of personal relations constantly accompanies accession
to office; many are the friendships, if they can be called such, which
cannot endure the experience that official action may not always be
controlled by them. If such is to be noted in Nelson, it is because he
was no exception to the common rule, and it is sad that a man so great
should not in this have been greater than he was. St. Vincent felt it
necessary to tell him, with reference to the difficulty of granting
some requests for promotion, "Encompassed as I am by applications and
presumptuous claims, I have nothing for it but to act upon the
defensive, as your Lordship will be compelled to do, whenever you are
placed in the situation I at present fill." This Nelson contents
himself with quoting; but of Troubridge he says: "Troubridge has so
completely prevented my mentioning any body's service, that I am
become a cypher, and he has gained a victory over Nelson's spirit.
Captain Somerville has been begging me to intercede with the Admiralty
again; but I have been so _rebuffed_, that my spirits are gone, and
the _great_ Troubridge has what we call _cowed_ the spirits of Nelson;
but I shall never forget it. He told me if I asked anything more that
I should get nothing. No wonder I am not well."

The refusal of the Admiralty to give him leave to come to London,
though founded on alleged motives of state, he thinks absurd. "They
are beasts for their pains," he says; "it was only depriving me of one
day's comfort and happiness, for which they have my hearty prayers."
His spleen breaks out in oddly comical ways. "I have a letter from
Troubridge, recommending me to wear flannel shirts. Does he care for
me? _No_; but never mind." "Troubridge writes me, that as the weather
is set in fine again, he hopes I shall get walks on shore. He is, I
suppose, laughing at me; but, never mind." Petulant words, such as
quoted, and others much more harsh, used to an intimate friend, are of
course to be allowed for as indicating mental exasperation and the
excitement of baffled longings, rather than expressing permanent
feeling; but still they illustrate mental conditions more faithfully
than do the guarded utterances of formal correspondence. Friendship
rarely regains the ground lost in them. The situation did undoubtedly
become exasperating towards the end, for no one pretended that any
active service could be expected, or that his function was other than
that of a signal displayed, indicating that Great Britain, though
negotiating for peace, was yet on her guard. Lying in an open
roadstead, with a heavy surf pouring in on the beach many days of the
week, a man with one arm and one eye could not easily or safely get
back and forth; and, being in a small frigate pitching and tugging at
her anchors, he was constantly seasick, so much so "that I cannot hold
up my head," afflicted with cold and toothache,--"but none of them
cares a d--n for me and my sufferings."

In September the Hamiltons came to Deal, off which the ship was lying,
and remained for a fortnight, during which he was happy; but the
reaction was all the more severe when they returned to town on the
20th. "I came on board, but no Emma. No, no, my heart will break. I am
in silent distraction.... My dearest wife, how can I bear our
separation? Good God, what a change! I am so low that I cannot hold up
my head." His depression was increased by the condition of Parker,
the young commander, who had been wounded off Boulogne, and had since
then hovered between life and death. The thigh had been shattered too
far up for amputation, and the only faint hope had been that the bones
might reunite. The day that the Hamiltons left, the great artery
burst, and, after a brief deceitful rally, he died on the 27th of
September. Nelson, who was tenderly attached to him, followed him to
the grave with emotion so deep as to be noticeable to the bystanders.
"Thank God," he wrote that afternoon, "the dreadful scene is past. I
scarcely know how I got over it. I could not suffer much more and be
alive." "I own," he had written to St. Vincent immediately after the
repulse, "I shall never bring myself again to allow any attack to go
forward, where I am not personally concerned; my mind suffers much
more than if I had a leg shot off in this late business."

The Admiralty refusing any allowances, much of the expense of Parker's
illness and of his funeral fell upon Nelson, who assumed all his
debts. It was but one instance among many of a liberality in money
matters, which kept him constantly embarrassed. To the surgeon who had
attended the wounded, and to the captain of the "Medusa," a much
richer man than he was, but who had shown him kindness, he gave
handsome remembrances of the favors which he was pleased to consider
done to himself personally. In a like spirit he wrote some months
afterwards, concerning a proposed monument to Captain Ralph Willett
Miller, who had fought under his flag. "I much doubt if all the
admirals and captains will subscribe to poor dear Miller's monument;
but I have told Davison, that whatever is wanted to make up the sum, I
shall pay. I thought of Lord St. Vincent and myself paying,L50 each;
some other admirals may give something, and I thought about L12 each
for the captains who had served with him in the actions off Cape St.
Vincent and the Nile. The spirit of liberality seems declining; but
when I forget an old and dear friend, may I cease to be your
affectionate Nelson and Bronte." Yet at this period he felt it
advisable to sell the diamonds from the presents given him by foreign
sovereigns. He was during these weeks particularly pressed, because in
treaty for a house which he bought at Merton in Surrey, and for which
he had difficulty in raising funds. In this his friend Davison helped
him by a generous and unlimited offer of a loan. "The Baltic
expedition," wrote Nelson in his letter of thanks, "cost me full
L2,000. Since I left London it has cost me, for Nelson cannot be like
others, near L1,000 in six weeks. If I am continued here, ruin to my
finances must be the consequence."

On the 1st of October the Preliminaries of Peace with France were
signed, and on the 9th news of their ratification reached Nelson on
board his ship. "Thank God! it is peace," he exclaimed. Yet, while
delighted beyond measure at the prospect of release from his present
duties, and in general for the repose he now expected, he was most
impatient at the exuberant demonstrations of the London populace, and
of some military and naval men. "Let the rejoicings be proper to our
several stations--the manufacturer, because he will have more markets
for his goods,--but seamen and soldiers ought to say, 'Well, as it is
peace, we lay down our arms; and are ready again to take them up, if
the French are insolent.' There is no person in the world rejoices
more in the peace than I do, but I would burst sooner than let a d--d
Frenchman know it. We have made peace with the French despotism, and
we will, I hope, adhere to it whilst the French continue in due
bounds; but whenever they overstep that, and usurp a power which would
degrade Europe, then I trust we shall join Europe in crushing her
ambition; then I would with pleasure go forth and risk my life for to
pull down the overgrown detestable power of France." When the mob in
London dragged the carriage of the French ambassador, his wrath quite
boiled over. "Can you cure madness?" he wrote to his physician; "for I
am mad to read that our d--d scoundrels dragged a Frenchman's
carriage. I am ashamed for our Country." "I hope never more to be
dragged by such a degenerate set of people," he tells Lady Hamilton.
"Would our ancestors have done it? So, the villains would have drawn
Buonaparte if he had been able to get to London to cut off the King's
head, and yet all our Royal Family will employ Frenchmen. Thanks to
the navy, they could not." Nelson's soul was disturbed without cause.
Under the ephemeral effervescence of a crowd lay a purpose as set as
his own, and of which his present emotions were a dim and unconscious
prophecy.

On the 15th of October he received official notification for the
cessation of hostilities with the French Republic, the precise date at
which they were to be considered formally at an end having been fixed
at the 22d of the month. The Admiralty declined to allow him to leave
his station until that day arrived. Then he had their permission to
take leave of absence, but not to haul down his flag. "I heartily hope
a little rest will soon set you up," wrote St. Vincent, "but until the
definitive treaty is signed, your Lordship must continue in pay,
although we may not have occasion to require your personal services at
the head of the squadron under your orders." In accordance with this
decision, Nelson's flag continued to fly as Commander-in-Chief of a
Squadron of ships "on a particular service," throughout the anxious
period of doubt and suspicion which preceded the signing of the treaty
of Amiens, on the 25th of March, 1802. It was not till the 10th of the
following April that he received the formal orders, to strike his flag
and come on shore.

On the 22d of October, 1801, he left the flagship and set off for his
new home in Surrey.

FOOTNOTES:

[37] These suggestive italics are in the letter as printed by Clarke and
M'Arthur, and reproduced by Nicolas.

[38] Hollesley Bay.

CHAPTER XVIII.

RELEASE FROM ACTIVE SERVICE DURING THE PEACE OF AMIENS.--HOME LIFE AT
MERTON.--PUBLIC INCIDENTS.

OCTOBER, 1801--MAY, 1803. AGE, 43-44.

During the brief interval between his return from the Baltic, July
I,1801, and his taking command of the Squadron on a Particular
Service, on the 27th of the same month, Nelson had made his home in
England with the Hamiltons, to whose house in Piccadilly he went
immediately upon his arrival in London. Whatever doubt may have
remained in his wife's mind, as to the finality of their parting in
the previous January, or whatever trace of hesitation may then have
existed in his own, had been definitively removed by letters during
his absence. To her he wrote on the 4th of March, immediately before
the expedition sailed from Yarmouth: "Josiah[39] is to have another
ship and to go abroad, if the Thalia cannot soon be got ready. I have
done _all_ for him, and he may again, as he has often done before,
wish me to break my neck, and be abetted in it by his friends, who are
likewise my enemies; but I have done my duty as an honest, generous
man, and I neither want or wish for anybody to care what becomes of
me, whether I return, or am left in the Baltic. Living, I have done
all in my power for you, and if dead, you will find I have done the
same; therefore my only wish is, to be left to myself: and wishing you
every happiness, believe that I am, your affectionate Nelson and
Bronte." Upon this letter Lady Nelson endorsed: "This is My Lord
Nelson's Letter of dismissal, which so astonished me that I
immediately sent it to Mr. Maurice Nelson,[40] who was sincerely
attached to me, for his advice. He desired me not to take the least
notice of it, as his brother seemed to have forgot himself."

A separation preceded and caused by such circumstances as this was,
could not fail to be attended with bitterness on both sides; yet one
could have wished to see in a letter which is believed, and probably
was intended, to be the last ever addressed by him to her, some
recollection, not only of what he himself had done for his stepson,
but that once, to use his own expression, "the boy" had "saved his
life;" and that, after all, if he was under obligations to Nelson, he
would have been more than youth, had no intemperance of expression
mingled with the resentment he felt for the slights offered his mother
in the face of the world. With Nelson's natural temperament and
previous habits of thought, however, it was imperative, for his peace
of mind, to justify his course of action to himself; and this he could
do only by dwelling upon the wrong done him by those who, in the eyes
of men generally, seemed, and must still seem, the wronged. Of what
passed between himself and Lady Nelson, we know too little to
apportion the blame of a transaction in which she appears chiefly as
the sufferer. Nisbet, except in the gallantry and coolness shown by
him at Teneriffe, has not the same claim to consideration, and his
career had undoubtedly occasioned great and legitimate anxiety to
Nelson, whose urgency with St. Vincent was primarily the cause of a
premature promotion, which spoiled the future of an officer, otherwise
fairly promising.[41] If the relations between the two had not been
so soon strained by Nelson's attentions to Lady Hamilton, things might
have turned out better, through the influence of one who rarely failed
to make the most of those under his command.

The annual allowance made to Lady Nelson by her husband, after their
separation, was L1,800; which, by a statement he gave to the Prime
Minister, two years later, when asking an increase of pension, appears
to have been about half of his total income. On the 23d of April,
1801, when daily expecting to leave the Baltic for England, he sent
her a message through their mutual friend Davison: "You will, at a
proper time, and before my arrival in England, signify to Lady N. that
I expect, and for which I have made such a very liberal allowance to
her, to be left to myself, and without any inquiries from her; for
sooner than live the unhappy life I did when last I came to England, I
would stay abroad for ever. My mind is fixed as fate: therefore you
will send my determination in any way you may judge proper."[42] To
Lady Hamilton he wrote about the same time, assuring her, under the
assumption of mystery with which he sought to guard their relations
against discovery through the postal uncertainties of the day, that he
had no communication with his wife: "Thomson[43] desires me to say he
has never wrote his aunt[44] since he sailed, and all the parade about
a house is nonsense. He has wrote to his father, but not a word or
message to her. He does not, nor cannot, care about her; he believes
she has a most unfeeling heart."[45]

His stay with the Hamiltons in Piccadilly, though broken by several
trips to the country, convinced Nelson that if they were to live
together, as he wished to do, it must be, for his own satisfaction, in
a house belonging to him. It is clear that the matter was talked over
between Lady Hamilton and himself; for, immediately upon joining his
command in the Downs, he began writing about the search for a house,
as a matter already decided, in which she was to act for him. "Have
you heard of any house? I am very anxious to have a home where my
friends might be made welcome." As usual, in undertakings of every
kind, he chafed under delays, and he was ready to take the first that
seemed suitable. "I really wish you would buy the house at Turnham
Green," he writes her within a week. The raising of the money, it is
true, presents some difficulty, for he has in hand but L3,000. "It is,
my dear friend," he moralizes, "extraordinary, but true, that the man
who is pushed forward to defend his country, has not from that country
a place to lay his head in; but never mind, happy, truly happy, in the
estimation of such friends as you, I care for nothing."

Lady Hamilton, however, was a better business-man than himself, and
went about his purchase with the deliberation of a woman shopping. At
the end of three weeks he was still regretting that he could not "find
a house and a little ece of ground, for if I go on much longer with
my present command, I must be ruined. I think your perseverance and
management will at last get me a home." By the 20th of August she was
suited, for on that date he writes to her, "I approve of the house at
Merton;" and, as the Admiralty would not consent to his leaving his
station even for a few days, all the details of the bargain were left
in her hands. "I entreat, my good friend, manage the affair of the
house for me." He stipulates only that everything in it shall be his,
"to a book or a cook," or even "to a pair of sheets, towels, &c." "I
entreat I may never hear about the expenses again. If you live in
Piccadilly or Merton it makes no difference, and if I was to live at
Merton I must keep a table, and nothing can cost me one-sixth part
which it does at present." "You are to be, recollect, Lady Paramount
of all the territories and waters of Merton, and we are all to be your
guests, and to obey, all lawful commands."

In this way were conducted the purchase and preparation of the only
home of his own on English ground that Nelson ever possessed, where he
passed his happiest hours, and from which he set out to fight his last
battle. The negotiation was concluded three days before the rumors of
the peace got abroad, therefore about the 27th of September, 1801; and
in consequence, so Sir William Hamilton thought, the property was
acquired a thousand pounds cheaper than it otherwise might have
been--a piece of financial good luck rare in Nelson's experience. "We
have now inhabited your Lordship's premises some days," continued the
old knight, "and I can now speak with some certainty. I have lived
with our dear Emma several years. I know her merit, have a great
opinion of the head and heart that God Almighty has been pleased to
give her; but a seaman alone could have given a fine woman full power
to chuse and fit up a residence for him without seeing it himself. You
are in luck, for in my conscience I verily believe that a place so
suitable to your views could not have been found, and at so cheap a
rate. The proximity to the capital,"--Nelson found it an hour's drive
from Hyde Park--"and the perfect retirement of this place, are, for
your Lordship, two points beyond estimation; but the house is so
comfortable, the furniture clean and good, and I never saw so many
conveniences united in so small a compass. You have nothing but to
come and enjoy immediately; you have a good mile of pleasant dry walk
around your own farm. It would make you laugh to see Emma and her
mother fitting up pig-sties and hencoops, and already the Canal is
enlivened with ducks, and the cock is strutting with his hens about
the walks."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35