The Life of Nelson, Volume 1

Sir William Hamilton, who had been minister since 1765, thus found himself suddenly converted from a dilettante and sportsman, lounging through life, into a busy diplomat, at the centre of affairs of critical moment. At sixty-two the change could scarcely have been welcome to him, but to his beautiful and ambitious wife the access of importance was sweet, for it led to a close friendship with the Queen, already disposed to affect her, even in the notorious position she had held before her marriage; and the Queen, a daughter of Maria Theresa and sister to Marie Antoinette, was much more of a man than the King. The intimacy became the talk of Naples, and the report spread, easily believed, because in the nature of things very likely, that the personal relations between the two women cloaked a great deal of underhand work, such as often accompanies diplomatic difficulties. Nor did Lady Hamilton lack natural qualifications for the position into which she undoubtedly wished to thrust herself. She was a brave, capable, full-blooded, efficient woman, not to be daunted by fears or scruples; a woman who, if only nerve and intelligence were required, and if distinction for herself was at stake, could be fairly depended upon. There was in her make-up a good deal of pagan virtue. She could appreciate and admire heroism, and, under the stimulus of excitement, of self-conscious magnanimity, for the glitter of effective performance and the applause of onlookers, she was quite capable of heroic action. It was this daring spirit, coarsely akin to much that was best in himself, and of which she made proof under his own eyes, that Nelson recognized; and this, in the thought of the writer, was the body of truth, from which his enthusiasm, enkindled by her charms and by her tenderness towards himself, projected such a singular phantasm of romantic perfections.

Such was the woman, and such the position in the public eye that she had gained for herself, when to Naples, first in the European continent, came the news which made Nelson for the moment the most conspicuous man of the day. He had achieved a triumph the most startlingly dazzling that had yet been gained, and over one who up to that time had excelled all other warriors in the brilliancy and extent of his victories. Bonaparte was not yet the Napoleon whom history knows, but thus far he had been the most distinguished child of the Revolution. That Lady Hamilton then and there formed the purpose of attaching Nelson to her, by the bonds which have sullied his memory, is most improbable; but it is in entire keeping with the career and the self-revelations of the woman that she should, instinctively, if not with deliberation, have resolved to parade herself in the glare of his renown, and appear in the foreground upon the stage of his triumph, the chief dispenser of his praises, the patroness and proprietor of the hero. The great occasion should shed a glamour round her, together with him. "Emma's passion is admiration," Greville had written soon after they parted, "and it is capable of aspiring to any line which would be celebrated, and it would be indifferent, when on that key, whether she was Lucretia or Sappho, or Scævola or Regulus; anything grand, masculine or feminine, she could take up."

Unhappily, Nelson was not able to stand the heady dose of flattery administered by a woman of such conspicuous beauty and consummate art; nor was his taste discriminating enough to experience any wholesome revolt against the rankness of the draught she offered him. The quick appreciation of the born actress, which enabled her when on the stage to clothe herself with a grace and refinement that dropped away when she left it, conspired with his simplicity of confidence in others, and his strong tendency to idealize, to invest her with a character very different from the true. Not that the Lady Hamilton of reality was utterly different from the Lady Hamilton of his imagination. That she ever loved him is doubtful; but there were in her spirit impulses capable of sympathetic response to his own in his bravest acts, though not in his noblest motives. It is inconceivable that duty ever appealed, to her as it did to him, nor could a woman of innate nobility of character have dragged a man of Nelson's masculine renown about England and the Continent, till he was the mock of all beholders; but on the other hand it never could have occurred to the energetic, courageous, brilliant Lady Hamilton, after the lofty deeds and stirring dramatic scenes of St. Vincent, to beg him, as Lady Nelson did, "to leave boarding to captains." Sympathy, not good taste, would have withheld her. In Lady Nelson's letters there is evidence enough of a somewhat colorless womanly affection, but not a thrill of response to the greatness of her husband's daring, even when surrounded herself by the acclamations it called forth.

What Nelson had never yet found in woman Lady Hamilton gave him,—admiration and appreciation, undisguised and unmeasured, yet bestowed by one who had the power, by the admission of even unfriendly critics, of giving a reality and grace to the part she was performing. He was soon at her feet. The playful gallantry with which Ball, Elliot, and even old St. Vincent74 himself, paid court to a handsome woman, greedy of homage, became in Nelson a serious matter. Romantic in temperament, he was all day in flattering contact with her. Worn out and ill from that "fever of anxiety," to use his own words, which he had endured since the middle of June, she attended and nursed him. "Lady Hamilton," he exclaimed to Lady Nelson, with enthusiasm undiscriminating in more ways than one, "is one of the very best women in this world; she is an honour to her sex." A week later he tells her, with an odd collocation of persons: "My pride is being your husband, the son of my dear father, and in having Sir William and Lady Hamilton for my friends. While these approve my conduct, I shall not feel or regard the envy of thousands." The matter was passing rapidly into the platonic stage, in which Sir William was also erelong assigned an appropriate, if not wholly flattering, position. "What can I say of hers and Sir William's attention to me? They are in fact, with the exception of you and my good father, the dearest friends I have in this world. I live as Sir William's son in the house, and my glory is as dear to them as their own; in short, I am under such obligations as I can never repay but with my eternal gratitude." "Naples is a dangerous place," he sagely tells Lord St. Vincent, "and we must keep clear of it. I am writing opposite Lady Hamilton, therefore you will not be surprised at the glorious jumble of this letter. Were your Lordship in my place, I much doubt if you could write so well; our hearts and our hands must be all in a flutter." Matters progressed; within ten days the veteran seaman learned, among other concerns of more or less official importance, that "Lady Hamilton is an Angel. She has honoured me by being my ambassadress to the queen: therefore she has my implicit confidence and is worthy of it."

That such intimacy and such relations resulted in no influence upon the admiral's public action is not to be believed. That he consciously perverted his views is improbable, but that he saw duty under other than normal lights is not only probable, but evident. His whole emotional nature was stirred as it never had been. Incipient love and universal admiration had created in him a tone of mind, and brought to birth feelings, which he had, seemingly, scarcely known. "I cannot write a stiff formal public letter," he tells St. Vincent effusively. "You must make one or both so. I feel you are my friend, and my heart yearns to you." Such extravagance of expression and relaxation of official tone has no pertinent cause, and is at least noteworthy. The Court, or rather the Queen through Lady Hamilton, took possession of him. He became immediately one of the little coterie centring round Her Majesty, and he reflected its tone and partisanship, which, fostered probably in the intimate conversations of the two women, were readily transmitted to the minister by the wife whom he adored. The Queen, impetuous, enterprising, and headstrong, like her mother and sister, moved more by feminine feelings of hatred and revenge against the French than by well-balanced considerations of policy, not only favored war, but wished to precipitate the action of the Emperor by immediately attacking the French in the Roman territory. The decision and daring of such a course was so consonant to Nelson's own temperament that he readily sympathized; but it is impossible to admit its wisdom, from either a political or military standpoint. It was an excessively bad combination, substituting isolated attacks for co-operation, and risking results upon the chance of prompt support, by a state which would be offended and embarrassed by the step taken.

Under ordinary conditions Nelson might have seen this, but he was well handled. Within three days he had been persuaded that upon his personal presence depended the salvation of Italy. "My head is quite healed, and, if it were necessary, I could not at present leave Italy, who looks up to me as, under God, its Protector." He continually, by devout recollection of his indebtedness to God, seeks to keep himself in hand. "I am placed by Providence in that situation, that all my caution will be necessary to prevent vanity from showing itself superior to my gratitude and thankfulness,"—but the current was too strong for him, and was swollen to a torrent by the streams of adulation, which from all quarters flowed in upon a temperament only too disposed to accept them. "Could I, my dearest Fanny," he writes to Lady Nelson, "tell you half the honours which are shown me here, not a ream of paper would hold it." A grand ball was given on his birthday, September 29; and a rostral column was "erected under a magnificent canopy, never, Lady Hamilton says, to come down while they remain at Naples." Within a week the conviction of his own importance led him to write to Lady Hamilton, evidently for transmission to the Queen, an opinion, or rather an urgent expression of advice, that Naples should at once begin war. It is only conjectural to say that this opinion, which rested on no adequate knowledge of the strength of the Neapolitan Kingdom, was elicited by the Queen through Lady Hamilton; but the inference derives support from the words, "I have read with admiration the queen's dignified and incomparable letter of September, 1796,"—two years before. That his views were not the simple outcome of his own unbiassed study of the situation is evident enough. "This country, by its system of procrastination, will ruin itself," he writes to St. Vincent, the very day after drawing up the letter in question; "the queen sees it and thinks"—not as I do, but—"as we do." That Lady Hamilton was one of the "we" is plain, for in the postscript to the letter he says: "Your Ladyship will, I beg, receive this letter as a preparative for Sir William Hamilton, to whom I am writing, with all respect, the firm and unalterable opinion of a British admiral," etc. Certainly these words—taken with those already quoted, and written just a week afterwards, "Lady Hamilton has been my ambassadress to the queen"—indicate that she was the intermediary between Nelson and the Court, as well as between him and her husband.

There is no record of any official request for this unofficial and irregular communication of the opinion of a British admiral; and, of course, when a man has allowed himself, unasked, though not unprompted, to press such a line of action, he has bound himself personally, and embarrassed himself officially, in case it turns out badly. Nelson very soon, within a fortnight, had to realize this, in the urgent entreaties of the Court not to forsake them; and to see reason for thinking "that a strong wish for our squadron's being on the Coast of Naples is, that in case of any mishap, that their Majesties think their persons much safer under the protection of the British flag than under any other;" that is—than under their own. They could not trust their own people; they could not, as the event proved, trust their army in the field; and the veteran Neapolitan naval officer, Caracciolo, whether he deserved confidence or not, was stung to the quick when, in the event, they sought refuge with a foreign admiral instead of with himself. That Nelson should not have known all this, ten days after reaching Naples, was pardonable enough, and, if formally asked for advice without such facts being placed before him, he could not be responsible for an error thus arising; but the case is very different when advice is volunteered. He is more peremptory than the minister himself. "You will not believe I have said or done anything, without the approbation of Sir William Hamilton. His Excellency is too good to them, and the strong language of an English Admiral telling them plain truths of their miserable system may do good."

The particular position of Naples relatively to France was this. French troops had for a year past occupied the Roman Republic, which had been established by them upon the overthrow of the Papal Government. Their presence there was regarded by Nelson as a constant threat to the Two Sicilies, and this to an extent was true; but rather because of the contagion of revolutionary ideas than from the military point of view. From the latter, it should have been obvious to a man like Nelson that the French must be deterred, under existing conditions, from entering Naples unprovoked; because the farther they advanced the more exposed was their army, in case war, which was darkly threatening, should be renewed in Upper Italy. They dared not, unless by folly, or because first attacked, prolong their already too extended ex-centric movement into Lower Italy. This was true, taking account of Austria only; but now that the British fleet was released by the entire destruction of the French at the Nile, and could operate anywhere on the coast, it would be doubly imprudent; and when the news that it had been done reached Egypt, Bonaparte, who had himself felt the weight of Naples as a possible enemy, remote and feeble as she was, exclaimed, "Italy is lost!" That Naples should co-operate in the general movement against France was right, although, as Nelson well knew, she had never dared do so under much more favorable conditions,—a fact which by itself should have suggested to him caution; but that she should act alone, with the idea of precipitating war, refusing to await the moment fixed by the principal states, was folly. This, however, was the course determined, under the combined impulse of the Queen, Lady Hamilton, and Nelson; and it was arranged that, after visiting the blockade off Malta, he should return to Naples to co-operate in the intended movement.

On the 15th of October Nelson sailed from Naples for Malta in the "Vanguard," with three ships-of-the-line which had lately joined him. He still felt, with accurate instinct, that Egypt and the Ionian Islands, with Malta, constituted the more purely maritime interests, in dealing with which the fleet would most further the general cause, and he alludes frequently to his wish to attend to them; but he promised the King that he would be back in Naples in the first week of November, to support the projected movement against the French. He remained off Malta, therefore, only one week, during which adequate arrangements were made for the blockade of the island, which had been formally proclaimed on the 12th of October, and was conducted for most of the following year by the Portuguese squadron; the senior British officer, Captain Ball, acting ashore with the insurgent Maltese. These had risen against the French during the summer, and now held them shut up in La Valetta. The adjacent island of Gozo surrendered to the British on the 28th. Hood continued in charge off Alexandria with three ships-of-the-line; while the Ionian Islands were left to themselves, until a combined Russian and Turkish squadron entered the Mediterranean a few weeks later.

On the 5th of November Nelson returned to Naples. "I am, I fear, drawn into a promise that Naples Bay shall never be left without an English man-of-war. I never intended leaving the coast of Naples without one; but if I had, who could resist the request of such a queen?" He could ground much upon the Admiralty's orders, given when he was first sent into the Mediterranean, to protect the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and he had understood that the Emperor also would give his aid, if Naples attacked. This impression received strength from an Austrian general, Mack,—then of high reputation, but afterwards better known by his surrender to Napoleon at Ulm, in 1805,—being sent to command the Neapolitan army. Sir William Hamilton, however, writing on the 26th of October, was more accurate in saying that the Emperor only advised the King "to act openly against the French at Malta, as he would certainly support him;" for, Naples having a feudal claim upon the island, action there could be represented as merely resistance to aggression. In consequence of this misunderstanding, great confusion ensued in the royal councils when a courier from Vienna brought word, on the 13th of November, that that Court wished it left to the French to begin hostilities; otherwise, it would give no assurance of help. Nelson was now formally one of the Council which deliberated upon military operations. In virtue of this position he spoke out, roughly enough. "I ventured to tell their Majesties that one of the following things must happen to the King, and he had his choice,—'Either to advance, trusting to God for his blessing on a just cause, to die with l'épée à la main, or remain quiet and be kicked out of your Kingdoms.'" Thus rudely adjured, the King decided to be a hero after the pattern of Nelson.

On the 22d of November a summons was sent to the French to evacuate the Papal States and Malta, and a Neapolitan army marched upon Rome, commanded by Mack in person. At the same time Nelson took on board his squadron a corps of five thousand, to seize Leghorn, the possession of which, with control of the sea, was not unjustly considered threatening to the communications between the centre of French power, in Northern Italy, and the exposed corps at the foot of the peninsula. After landing this body, Nelson again went to Naples, leaving Troubridge in charge at Leghorn, with several ships; directing him also to keep vessels cruising along the Riviera, and before Genoa, to break up the coastwise traffic, which had resumed great proportions since the absence of the British from the Mediterranean, and upon which the French army in Piedmont and Lombardy now greatly depended.

On the 5th of December the "Vanguard" once more anchored at Naples. Nelson's estimate of affairs as he now found them, is best told in his own words. "The state of this Country is briefly this: The army is at Rome, Civita Vecchia taken, but in the Castle of St. Angelo are five hundred French troops. The French have thirteen thousand troops at a strong post in the Roman State, called Castellana. General Mack is gone against them with twenty thousand: the event in my opinion is doubtful, and on it hangs the immediate fate of Naples. If Mack is defeated, this country, in fourteen days, is lost; for the Emperor has not yet moved his army, and if the Emperor will not march, this country has not the power of resisting the French. But it was not a case of choice, but necessity, which forced the King of Naples to march out of his country, and not to wait till the French had collected a force sufficient to drive him, in a week, out of his kingdom." It is by no means so sure that no other course of action had been open, though Nelson naturally clung to his first opinion. By advancing, the King gave the French occasion, if they were seeking one; and the Neapolitan army, which might well have deterred them, as it had embarrassed even Bonaparte in his time, had its rottenness revealed as only trial can reveal. When reviewed, it had appeared to Mack and Nelson a well-equipped force of thirty thousand of the "finest troops in Europe." Brought face to face with fifteen thousand French, in a month it ceased to exist.

Upon Mack's advance, the French general Championnet had evacuated Rome, into which the King made a vainglorious triumphal entry. The French retired to Castellana, followed by the Neapolitans; but in the campaign that ensued the latter behaved with disgraceful cowardice. Flying in every direction, with scarcely any loss in killed, and preceded in their flight by the King, the whole force retreated in confusion upon the capital. There revolutionary ideas had spread widely among the upper classes; and, although the populace both in city and country remained fanatically loyal, and hostile to the French, the King and Queen feared to trust their persons to the issue of events. Powerless through suspicions of those around them, apparently well founded, and through lack of any instrument with which to act, now that their army was destroyed, their one wish was to escape to Palermo.

To do this involved some difficulty, as the mob, like that of Paris, was bitterly opposed to their sovereign leaving the capital; but by the management and determination of Nelson, who was greatly helped by the courage and presence of mind of Lady Hamilton, the royal family was embarked on board the "Vanguard" on the evening of December 21st. During several previous days treasure to the amount of two and a half millions sterling was being conveyed secretly to the ship. "The whole correspondence relative to this important business," wrote Nelson to St. Vincent, "was carried on with the greatest address by Lady Hamilton and the Queen, who being constantly in the habits of correspondence, no one could suspect." On the evening of the 23d the "Vanguard" sailed, and after a most tempestuous passage reached Palermo on the 26th. The youngest of the princes, six years old, taken suddenly with convulsions, died on the way in the arms of Lady Hamilton, whose womanly helpfulness, as well as her courage, came out strongly in this trying time. Nelson wrote to St. Vincent: "It is my duty to tell your Lordship the obligations which the whole royal family as well as myself are under on this trying occasion to her Ladyship." These scenes inevitably deepened the impression she had already made upon him, which was not to be lessened by her lapse into feminine weakness when the strain was over. To use her own words, in a letter to her old lover, Greville, "My dear, adorable queen and I weep together, and now that is our onely comfort." "Our dear Lady Hamilton," Nelson wrote again a few days later, "whom to see is to admire, but, to know, are to be added honour and respect; her head and heart surpass her beauty, which cannot be equalled by anything I have seen." Upon himself the brief emergency and its sharp call to action had had the usual reviving effect. "Thank God," he wrote to Spencer, "my health is better, my mind never firmer, and my heart in the right trim to comfort, relieve, and protect those who it is my duty to afford assistance to."

In Palermo Nelson again lived in the minister's house, bearing a large, if not a disproportionate, share of the expenses. When they returned to England in 1800, Hamilton was £2,000 in his debt. The intimacy and the manner of life, in the midst of the Neapolitan court, whose corruptness of manners both Nelson and Troubridge openly condemned, was already causing scandal, rumors of which were not long in reaching home. "I am quite concerned," wrote Captain Ball to Saumarez, when Nelson was about to quit the station, "at the many severe paragraphs which have been put in the newspapers respecting him and Lady Hamilton. I am convinced that there has not been anything improper between them—his Lordship could not fail being delighted with her accomplishments and manners, which are very fascinating." Lady Nelson, uneasy as a wife could not fail to be at reports affecting her husband's honor, and threatening her own happiness, quickly formed, and for a time entertained, the thought of joining him on the station; but, if she broached the idea to Nelson, he certainly discouraged it. Writing to her on the 10th of April, 1799, he said: "You would by February have seen how unpleasant it would have been had you followed any advice, which carried you from England to a wandering sailor. I could, if you had come, only have struck my flag, and carried you back again, for it would have been impossible to have set up an establishment at either Naples or Palermo."75