The Life of Nelson, Volume 1

Backed by the royal approval, and with his legal expenses guaranteed, Nelson's course was now smooth. He continued in all parts of the station to suppress the contraband trade, and his unpopularity, of course, also continued; but excitement necessarily subsided as it became clear that submission was unavoidable, and as men adapted themselves to the new conditions. The whole procedure now looks somewhat barbarous and blundering, but in no essential principle differs from the methods of protection to which the world at present seems again tending. It is not for us to throw stones at it. The results, then, were completely successful, judged by the standards of the time. "At this moment," wrote Nelson some few months later, "there are nearly fifty sail employed in the trade between the Islands of St. Kitts, Nevis, and America, which are truly British built, owned, and navigated. Had I been an idle spectator, my firm belief is that not a single vessel would have belonged to those islands in the foreign trade." His own action was further endorsed by the ministry, which now gave captains of ships-of-war much more extensive powers, thereby justifying his contention that it was within their office to enforce the Navigation Act. Nor was this increased activity of the executive branch of the government the only result of Nelson's persistence. His sagacious study of the whole question, under the local conditions of the West Indies, led to his making several suggestions for more surely carrying out the spirit of the Law; and these were embodied the next year in a formal Act of the Legislature.

With so vivid a career as that of Nelson ahead, the delay imposed by this wrangling episode is somewhat dreary; but it undeniably shows his characteristics in the strongest light. Duty, not ease; honor, not gain; the ideal, not the material,—such, not indeed without frailty and blemish, were ever his motives. And, while he craved his reward in the approval and recognition of those around and above him, he could find consolation for the lack of them in his own sense of right-doing. "That thing called Honour," he writes to a friend soon after the "Boreas" cruise, "is now, alas! thought of no more. My integrity cannot be mended, I hope; but my fortune, God knows, has grown worse for the service; so much for serving my country. But I have invariably laid down, and followed close, a plan of what ought to be uppermost in the breast of an officer: that it is much better to serve an ungrateful Country than to give up his own fame. Posterity will do him justice; a uniform conduct of honour and integrity seldom fails of bringing a man to the goal of fame at last."

This struggle with Sir Richard Hughes, in which Nelson took the undesirable, and to a naval officer invidious, step of disobeying orders, showed clearly, not only the loftiness of his motives, but the distinguishing features which constituted the strength of his character, both personal and military. There was an acute perception of the right thing to do, an entire readiness to assume all the responsibility of doing it, and above all an accurate judgment of the best way to do it,—to act with impunity to himself and with most chances of success to his cause. Its analogy to a military situation is striking. There was a wrong condition of things to be righted—a victory to be won. To achieve this a great risk must be taken, and he was willing to take it; but in so doing he made such choice of his ground as to be practically unassailable—to attain his end without lasting harm to himself. That Nelson would have managed better had he been ten years older is very probable. Likely enough he betrayed some of the carelessness of sensibilities which the inexperience of youth is too apt to show towards age; but, upon a careful review of the whole, it appears to the writer that his general course of action was distinctly right, judged by the standards of the time and the well-settled principles of military obedience, and that he pursued an extremely difficult line of conduct with singular resolution, with sound judgment, and, in the main, with an unusual amount of tact, without which he could scarcely have failed, however well purposing, to lay himself open to serious consequences. Certainly he achieved success.

It was in the midst of this legal warfare, and of the preoccupations arising from it, that Nelson first met the lady who became his wife. She was by birth a Miss Frances Woolward, her mother being a sister of the Mr. Herbert already mentioned as President of the Council in Nevis. She was born in the first half of 1758,12 and was therefore a few months older than Nelson. In 1779 she had married Dr. Josiah Nisbet, of Nevis, and the next year was left a widow with one son, who bore his father's full name. After her husband's death, being apparently portionless, she came to live with Herbert, who looked upon and treated her as his own child, although he also had an only daughter. When Nelson first arrived at Nevis, in January, 1785,13 she was absent, visiting friends in a neighboring island, so that they did not then meet,—a circumstance somewhat fortunate for us, because it led to a description of him being sent to her in a letter from a lady of Herbert's family, not improbably her cousin, Miss Herbert. Nelson had then become a somewhat conspicuous factor in the contracted interests of the island society, owing to the stand he had already publicly assumed with reference to the contraband trade. People were talking about him, although he had not as yet enforced the extreme measures which made him so unpopular. "We have at last," so ran the letter, "seen the little captain of the Boreas of whom so much has been said. He came up just before dinner, much heated, and was very silent; but seemed, according to the old adage, to think the more. He declined drinking any wine; but after dinner, when the president, as usual, gave the three following toasts, 'the King,' 'the Queen and Royal Family,' and 'Lord Hood,' this strange man regularly filled his glass, and observed that those were always bumper toasts with him; which, having drank, he uniformly passed the bottle, and relapsed into his former taciturnity. It was impossible, during this visit, for any of us to make out his real character; there was such a reserve and sternness in his behaviour, with occasional sallies, though very transient, of a superior mind. Being placed by him, I endeavoured to rouse his attention by showing him all the civilities in my power; but I drew out little more than 'Yes' and 'No.' If you, Fanny, had been there, we think you would have made something of him, for you have been in the habit of attending to these odd sort of people."

Mrs. Nisbet very quickly made something of him. Little direct description has been transmitted to us concerning the looks or characteristics of the woman who now, at the time when marriage was possible to him, had the misfortune to appear in the line of succession of Nelson's early fancies, and to attract the too easily aroused admiration and affection of a man whose attachment she had not the inborn power to bind. That Nelson was naturally inconstant, beyond the volatility inherent in youth, is sufficiently disproved by the strength and endurance of his devotion to the one woman, in whom he either found or imagined the qualities that appealed to the heroic side of his character. How completely she mastered all the approaches to his heart, and retained her supremacy, once established, to the end, is evidenced by the whole tenor of his correspondence with her, by his mention of her in letters to others, by the recorded expressions he used in speaking to or about her. Despite all that he certainly knew of her, and much more that it is unreasonable to doubt he must have known of her history, there is no mistaking the profound emotions she stirred in his spirit, which show themselves continually in spontaneous outbreaks of passionate fondness and extravagant admiration, whose ring is too true and strong for doubt concerning their reality to find a place.

Many men are swayed by strong and wayward impulses; but to most the fetters imposed by social conventions, by inherited or implanted standards of seemliness and decorum, suffice to steady them in the path of outward propriety. Of how great and absorbing a passion Lord Nelson was capable is shown by the immensity of the sacrifice that he made to it. Principle apart,—and principle wholly failed him,—all else that most appeals to man's self-respect and regard for the esteem of others was powerless to exert control. Loyalty to friendship, the sanctity which man is naturally fain to see in the woman he loves, and, in Nelson's own case, a peculiar reluctance to wound another,—all these were trampled under foot, and ruthlessly piled on the holocaust which he offered to her whom he worshipped. He could fling to the winds, as others cannot, considerations of interest or expediency, as he flung them over and over in his professional career. My motto, he said once and again, is "All or nothing." The same disregard of consequences that hazarded all for all, in battle or for duty, broke through the barriers within which prudence, reputation, decency, or even weakness and cowardice, confine the actions of lesser men. And it must be remembered that the admitted great stain upon Nelson's fame, which it would be wicked to deny, lies not in a general looseness of life, but in the notoriety of one relation,—a notoriety due chiefly to the reckless singleness of heart which was not ashamed to own its love, but rather gloried in the public exhibition of a faith in the worthiness of its object, and a constancy, which never wavered to the hour of his death.14 The pitifulness of it is to see the incongruity between such faith, such devotion, and the distasteful inadequacy of their object.

To answer the demands of a nature capable of such energetic manifestation—to fulfil the imagination of one who could so cast himself at the feet of an ideal—was beyond the gentle, well-ordered, and somewhat prosaic charms with which alone Mrs. Nisbet was invested by Nelson, even when most loverlike in tone. "My greatest wish," he writes in the first of his letters to her that has been preserved, "is to be united to you; and the foundation of all conjugal happiness, real love and esteem, is, I trust, what you believe I possess in the strongest degree toward you." Fifteen months later, and but a short time before their wedding, he says again: "His Royal Highness often tells me, he believes I am married; for he never saw a lover so easy, or say so little of the object he has a regard for. When I tell him I certainly am not, he says, 'Then he is sure I must have a great esteem for you, and that it is not what is (vulgarly), I do not much like the use of that word, called love.' He is right: my love is founded on esteem, the only foundation that can make the passion last." But general maxims, even when less disputable than this, do not admit of universal application; and if an affection was to hold its own in a nature enthusiastic and imaginative as that of Nelson, it had need to strike root deeper than that surface soil indicated by mere esteem, at least when the latter rests simply upon an assemblage of upright and amiable qualities, and not upon that force of character which compels dependence as well as appreciation. At their last parting he solemnly avowed that his esteem was not lessened; while he was destined also to afford a conspicuous illustration of how enduring a passion may flourish where no just title to esteem exists.

The progress of his wooing was rapid enough. On the 12th of May he mentions their first meeting; on the 28th of June he writes to his brother: "Entre, nous.—Do not be surprised to hear I am a Benedict, for if at all, it will be before a month. Do not tell." On the 11th of September is dated his first letter to her, already quoted, in which he addresses her as "My dear Fanny," and alludes to the understanding existing between them. At the expiration of six months he wrote, formally announcing his engagement, to Mr. William Suckling, his mother's brother. He anticipates the latter's doubts as to the permanence of this fancy: "This Horatio, you will say, is for ever in love;" but he considers that six months without change settles that question. "My present attachment is of pretty long standing; but I was determined to be fixed before I broke this matter to any person." He then explains the situation,—that the lady herself has little or nothing; that Mr. Herbert, though rich, is not likely to help the young couple much, and he asks his uncle's assistance. This Suckling consented to give, and for several years continued liberally to extend. But still, impatient though Nelson always was to complete whatever he had on hand, various causes delayed the wedding for another year. Even with Suckling's help the question of means was pressing; and while, with pardonable self-justification, he gloried to his betrothed that "the world is convinced that I am superior to pecuniary considerations in my public and private life, as in both instances I might have been rich," he nevertheless owned to regretting that he "had not given greater attention to making money." Besides, as he wrote to his brother, "What should I do carrying a wife in a ship, and when I marry I do not mean to part with my wife." The cruising duty of the "Boreas" took her from port to port of the limited area embraced in the Leeward Islands Station, and Nevis was among the least important of the points demanding his attention. He was, therefore, frequently away from his betrothed during this period, and absence rather fanned than cooled the impetuous ardor which he carried into all his undertakings. Whether it were the pursuit of a love affair, or the chase of an enemy's fleet, delays served only to increase the vehemence with which Nelson chafed against difficulties. "Duty," he tells Mrs. Nisbet, "is the great business of a sea officer,—all private considerations must give way to it, however painful it is;" but he owns he wishes "the American vessels at the Devil, and the whole continent of America to boot," because they detain him from her side.

There is no singularity in the experience that obstacles tend rather to inflame than to check a lover's eagerness. What is noteworthy in Nelson's letters at this time is the utter absence of any illusions, of any tendency to exaggerate and glorify the qualities of the woman who for the nonce possessed his heart. There is not a sign of the perturbation of feeling, of the stirring of the soul, that was afterwards so painfully elicited by another influence. "The dear object," he writes to his brother, "you must like. Her sense, polite manners, and, to you I may say, beauty, you will much admire. She possesses sense far superior to half the people of our acquaintance, and her manners are Mrs. Moutray's." The same calm, measured tone pervades all his mention of her to others. His letters to herself, on the other hand, are often pleasing in the quiet, simple, and generally unaffected tenderness which inspires them. In a more ordinary man, destined to more commonplace fortunes, they might well be regarded as promising that enduring wedded love which strikes root downward and bears fruit upward, steadily growing in depth and devotion as the years roll by. But Nelson was not an ordinary man, and from that more humble happiness a childless marriage further debarred him. He could rise far higher, and, alas! descend far lower as he followed the radiant vision,—the image of his own mind rather than an external reality,—the ideal, which, whether in fame or in love, beckoned him onward. The calm, even, and wholly matter-of-fact appreciation of his wife's estimable traits can now be seen in the light of his after career, and its doubtful augury descried; for to idealize was an essential attribute of his temperament. Her failure, even in the heyday of courtship, to arouse in him any extravagance of emotion, any illusive exaltation of her merits, left vacant that throne in his mind which could be permanently occupied only by a highly wrought excellence,—even though that were the purely subjective creation of his own enthusiasm. This hold Lady Nelson never gained; and the long absence from 1793 to 1797, during the opening period of the war of the French Revolution, probably did to death an affection which owed what languid life it retained chiefly to propinquity and custom. Both Saumarez and Codrington, who served under him, speak passingly of the lightness with which his family ties sat upon Nelson in the years following his short stay at home in 1797. The house was empty, swept, and garnished, when the simple-minded, if lion-hearted, seaman came under the spell of one whose fascinations had overpowered the resistance of a cool-headed man of the world, leading him in his old age, with open eyes, to do what every prepossession and every reasonable conviction of his life condemned as folly.

In the summer of 1786 Sir Richard Hughes was recalled to England. During the later part of his association with Nelson, the strain which had characterized their earlier relations had not only disappeared, but had been succeeded by feelings approaching cordiality. The Government's approval of his subordinate's action, and of himself as credited with supporting it, had removed that element of apprehension which in timid men induces irritation; and Hughes, who, though irresolute, was naturally kindly, had been still farther placated by the prize-money falling to him from the vessels condemned through the zeal of Nelson. The latter, who never harbored malice, easily forgave the past, and responded to this change of tone. "I have been upon the best terms with the Admiral," he wrote from Barbadoes to his intended wife in April, 1786, "and I declare I think I could ever remain so. He is always remarkably kind and civil to every one;" and again, a few days earlier, "The admiral is highly pleased with my conduct here, as you will believe, by sending me such fine lines with a white hat. I well know I am not of abilities to deserve what he has said of me: but I take it as they are meant, to show his regard for me; and his politeness and attention to me are great: nor shall I forget it. I like the man, although not all his acts." He then directs that the lines shall not be shown to any one, "as the compliment is paid to me at the expense of the officers of the squadron," an injunction thoroughly characteristic of the man's kindly consideration for others. It was creditable to Hughes that, after being so braved, and his instructions set at naught, by his junior, he had candor enough to see and acknowledge his merit; but the fact still remained that in the hour of trial he had failed Nelson, nor did the latter, though he forgave, forget it. As he wrote to Locker in September, 1786, after the admiral's departure, "Instead of being supported by my admiral, I was obliged to keep him up, for he was frightened at this business;" of which business he truly said, emphasizing, but not at all exaggerating, the gravity of the responsibility he had taken in defiance of his superior: "After loss of health and risk of fortune, another is thanked for what I did against his orders. Either I deserved to be sent out of the service,15 or at least to have had some little notice taken of me."

Nelson indeed, in the West Indies, as an unknown captain, had done that which as a junior admiral he did later at Copenhagen, at a moment far more critical to Great Britain. By his own unusual powers of impulse and resolve he had enforced, as far as was possible against the passive, inert lethargy—not to say timidity—of his superior, the course of action which at the moment was essential to the interests of his country. Truly great in his strength to endure, he knew not the perturbations nor the vacillations that fret the temper, and cripple the action, of smaller men; and, however harassed and distressed externally, the calmness of a clear insight and an unshaken purpose guided his footsteps, unwavering, in the path of duty, through all opposition, to the goal of success. It is reported that an officer of the "Boreas," speaking to him of the vexations and odium he had undergone, used the word "pity." Nelson's reply showed the profound confidence which throughout had animated him, keenly as he had undoubtedly felt the temporary anxieties. "Pity, did you say? I shall live, Sir, to be envied; and to that point I shall always direct my course."

By the departure of Sir Richard Hughes Nelson was left senior officer upon the station until his own return home, a twelvemonth later. In November he renewed his acquaintance with Prince William Henry, whom he had known as a midshipman in 1782, and who now came to the Leeward Islands a post-captain, in command of the frigate "Pegasus." The two young men were not far apart in age, and an intimacy between them soon arose, which ended only with the death of Nelson. The latter had a profound reverence for royalty, both as an institution and as represented in its members; and to this, in the present case, was added a strong personal esteem, based upon the zeal and efficiency in the discharge of official duties, which he recognized in one whose rank would assure him impunity for any mere indifference. The prince, on the other hand, quickly yielded to the charm of Nelson's intercourse, so vividly felt by most who knew him, and to the contagious enthusiasm which animated his conversation when talking of his profession. This, also, his ardent imagination endowed with possibilities and aspirations, not greater, indeed, than its deserts, but which only the intuitions of a genius like his could realize and vivify, imparting to slower temperaments something of his own fire. To this association the prince afterwards attributed the awakening of that strong interest in maritime affairs which he retained to the day of his death. The two friends dined alternately one with the other, and, in their association of some six months at this time, they together fought over all the naval battles that during the recent war had illustrated the waters through which they were then cruising.

The incessant energy displayed by Nelson, and the agitations through which he passed during the three years of this stay upon the West Indian station, again produced distressing symptoms in his general health. To use his own words, the activity of the mind was "too much for my puny constitution." "I am worn to a skeleton," he writes to Mr. Suckling in July, 1786; and three months later to Locker, "I have been since June so very ill that I have only a faint recollection of anything which I did. My complaint was in my breast, such a one as I had going out to Jamaica [in 1777]. The Doctor thought I was in a consumption, and quite gave me up." This fear, however, proved unfounded; nor does there appear at any time to have been any serious trouble with his lungs.

On the 11th16 of March, 1787, the marriage of Captain Nelson to Mrs. Nisbet took place at Nevis. Prince William Henry, whose rule it was never to visit in any private house, made an exception on this occasion, having exacted from Nelson a promise that the wedding should wait until he could be present; and he gave away the bride. Three months later, on the 7th of June, the "Boreas" sailed for England, and on the 4th of July anchored at Spithead. Whether Mrs. Nelson accompanied him in the ship does not appear certainly; but from several expressions in his letters it seems most probable that she did. Five days after his arrival he sent a message from her to Locker, in terms which indicate that she was with him.

A newly married man, who had just concluded a full cruise of such arduous and unremitting exertions, might reasonably have wished and expected a period of relaxation; but the return of the "Boreas" coincided with a very disturbed state of European politics. In the neighboring republic of Holland two parties were striving for the mastery; one of which was closely attached to France, the other, that of the Stadtholder, to Great Britain. In 1785 the former had gained the upper hand; and, by a treaty signed on Christmas Day of that year, a decided preponderance in the councils of the United Provinces had been given to France. The enfeebled condition of the latter country, however, had allowed little prospect of permanence to this arrangement; and, in the summer of 1787, an insult offered by the French party to the wife of the Stadtholder led to a forcible intervention by the King of Prussia, whose sister she was. Louis XVI. prepared to support his partisans, and notified his purpose to Great Britain; whereupon the latter, whose traditional policy for over a century had been to resist the progress of French influence in the Low Countries, replied that she could not remain a quiet spectator, and at once began to arm. "The Dutch business," wrote Nelson, "is becoming every day more serious; and I hardly think we can keep from a war, without giving forever the weight of the Dutch to the French, and allowing the Stadtholdership to be abolished,—things which I should suppose hardly possible." Already his eager spirit was panting for the fray. "If we are to have a bustle, I do not want to come on shore; I begin to think I am fonder of the sea than ever." Only five months married!