The Life of Nelson, Volume 2

Another medical officer, who served on board the "Victory" soon after the writer of the lines just quoted, has transmitted some other interesting particulars of Nelson's personal habits and health, which relate to the general period now under narration.

"An opinion has been very generally entertained, that Lord Nelson's state of health, and supposed infirmities arising from his former wounds and hard services, precluded the probability of his long surviving the battle of Trafalgar, had he fortunately escaped the Enemy's shot: but the writer of this can assert that his Lordship's health was uniformly good, with the exception of some slight attacks of indisposition arising from accidental causes; and which never continued above two or three days, nor confined him in any degree with respect to either exercise or regimen: and during the last twelve months of his life, he complained only three times in this way. It is true, that his Lordship, about the meridian of life, had been subject to frequent fits of the gout; which disease, however, as well as his constitutional tendency to it, he totally overcame by abstaining for the space of nearly two years from animal food, and wine, and all other fermented drink; confining his diet to vegetables, and commonly milk and water. And it is also a fact, that early in life, when he first went to sea, he left off the use of salt, which he then believed to be the sole cause of scurvy, and never took it afterwards with his food.

"His Lordship used a great deal of exercise, generally walking on deck six or seven hours in the day. He always rose early, for the most part shortly after daybreak. He breakfasted in summer about six, and at seven in winter: and if not occupied in reading or writing despatches, or examining into the details of the Fleet, he walked on the quarter-deck the greater part of the forenoon; going down to his cabin occasionally to commit to paper such incidents or reflections as occurred to him during that time, and as might be hereafter useful to the service of his country. He dined generally about half-past two o'clock. At his table there were seldom less than eight or nine persons, consisting of the different Officers of the Ship: and when the weather and the service permitted, he very often had several of the Admirals and Captains in the Fleet to dine with him; who were mostly invited by signal, the rotation of seniority being commonly observed by his Lordship in these invitations. At dinner he was alike affable and attentive to every one: he ate very sparingly himself; the liver and wing of a fowl, and a small plate of macaroni, in general composing his meal, during which he occasionally took a glass of champagne. He never exceeded four glasses of wine after dinner, and seldom drank three; and even those were diluted with either Bristol or common water.

"Few men subject to the vicissitudes of a Naval life, equalled his Lordship in an habitual systematic mode of living. He possessed such a wonderful activity of mind, as even prevented him from taking ordinary repose, seldom enjoying two hours of uninterrupted sleep; and on several occasions he did not quit the deck during the whole night. At these times he took no pains to protect himself from the effects of wet, or the night air; wearing only a thin great coat: and he has frequently, after having his clothes wet through with rain, refused to have them changed, saying that the leather waistcoat which he wore over his flannel one would secure him from complaint. He seldom wore boots, and was consequently very liable to have his feet wet. When this occurred he has often been known to go down to his cabin, throw off his shoes, and walk on the carpet in his stockings for the purpose of drying the feet of them. He chose rather to adopt this uncomfortable expedient, than to give his servants the trouble of assisting him to put on fresh stockings; which, from his having only one hand, he could not himself conveniently effect.

"From these circumstances it may be inferred, that though Lord Nelson's constitution was not of that kind which is generally denominated strong, yet it was not very susceptible of complaint from the common occasional causes of disease necessarily attending a Naval life. The only bodily pain which his Lordship felt in consequence of his many wounds, was a slight rheumatic affection of the stump of his amputated arm on any sudden variation in the state of the weather; which is generally experienced by those who have the misfortune to lose a limb after the middle age. His Lordship usually predicted an alteration in the weather with as much certainty from feeling transient pains in his stump, as he could by his marine barometer; from the indications of which latter he kept a diary of the atmospheric changes, which was written with his own hand.

"His Lordship had lost his right eye by a contusion which he received at the siege of Calvi, in the island of Corsica. The vision of the other was likewise considerably impaired: he always therefore wore a green shade over his forehead, to defend this eye from the effect of strong light; but as he was in the habit of looking much through a glass while on deck, there is little doubt that had he lived a few years longer, and continued at sea, he would have lost his sight totally."68

The business hours of the day from seven to two were spent by Nelson largely with his secretaries. We know from Colonel Stewart that in the Baltic, where his command was more numerous than in the Mediterranean, his habit was to get through the ordinary business of the squadron before eight o'clock; for the rest, the greater part of the detail work would fall upon the Captain of the Fleet, then Rear-Admiral George Murray, who would require only general instructions and little interference for carrying on the laborious internal administration of the fleet. The admiral's energies were sufficiently taxed in considering and meeting, so far as his resources would permit, the numerous and complicated demands for external services in the different quarters of his wide command—the ingenious effort to induce two and two to make five, in which so much of the puzzle of life consists. His position necessarily involved extensive diplomatic relations. Each British Minister around the shores of the Mediterranean had his own particular care; the British admiral was in confidential communication with all, and in every movement had to consider the consequences, both of what he did and of what he left undone. It was a day when force ruled, and all the nations of Europe, whether they wished or not, had to put their chief trust in the sword, and in those who bore it. Not the least of Nelson's qualifications for his post was that he possessed intimate knowledge and experience of political conditions in the Mediterranean, knew the peoples and the rulers well, and to great sagacity and sound judgment added a temper at once firm and conciliatory. "He had in a great degree," said a contemporary who knew him well,69 "the valuable but rare quality of conciliating the most opposite tempers, and forwarding the public service with unanimity amongst men not of themselves disposed to accord;" and although the remark referred primarily to his conduct in the naval service, it will readily be seen that this aptitude is nowhere more useful than in the tangled maze of conflicting national interests. "My line of conduct," he wrote to Hobart, a year after taking his command, "in obedience to the spirit of his Majesty's instructions communicated through your Lordship, has been simply this,—to conciliate all, to protect all from French rapacity. I have been honoured with your letter of January 7th, and it has given me most sincere pleasure that my whole conduct in my command here has been such as to meet his Majesty's approbation." The new Ministry, upon assuming office, requested him in the most flattering terms to continue his direct correspondence on political subjects with them, as with their predecessors.

Yet, while conciliatory, he could at times be curt and arbitrary enough. Fault was found with the blockade of Genoa on the ground that it did not comply with the requirements of international law; the complaint resting, apparently, on the statement that the blockaders could not be seen from Genoa. Nelson replied that the proof of evident danger to vessels seeking to enter or leave, rested on the fact that captures were made; and it is, on the face of it, absurd to say that there can be no danger to a vessel seeking to enter a blockaded port, because the blockading vessels are not visible from the latter. Much more depends upon their number, disposition, and speed. "From my knowledge of Genoa and its Gulf," said Nelson, "I assert without fear of contradiction, that the nearer ships cruise to Genoa, the more certain is the escape of vessels from that port, or their entrance into it insured. I am blockading Genoa, according to the orders of the Admiralty, and in the way I think most proper. Whether modern law or ancient law makes my mode right, I cannot judge; and surely of the mode of disposing of a fleet, I must, if I am fit for my post, be a better judge than any landsman, however learned he may appear. It would be the act of a fool to tell Europe where I intend to place the ships, for the purpose of effectually obeying my orders; not a captain can know it, and their positions will vary, according to the information I may receive.... I endeavour, as well as I am able, to obey my orders, without entering into the nice distinctions of lawyers. I will not further take up your time on a subject which, without being a lawyer, merely as a man, could have admitted of no dispute." Along with much truth, there was in this a certain amount of special pleading, as appeared when he took the further position that, to intercept ships from Genoa, bound to the Atlantic, there was no better place than the Gut of Gibraltar. When a definition of international law is stretched as far as that, it will have little elastic force left.

A petty, yet harassing, diplomatic difficulty, curiously illustrative of maritime conditions at that day, ran unsettled through almost the whole of his command. Malta, under the Knights, had been always at war with the Barbary Powers; and there was trouble in impressing upon the rulers of the latter that, when it passed into British hands, its people and ships were under British protection. Several Maltese vessels had been taken by Algerine cruisers, and their crews enslaved. When Nelson came out in 1803, he found pending these cases, and also the question of compelling, or inducing, the Dey to receive back the British consul, whom he had expelled with insult. In the absence of a British representative, the negotiations were intrusted wholly to the admiral.

Nelson's feelings were strongly excited. He was tenacious of everything he conceived to touch his country's honor, and long service in the Mediterranean had made him familiar with the outrages on its defenceless coasts practised by these barbarians, under the pretence of war with the weaker states. Even in the remote and impoverished north of Sardinia, the shepherds near the beaches watched their flocks with arms beside them, day and night, to repel the attacks of marauders from the sea. Not only were trading-vessels seized, but descents were made upon the shore, and the inhabitants swept off into slavery. Speaking of one such case in 1799, he had said: "My blood boils that I cannot chastise these pirates. They could not show themselves in the Mediterranean did not our Country permit. Never let us talk of the cruelty of the African slave trade, while we permit such a horrid war." But he knew, both then and afterwards, that Great Britain, with the great contest on her hands, could not spare the ships which might be crippled in knocking the barbarians' strongholds about their ears, and that no British admiral would be sustained in a course that provoked these pirates to cast aside the fears that restrained them, and to declare war on British commerce, which, as it was, he had difficulty to protect. He estimated ten ships-of-the-line as the force necessary, in case the batteries at Algiers were to be attacked. Exmouth, twelve years later, with fuller information, thought and found five to be sufficient.

Nelson's conduct and self-control were sorely tested by the necessity of temporizing with this petty foe, who reckoned securely on the embarrassments of Great Britain. He acted with great judgment, however, holding a high tone, and implying much in the way of menace, without at any time involving himself in a definite threat, from which he could not recede without humiliation; careful and precise in his demands, but never receding from them, or allowing them to be evaded, when once made; sensible of the difficulties in his way, as well those raised by his own Government as those dependent upon his opponent, but equally aware that he held in his hands, if authorized to use it, the power to suppress the career of depredation, upon which the Dey relied to support his revenue, and to content his officers. Personally, he favored a short and summary proceeding, accordant to his own decided character. The Dey proving immovable when first summoned, he proposed to the British Government "that on the 28th of April next, when, if he means to send his cruisers to sea, they will be out, that, on that day, every ship under my command should have strict orders (to open on that day) to take, sink, burn, and destroy every Algerine, and that on that day the port of Algiers should be declared in a state of blockade. Thus the Dey could get neither commerce, presents, or plunder; and, although the other Powers may rejoice at the war with us, yet I am firmly persuaded that it will be most advantageous to us for the next hundred years." At the same time, with his usual circumspection, he issued a general direction to all commanders of convoys to carry their charges well clear of the Algerine coast, until matters were settled. In the end, the British Ministry yielded much more than Nelson approved, but, however sorely against the grain, he carried out all his instructions with scrupulous subordination. It was only three days before the active campaign began with the sortie of the French fleet, that he was rejoined by the ship to whose captain were intrusted the final arrangements with Algiers.

For his diplomatic and naval correspondence, Nelson had two principal secretaries, public and private, both, awkwardly enough, named Scott; but the latter, being a clergyman and chaplain of the ship, was colloquially brevetted Doctor, a distinction which, for convenience, will be observed when it is necessary to mention him. He had become known to Nelson while serving in the same capacity with Sir Hyde Parker, and had been found very useful in the negotiations at Copenhagen. An accomplished linguist and an omnivorous reader, Dr. Scott was doubly useful. Upon him devolved the translating of all despatches and letters, not only from, but to, foreign courts and officials; for Nelson made a point of sending with all such papers a copy in the language of the person addressed, and an apology for failing to do so sometimes appears, on account of his secretary's absence. The latter was also a man of wide information, acquired, not as his superior's chiefly was, by mingling among men and dealing with affairs, but from books; and the admiral, while rightly valuing the teachings of experience above all, was duly sensible that one's own experience is susceptible of further extension through that of others, imparted either by word or pen. Nelson entertained a persuasion, so Scott has told us, that no man ever put his hand to paper without having some information or theory to deliver, which he fancied was not generally known, and that this was worth looking after through all the encumbering rubbish. For the same reason, besides being naturally sociable, he liked to draw others into conversation, and to start subjects for discussion, from which, when fairly under way, he would withdraw himself into silence and allow the company to do the talking, both in order to gather ideas that might be useful to himself, and also to observe character transpiring in conversation. Bourrienne has told us that Bonaparte took pleasure in provoking similar debates. Scott himself, a man essentially unpractical, afforded Nelson amusement as well as interest, and was the object of a good deal of innocent chaffing. He would, in those after-dinner gatherings which Gillespie mentions, lead the doctor into arguments on literature, politics, Spanish and even naval affairs, and would occasionally provoke from him a lecture on navigation itself, to the great entertainment of Murray, Hardy, and the other officers present.70 "Ah, my dear Doctor!" he would say chaffingly, "give me knowledge practically acquired—experience! experience! experience! and practical men!"

Nelson, however, was too big and too broad a man not to know that, while by doing the same thing, or bearing the same thing, many times,—by experience, that is,—one acquires a facility not otherwise communicable, in a novel situation a man is abler to act, the more he has availed himself of the knowledge and the suggestions of others. Absorbed with the duties of his station, it was of the first importance that he should possess every information, and ponder every idea, small and great, bearing upon its conditions, as well as upon the general political state of Europe in that period of ominous waiting, wherein great events were evidently coming to birth. Day after day, Dr. Scott's biographer tells us, was passed by the two together, sitting in two black leathern arm-chairs with roomy pockets, stuffed with papers, written and printed, journals and pamphlets, gathered from every source—from prizes, from passing neutral vessels, from cruisers returning from neutral or friendly ports, or picked up by the doctor himself in the not infrequent trips on which he was sent, ostensibly for pleasure, but with a keen eye also to the collection of intelligence. Marked externally by the abstraction of a book-worm, entirely unpractical and heedless in the common affairs of life, and subject to an occasional flightiness of action, the result in part of an injury to his head while in the service, Scott gave those who saw him going about an impression of guilelessness, which covered him from the suspicion of having a mission. He had, says his biographer, "in union with a capacity for very difficult services, a simplicity that often put him at disadvantage in worldly matters, and it became a common joke with the Admiral, that 'the doctor would always want somebody to take care of him.'"

Nelson had everything read to him; first of all, newspapers, which were sent regularly to the fleet by British agents in various quarters. Upon them chiefly, and not upon England, he depended for knowledge of what was happening; in Great Britain itself, as well as on the Continent. From ten to twelve weeks was no uncommon length of time for him to be without word from home. "I never hear from England," he wrote to Elliot in the summer of 1804, "but as we manage to get the Paris papers regularly through Spain. From ten days to a fortnight we get them from their date at Paris: therefore we know the very great events which are passing in Europe—at least as much as the French people;" a shrewd limitation. These, therefore, together with Spanish, Italian, and other sheets, it was Scott's daily task to read aloud to his chief, who found therein not only information but amusement. He insisted also upon hearing the numerous ephemeral pamphlets, of which the age was prolific, and which found their way to him. His quickness in detecting the drift of an author was marvellous. Two or three pages of a pamphlet were generally sufficient to put him in complete possession of the writer's object, while nothing was too trivial for his attention where there existed a possibility of its contributing a clue to the problems of his command. Not the least onerous of the doctor's duties was the deciphering of private letters found in prizes, a channel by which important public interests are often betrayed. Nelson's quickness to see the bearing and value of an apparently trifling mention, dropped by the way by a careless pen, rendered such an exercise of his ingenuity at once a pleasure and a profit. The public secretary, Mr. Scott, was equally struck with the alertness and sagacity of his employer's mind. "I have heard much of Lord Nelson's abilities as an officer and statesman, but the account of the latter is infinitely short. In my travels through the service I have met with no character in any degree equal to his Lordship; his penetration is quick, judgment clear, wisdom great, and his decisions correct and decided: nor does he in company appear to bear any weight on his mind." It was with difficulty, after a prolonged session, that the doctor could at times beg off, and leave, stuffed in the arm-chair pockets, for another day's work, a dozen or two of such letters, sealed to Nelson by his imperfect eyesight and inadequate mastery of other tongues. The arm-chairs, lashed together, formed at times a couch upon which the admiral "slept those brief slumbers for which he was remarkable;" in those moments, doubtless, when anxiety about the enemy's movements did not permit him to go regularly to bed.

In common with all those closely associated with Nelson, Dr. Scott was particularly struck with the kindliness and cordiality of his bearing and actions; which is the more to be noted, because no one, probably, had more occasion to see the movements of irritability, of impatience, which lay very near the surface, than did his secretaries, through whom his most vexatious work must be done. That he was vehement to express annoyance has appeared frequently in these pages. The first Lord Radstock, who was senior to him in the service, and knew him well, writing to his son, then a midshipman in the "Victory," is constant and extreme in his admiration of Nelson; but he gives the caution to be careful of impressions made upon a chief upon whom advancement depends. Quick in all his ways, a moment's heedlessness, possibly misunderstood or misrepresented, may produce lasting injury. "Lord Nelson is of so hasty a temper, that in spite of all his natural goodness, I should fear that he would too readily give ear to those in whom he had placed his confidence. He is a man of strong passions, and his prejudices are proportionate." "On many occasions," says another writer, "Lord Nelson evinced an impatience that has been considered as irreconcileable with magnanimity; but the secret workings of his soul have not been received into the account or analysis of character, for we find the same individual, while employed in watching the French fleet off Toulon, display the most unexampled patience and forbearance, and never betray the smallest symptom of inquietude or disappointment."71 Murray, the Captain of the Fleet, when first offered his appointment, had hesitated to accept. Upon Nelson urging him, he gave as his reason that the nature of the duties often led to disagreements between the admiral and his chief of staff, and that he was unwilling to risk any diminution of the regard existing between him and his Lordship; a remark true enough in the general, but clearly of somewhat special application. Nelson assured him that, should anything go contrary to his wishes, he would waive his rank and explain or expostulate with him as his friend, and when, after two years' service, Murray had to leave the ship, he refused to replace him,—he would have Murray or none. In truth, such readiness to flare up must needs be the defect of that quality of promptness, that instant succession of deed to thought, which was a distinguishing feature of Nelson's genius and actions. Captain Hillyar more than once alludes to this trait as characteristic of the fleet, to which its chief had transmitted his own spirit. "I have had to-day to lament," he says, speaking of some trifling disappointment, "the extreme promptitude with which we all move when near his lordship."

But, while traces of this failing may be detected here and there by the watchful reader, as Nelson himself gleaned useful indications amid the rubbishy mass of captured correspondence, there survives, among the remains left by those in daily contact with him, only the record of a frank, open bearing, and unfailing active kindness. "Setting aside his heroism," wrote Dr. Scott after Trafalgar, "when I think what an affectionate, fascinating little fellow he was, how dignified and pure his mind, how kind and condescending his manners, I become stupid with grief for what I have lost." "He is so cheerful and pleasant," wrote the public secretary, Mr. Scott, "that it is a happiness to be about his hand." Dr. Gillespie notes "his noble frankness of manners, freedom from vain formality and pomp (so necessary to the decoration of empty little great men), which can only be equalled by the unexampled glory of his naval career, and the watchful and persevering diligence with which he commands this fleet." "Nelson was the man to love" said Captain Pulteney Malcolm, who knew intimately both him and Wellington. "I received Captain Leake," Nelson himself says, speaking of an army officer on a special mission to the Mediterranean, "with that openness which was necessary to make myself as well acquainted with him in three days, as others might do in as many years. I have given him all the knowledge of the men, their views, &c. &c., as far as I have been able to form a judgment." The remark is valuable, for it shows that frankness and cordiality were recognized by him as the wisest and most politic method of dealing with men. "Our friend, Sir Alexander," he says testily, "is a very great diplomatic character, and even an admiral must not know what he is negotiating about. You shall judge, viz., 'The Tunisian envoy is still here, negotiating. He is a moderate man; and, apparently, the best disposed of any I ever did business with.' Could even the oldest diplomatic character be drier? I hate such parade and nonsense."