The Life of Nelson, Volume 2

From newspapers received off Ushant he first learned of Calder's battle, and the public dissatisfaction with the results. He had undergone too much frustration and anxiety himself not to feel for an officer who had made a mistake, although it may safely be said that Calder's mistake was not only one Nelson could not have made, but was the exact opposite of the course which Nelson by anticipation had said he would adopt. He expressed himself in words of generous sympathy. "I was bewildered by the account of Sir Robert Calder's victory, and the joy of the event; together with the hearing that John Bull was not content, which I am sorry for. Who can, my dear Freemantle, command all the success which our Country may wish? We have fought together, and therefore well know what it is. I have had the best disposed fleet of friends, but who can say what will be the event of a battle? and it most sincerely grieves me, that in any of the papers it should be insinuated, that Lord Nelson could have done better. I should have fought the enemy, so did my friend Calder; but who can say that he will be more successful than another? I only wish to stand upon my own merits, and not by comparison, one way or the other, upon the conduct of a brother officer. You will forgive this dissertation, but I feel upon the occasion." These words, which spoke the whole of his honest heart, were the more generous, because he believed Calder to be one of the few professional enemies that he had.

From the place where Villeneuve was met, Nelson reasoned, again, that the primary intention of the allies, returning from the West Indies, had been to enter the Straits. "By all accounts I am satisfied their original destination was the Mediterranean, but they heard frequently of our track." This persistence in his first view was partly due to the confidence with which he held to his own convictions,—the defect of a strong quality,—partly, doubtless, to the fact that Villeneuve had blundered in his homeward course, and fetched unnecessarily to leeward of his port, with reference to winds perfectly understood by seamen of that day. In fact he had no business to be where he brought up, except on the supposition that he was making for the Straits.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER XXI.

NELSON'S LAST STAY IN ENGLAND

Meeting of Nelson and Wellington

AUGUST 19—SEPTEMBER 15, 1805. AGE, 46

The "Victory" was delayed in quarantine twenty-four hours, when orders from London directed her release. At 9 P.M. of the 19th of August, Nelson's flag was hauled down, and he left the ship for Merton, thus ending an absence of two years and three months. His home being but an hour's drive from the heart of London, the anxieties of the time, and his own eagerness to communicate his views and experience, carried him necessarily and at once to the public offices—to the Admiralty first, but also to the Secretaries for Foreign Affairs and for War, both of whom had occasion for the knowledge and suggestions of so competent and practised an observer. The present head of the Admiralty, Lord Barham, had succeeded to the office, unexpectedly, upon the sudden retirement of Melville the previous May. He was a naval officer, eighty years of age, who since middle life had exchanged the active sea-going of the profession, for civil duties connected with it. He had thus been out of touch with it on the military side; and although Nelson was of course well known to him by reputation and achievement, he had not that intimate personal experience of his character and habit of thought, upon which was based the absolute confidence felt by St. Vincent, and by all others who had seen the great warrior in active service. "Lord Barham is an almost entire stranger to me," wrote Nelson; but after their interview he left with him the journals in which were embodied the information obtained during his recent command, with his comments upon the affairs of the Mediterranean in particular, and, as incidental thereto, of Europe in general. Barham, who gave proof of great military capacity during his short term of office, was so much impressed by the sagacity and power of Nelson's remarks, that he assured the Cabinet he ought by all means to go back to the Mediterranean; and it may be assumed that the latter's wish so to do would have been gratified, at the time of his own choosing, had not other events interposed to carry him away earlier, and to end his career.

It was upon one of these visits to Ministers that Nelson and Wellington met for the only time in their lives. The latter had just returned from a long service in India, reaching England in September, 1805. His account of the interview, transmitted to us by Croker, is as follows:—

WALMER, October 1st, 1834. We were talking of Lord Nelson, and some instances were mentioned of the egotism and vanity that derogated from his character. "Why," said the Duke, "I am not surprised at such instances, for Lord Nelson was, in different circumstances, two quite different men, as I myself can vouch, though I only saw him once in my life, and for, perhaps, an hour. It was soon after I returned from India. I went to the Colonial Office110 in Downing Street, and there I was shown into the little waiting-room on the right hand, where I found, also waiting to see the Secretary of State, a gentleman, whom, from his likeness to his pictures and the loss of an arm, I immediately recognised as Lord Nelson. He could not know who I was, but he entered at once into conversation with me, if I can call it conversation, for it was almost all on his side and all about himself, and in, really, a style so vain and so silly as to surprise and almost disgust me. I suppose something that I happened to say may have made him guess that I was somebody, and he went out of the room for a moment, I have no doubt to ask the office-keeper who I was, for when he came back he was altogether a different man, both in manner and matter. All that I had thought a charlatan style had vanished, and he talked of the state of this country and of the aspect and probabilities of affairs on the Continent with a good sense, and a knowledge of subjects both at home and abroad, that surprised me equally and more agreeably than the first part of our interview had done; in fact, he talked like an officer and a statesman. The Secretary of State kept us long waiting, and certainly, for the last half or three quarters of an hour, I don't know that I ever had a conversation that interested me more. Now, if the Secretary of State had been punctual, and admitted Lord Nelson in the first quarter of an hour, I should have had the same impression of a light and trivial character that other people have had; but luckily I saw enough to be satisfied that he was really a very superior man; but certainly a more sudden and complete metamorphosis I never saw."111

This is not the only record that remains to us of those interesting interviews with Cabinet Ministers, although the most have passed away unnoted. It was in one of them that he uttered a military opinion, for whose preservation we are indebted to his own mention of it in a private letter; an opinion so characteristic of his habits of thought, his reasoned motives of action, that, although it has before been quoted, it is fitting to repeat it in his own words and in full.

When he reached England, the naval situation, as far as then known, was that Napoleon had twenty-one French ships-of-the-line in Brest, and twenty-eight or nine, French and Spanish, in Ferrol; while Cornwallis had thirty-five British off Brest. This was the condition on the 15th of August, when Nelson parted from the fleet off Ushant. Very soon after his arrival in town, news was received that Villeneuve had gone to sea from Ferrol, and that Cornwallis, when informed of the fact, had divided his fleet, with great lack of judgment, keeping himself seventeen ships to confront the Brest squadron, while eighteen were sent to look for Villeneuve under the command of Admiral Calder. In the public discontent with the latter, it was not reassuring to know that, at a moment when every one's nerves were on the rack, he was again intrusted with the always difficult task of coping with a much superior force. While this state of excitement prevailed, Nelson called upon the Secretary of State, Lord Castlereagh, on the 23d of August. "Yesterday," he wrote to Captain Keats, "the Secretary of State, which is a man who has only sat one solitary day in his office, and of course knows but little of what is passed, and indeed the Minister,112 were all full of the enemy's fleet, and as I am now set up for a Conjuror, and God knows they will very soon find out I am far from being one, I was asked my opinion, against my inclination, for if I make one wrong guess the charm will be broken; but this I ventured without any fear, that if Calder got close alongside their twenty-seven or twenty-eight sail, that by the time the enemy had beat our fleet soundly, they would do us no harm this year."

This acute perception of the reason why it was at times desirable and proper to hurl a smaller though more efficient force against superior numbers, content that the latter, as a factor, were for the campaign annihilated,—this realization of the possible fruitfulness of a defeat, or rather, of a battle wisely lost, as contrasted with what Jomini calls the sterile glory of fighting battles merely to win them,—is one of the most marked and decisive features of Nelson's genius as a general officer. It recurs over and over again, and at all periods, in his correspondence, this clear and full appreciation of the relation of the parts to the whole.113 It underlay his sustained purpose during the long pursuit of the preceding months, that, if he found the allied squadron, "they would not part without a battle." Whatever else the result, that particular division would do no harm that year, and with it necessarily fell the great combination, whatever that might be, of which it was an essential factor. "The event would have been in the hands of Providence," he wrote to Barham; "but we may without, I hope, vanity, believe that the enemy would have been fit for no active service after such a battle." There is wanting to the completeness of this admirable impulse only the steadying resolve that he would bide his time, so as, to use Napoleon's phrase, to have the most of the chances on his side when he attacked. This also we know he meant to do. "I will wait, till they give me an opportunity too tempting to be resisted, or till they draw near the shores of Europe." In such qualification is to be seen the equipoise of the highest order of ability. This union of desperate energy with calculating wariness was in him not so much a matter of reasoning, though reason fully endorses it, as it was the gift of nature,—genius, in short. Reasoning of a very high order illuminates Nelson's mental processes and justifies his conclusions, but it is not in the power of reason, when face to face with emergency, to bridge the chasm that separates perception, however clear, from the inward conviction which alone sustains the loftiest action. "Responsibility," said St. Vincent, "is the test of a man's courage." Emergency, it may be said, is the test of his faith in his beliefs.

While those at the head of the State thus hung upon his counsels, and drew encouragement from his indomitable confidence, the people in the streets looked up to him with that wistful and reverent dependence which does not wholly understand, but centres all its trust upon a tried name. They knew what he had done in the now distant past, and they had heard lately that he had been to the West Indies, and had returned, having saved the chief jewel among the colonies of the empire. They knew, also, that their rulers were fearful about invasion, and that in some undefined way Nelson had stood, and would yet stand, between them and harm. The rapidity of his movements left little interval between the news of his being back at Gibraltar and the announcement of his arrival at Portsmouth, which was not generally expected. On the 19th of August, a day after the "Victory" anchored at Spithead, Lord Radstock wrote: "'T is extraordinary no official accounts have been received from Lord Nelson since the 27th of July. He then hinted that he might perhaps go to Ireland; nevertheless, we have had no tidings of him on that coast. I confess I begin to be fearful that he has worried his mind up to that pitch, that he cannot bear the idea of showing himself again to the world, until he shall have struck some blow, and that it is this hope that is now making him run about, half-frantic, in quest of adventures. That such unparalleled perseverance and true valor should thus evaporate in air is truly melancholy."

If any doubt of the approval of his countrymen mingled with the distress Nelson unquestionably felt at having missed the enemy, he was touchingly undeceived. As soon as the "Victory" and his flag were made out, the people flocked to Portsmouth, collecting on the ramparts of the town and other points of view, in inaudible testimony of welcome. As the barge pulled to the shore, and upon landing, he was greeted with loud and long-continued cheering. In London the same demonstrations continued whenever he was recognized in public. "Lord Nelson arrived a few days ago," wrote Radstock. "He was received in town almost as a conqueror, and was followed round by the people with huzzas. So much for a great and good name most nobly and deservedly acquired." "I met Nelson in a mob in Piccadilly," wrote Minto at the same time, "and got hold of his arm, so that I was mobbed too. It is really quite affecting to see the wonder and admiration, and love and respect of the whole world; and the genuine expression of all these sentiments at once, from gentle and simple, the moment he is seen. It is beyond anything represented in a play or in a poem of fame." In these few days was concentrated the outward reward of a life spent in the service of his country. During them, Nelson was conspicuously the first man in England,—first alike in the love of the people and in importance to the State.

On the private side, also, his life for this brief respite was eminently happy, marred only by the prospect of a speedy departure, the signal for which sounded even sooner than was expected. By his own account, he was only four times in London, and all the moments that could be spared from external calls he spent at Merton, where there gathered a large family party, including all his surviving brothers and sisters, with several of their children. "I cannot move at present," he writes on the 31st of August, in declining an invitation, "as all my family are with me, and my stay is very uncertain; and, besides, I have refused for the present all invitations." "I went to Merton on Saturday" (August 24th), wrote Minto, "and found Nelson just sitting down to dinner, surrounded by a family party, of his brother the Dean, Mrs. Nelson, their children, and the children of a sister. Lady Hamilton at the head of the table, and Mother Cadogan114 at the bottom. I had a hearty welcome. He looks remarkably well and full of spirits. His conversation is a cordial in these low times. Lady Hamilton has improved and added to the house and the place extremely well, without his knowing she was about it. He found it already done. She is a clever being, after all: the passion is as hot as ever."

Over all hung, unseen, the sword of Damocles. Nelson himself seems to have been possessed already by vague premonitions of the coming end, which deepened and darkened around him as he went forward to his fate. The story told of his saying to the upholsterer, who had in charge the coffin made from the mast of the "Orient," that a certificate of its identity should be engraved on the lid, because he thought it highly probable that he might want it on his return, is, indeed, but a commonplace, light-hearted remark, which derives what significance it has purely from the event; but it is easy to recognize in his writings the recurrent, though intermittent, strain of unusual foreboding. Life then held much for him; and it is when richest that the possibility of approaching loss possesses the consciousness with the sense of probability. Upon a soul of his heroic temper, however, such presentiments, though they might solemnize and consecrate the passing moments, had no power to appall, nor to convert cheerfulness into gloom. The light that led him never burned more brightly, nor did he ever follow with more unfaltering step.

Fixed in his mind to return to his command in October, he soon felt that, in the uncertainties of the French movements, a call might come at any moment. Although he nowhere says so, his mind was doubtless made up that, if Villeneuve's twenty-nine sail went to, or near, the Mediterranean, he would go out at once. "Every ship," he writes on the 31st of August, "even the Victory, is ordered out, for there is an entire ignorance whether the Ferrol fleet is coming to the northward, gone to the Mediterranean, or cruizing for our valuable homeward-bound fleet." "Mr. Pitt," he tells a friend as early as the 29th, "is pleased to think that my services may be wanted. I hope Calder's victory (which I am most anxiously expecting) will render my going forth unnecessary." "I hold myself ready," he writes again on the 3d of September, "to go forth whenever I am desired, although God knows I want rest; but self is entirely out of the question."115

It was not, therefore, to a mind or will unprepared that the sudden intimation came on the 2d of September—just a fortnight after he left the "Victory." That morning there arrived in town Captain Blackwood of the frigate "Euryalus," which had been despatched by Collingwood to notify the Admiralty that the missing Villeneuve had turned up with his squadron at Cadiz, on the 20th of August. Blackwood was an old friend and follower. It was he who had commanded the "Penelope" in March, 1800, and more than any one present had insured the capture of the "Guillaume Tell," when she ran out from Malta,116—the greatest service, probably, rendered to Nelson's reputation by any man who ever sailed under his orders. He stopped first at Merton at five o'clock in the morning, and found Nelson already up and dressed. The latter said at once, "I am sure you bring me news of the French and Spanish fleets, and I think I shall yet have to beat them." Later in the day he called at the Admiralty, and there saw Blackwood again. In the course of conversation, which turned chiefly upon future operations in the Mediterranean, he frequently repeated, "Depend on it, Blackwood, I shall yet give Mr. Villeneuve a drubbing," an expression whose wording evinces animation and resolve,—far removed from the troubled indecision from which, by her own account, Lady Hamilton freed him.

It was speedily determined by the Government that the combined fleets in Cadiz should be held there, or forced to fight if they left; the country had passed through a fortnight of too great anxiety, to risk any chance of its repetition by a renewed evasion. Ignorant of the reasons which dictated Villeneuve's course, and that it was not accordant but contrary to his orders, it was natural to suppose that there was some further object indicated by the position now taken, and that that object was the Mediterranean. Moreover, so large a body of commissioned ships—nearly forty—as were now assembled, could not fail to tax severely the resources of a port like Cadiz, and distress would tend to drive them out soon. Thirty thousand able-bodied men are a heavy additional load on the markets of a small city, blockaded by sea, and with primitive communications by land. Upon this rested Nelson's principal hope of obliging them to come forth, if Napoleon himself did not compel them. Their position, he wrote the Secretary for War soon after he joined the fleet, seemed to favor an attack by rockets; "but I think we have a better chance of forcing them out by want of provisions: it is said hunger will break through stone walls,—ours is only a wall of wood." "It is said that there is a great scarcity of provisions in Cadiz." He then mentioned that the allies were endeavoring to meet this difficulty by sending neutral vessels, loaded with food-stuffs, from French ports to all the small harbors on either side of Cadiz, whence the stores carried by them could be transferred by coasting-boats,—a process which ships were powerless to stop. Collingwood, therefore, had seized the neutrals, and sent them into Gibraltar, a step which Nelson had approved and continued. For it he then demanded the authority of his government. "Should it be thought proper to allow the enemy's fleet to be victualled, I request that I may be informed as soon as possible."

In connection with this subject Nelson made an allusion to a policy with which Castlereagh, the minister he was addressing, was afterwards identified,—that of the celebrated Orders in Council of 1807, and the license system connected with it. This is one of the few intimations we have of the wide range of subjects upon which he conversed with members of the Cabinet while in England; and it is interesting, not only as showing how far back those measures originated, but also as illustrating his own prophetic intuition of the construction which would be placed upon such proceedings. "I can have nothing, as an Admiral, to say upon the propriety of granting licences; but from what your Lordship told me of the intention of Ministers respecting the neutral trade, it strikes me, some day it may be urged that it was not for the sake of blockade, but for the purpose of taking all the trade into her own hands, that Great Britain excluded the Neutrals. Your Lordship's wisdom will readily conceive all that Neutral Courts may urge at this apparent injustice, and of might overcoming right."117 This shrewdly accurate forecast of a contention which was not to arise till after his death is but one instance among many of Nelson's clearness of judgment, in political as well as in military matters.

Nelson's services, upon this, his final departure from England, were rather requested by the Government than by him volunteered—in the ordinary sense of the word. He went willingly enough, doubtless, but in obedience, proud and glad, to the summons, not only of the popular cry, but of the Cabinet's wish. "I own I want much more rest," he wrote to Elliot, immediately after joining the fleet off Cadiz; "but it was thought right to desire me to come forth, and I obeyed." "I expected to lay my weary bones quiet for the winter," he told another friend in Naples, "but I ought, perhaps, to be proud of the general call which has made me to go forth." The popularly received account, therefore, derived from Lady Hamilton, of her controlling influence in the matter, may be dismissed as being—if not apocryphal—merely one side of the dealing by which he had to reconcile the claims of patriotic duty with the appeals of the affections. As told by Southey, her part in his decision was as follows: "When Blackwood had left him, he wanted resolution to declare his wishes to Lady Hamilton and his sisters, and endeavoured to drive away the thought. He had done enough, he said: 'Let the man trudge it who has lost his budget!' His countenance belied his lips; and as he was pacing one of the walks in the garden, which he used to call the quarter-deck, Lady Hamilton came up to him, and said she saw he was uneasy. He smiled, and said: 'No, he was as happy as possible; he was surrounded by his family, his health was better since he had been on shore, and he would not give sixpence to call the king his uncle.' She replied, that she did not believe him, that she knew he was longing to get at the combined fleets, that he considered them as his own property, that he would be miserable if any man but himself did the business, and that he ought to have them, as the price and reward of his two years' long watching, and his hard chase. 'Nelson,' said she, 'however we may lament your absence, offer your services; they will be accepted, and you will gain a quiet heart by it; you will have a glorious victory, and then you may return here, and be happy.' He looked at her with tears in his eyes: 'Brave Emma! Good Emma! If there were more Emmas, there would be more Nelsons.' His services were as willingly accepted as they were offered."

The fidelity with which Nelson destroyed Lady Hamilton's letters prevents our knowing just what was her attitude towards his aspirations for glory, and her acquiescence in his perils, in view of the entire dependence of her future upon his life; a dependence such as an honored wife could by no means feel, for the widow of Nelson could rely safely upon the love of the nation. Certain it is that his letters to her contain enough appeals to the sense she should have of his honor, to show that he stood in need of no strengthening at her hands; and it seems legible enough, between the lines, that he had rather to resist the pull of her weakness, or her interest, than to look for encouragement in the path of hardship and self-denial. It is certain, too, that some days before Blackwood arrived, Nelson understood that he might be wanted soon, and avowed his entire willingness to go, while not affecting to conceal his hope that circumstances might permit him to remain until October, the time he had fixed to Collingwood for his return. Whatever the inside history, the matter was quickly settled. On September 3d, the day after Blackwood's arrival, he writes to Rose: "I shall rejoice to see you on board the Victory, if only for a moment; but I shall certainly not be an advocate for being at Portsmouth till one of the Victory's anchors are at the bows."118 The next day, the 4th, Lord Minto writes: "Lord Nelson has been here to-day. He is going to resume the command of the Mediterranean as soon as the Victory is ready, which will be within a week." On the 5th he himself tells a friend, "All my things are this day going off for Portsmouth."