Caribbean (68 page)

He was thus in a frame of mind to fall in love with the Widow Nisbet even before he saw her, and when she first came fluttering into the room of her uncle’s mansion in Nevis, she swept Nelson away, for she was delicately beautiful, charming, witty in conversation, and gifted as a musician. Her attributes, which were many, were enhanced by the fine deportment of her son, Josiah, who at age five already wanted to go to sea. But most reassuring of all was the intelligence which his trusted friend Alistair Wrentham quietly collected for Nelson when the latter returned starry-eyed to the
Boreas:
“It’s impossible to determine just how much money old Herbert has, but it must be tremendous, because he controls three different sugar plantations, his factors assure me that year after year he ships back to London at least six hundred hogsheads of sugar. I’ve made my own count of his slaves and they’re worth not less than sixty thousand pounds. Can you imagine what the total fortune has to be?”

Nelson could not. But Wrentham, enthusiastic and accustomed to large figures, cried: “With his wealth, Herbert could easily provide his niece with twenty thousand. Now, if you invested that in Consols at five percent, you’d have … how much? Wonderful! You’d have a thousand pounds a year!” But upon reflection, Wrentham thought that the old man might want to give as much as £40,000 outright, which would yield a handsome two thousand a year, and this figure became fixed in Nelson’s mind as securely as if Mr. Herbert had promised it in writing; he was going to be a rich man, a condition to which he felt he was entitled.

Despite the fact that Lieutenant Wrentham had assured himself that Nelson was going to be a wealthy man, he frequently caught himself thinking about his exciting days at Trevelyan Plantation, and lamenting: Why couldn’t it have been Prudence Pembroke and not this one? Prudence had all the money Nelson needed, and beauty too. Her family could have been even more influential in gaining him promotions. There’s something about this affair … maybe her having a son … that I don’t like. Besides, Nelson is not in good health. His constant attention to detail continues to wear him down, and he ought to be thinking about taking a long rest rather than getting married. Then he would visualize Prudence as he had seen her that first day on the steps of Golden Hall, an apparition of delight in her charming dress, her welcoming smile, and he would drop his head
and move it slowly from side to side, as if attempting to turn back the clock to those happy days when he was striving to find a wife for the man he revered.

No place for regrets, now, he told himself one day as he watched Nelson launch his tempestuous courtship of Mrs. Nisbet. Frustrated so many times before, and needing money now more than ever, Nelson also felt that he must not allow this dazzling opportunity to escape, and since Fanny Nisbet apparently felt the same way, a love match was under way. But there was one small cloud threatening this dreamy landscape: Mr. Herbert pointed out that his niece had contracted to serve as his housekeeper, and he could not see his way clear to releasing her from those duties for another eighteen months. So the love-smitten couple had to waste all of 1785 and much of the next year in courtship rather than marriage, but since this occurred on the lovely little island of Nevis, the long months acquired a fairy-tale aspect, and that kept Nelson content.

Only one weakness in the marriage plan kept intruding, that Herbert’s natural daughter might move back into his affections and thus imperil Mrs. Nisbet’s fortune. But Wrentham made discreet inquiries and brought Nelson news that was both reassuring and scandalous: “Martha is stubbornly going ahead with the marriage her father refuses to approve—and who do you think the man is?”

“I’ve no interest.”

“You will. It’s a Mr. Hamilton, and he’s related to that other Hamilton from Nevis, the famous Alexander who played such a despicable role in America’s revolution against us and who now parades as one of the leaders of the new nation.”

“I refuse to associate with traitors or friends of traitors,” Nelson said angrily, but Alistair soothed him: “No need to see the American scoundrel or the Nevis one, either. Remember, father and daughter don’t speak. The fortune is secured to Fanny.”

So on 11 March 1787, in a lavish ceremony at Mr. Herbert’s Nevis mansion, Nelson, attended by no less a person than Prince William, son of George III and later to be crowned as King William IV, marched beneath a festooned bower to where Fanny Nisbet and her young son waited. It was a gala affair, this wedding of the promising young naval officer and an heiress whose huge fortune would spur his career. But the future king, known to his friends as Silly Billy, took a more cautious view, for in a letter to a friend he made four statements: “I gave the bride away. She is pretty. She has a great deal of
money. Nelson is in love with her. But he needs a nurse more than he does a wife.” Ominously, he added: “I wish that he may not repent the step he has taken.”

Wrentham, suppressing his apprehensions about the marriage, joined the other junior officers that evening at a banquet, and they congratulated themselves on having, in a small way, helped their gifted friend achieve the financial security he had so long and heretofore so fruitlessly pursued. As Wrentham, thinking of his own improved chances for promotion if Nelson prospered in the service, reminded his fellows: “A rising tide lifts all ships in the harbor. When Nelson climbs the ladder of preferment, we climb with him.”

Then everything seemed to fall apart. With a shock that threatened to unnerve him, Nelson discovered that his wife was not five years younger than he, but five months older. He then learned that Mr. Herbert, owner of this immense sugar fortune, was by no means disposed to settle upon his niece any sum ensuring her £2,000 a year; he was willing to provide an annuity of £100, which, with the hundred that Nelson had in his own right, meant that the newlyweds could count upon a meager £200 a year until such time as Mr. Herbert died, when the whole fortune would presumably pass to Mrs. Nelson.

But now Lieutenant Wrentham brought appalling news: “Martha Hamilton, Herbert’s recently married daughter, has effected a reconciliation with her father, and it’s she who will inherit the entire fortune.” When Nelson, in a state of trembling agitation, asked Mr. Herbert about this, he was told that “blood is thicker than water,” and that furthermore, Nelson would be wise to tend to his own affairs, since the merchants of the Caribbean were about to bring legal charges against him for interfering with their trade with Boston and New York.

Nelson’s enemies laid a devious trap. Knowing him to be rigorously honest and an officer devoted to any printed instructions, they used decoys to let him know that two land-based officials of the English navy yards in the Caribbean were stealing governmental funds, and although Wrentham warned against precipitate action, Nelson came out raging like a bull, publicly charged the men with theft, and then recoiled in stunned amazement when they fought back, bringing their own charges against him and suing him for the frightening sum of £40,000.

His last days in the Caribbean, a sea he had grown to love for its opulence, its marvelous islands and their safe harbors, were miserable. Tied to a near-penniless wife five years older than he had been led to believe, saddled with the care of a boy he had not fathered, scorned by the powerful men on the sugar estates, and hounded by lawyers pursuing their lawsuits against him, he felt so badgered from all sides that he cried aloud like Job: “Why did I ever sail into this accursed sea?” In his despair he overlooked the fact that it was in these waters that he identified his true merits—his courage, his fortitude, his inventiveness, his ability to command men—those attributes so essential to military leadership and so often left undeveloped by would-be commanders. It was in the Caribbean that he forged his character, almost terrifying in its single-mindedness, shameful in its willingness to beg and kowtow to authority if one command of a ship could be obtained. He was a product of the Caribbean, as he may have foreseen when as a beginning officer he had rejected that glamorous assignment in the New York fleet in order to take a command in the Caribbean “because that’s the station for gaining honour.” In his dark days he may have rejected the Caribbean, but when he sailed away from it, he was one of the most resolute men in the world at that time. Great sea battles are often won on shore, where future captains are hardening themselves for the day of test.

But, as always, he felt that others owed him funds for his career and recommendations for promotion to better assignment. “Why,” he asked Wrentham plaintively, “doesn’t Admiral Hughes over in Barbados do anything to defend me against my enemies or promote me among my friends?” Alistair laughed: “You must know that Hughes is a ninny. Spent all his time doing nothing but trying to find a husband for Rosy.”

“What’s happened to the little pudding?”

“Didn’t you hear? He offered young Lieutenant Kelly who sailed with us five thousand pounds if he’d marry Rosy. But Kelly was no fool. Married that lively cousin of your wife’s.”

“And Rosy?”

Wrentham laughed, and said with great warmth: “It made me feel good when it happened. Lady Hughes and the admiral combed the entire fleet but could press-gang no one. However, an impecunious major in the 67th Infantry Regiment, a nobody named John Browne, finally took the bait, picked up the whole five thousand and Rosy as well. I attended the wedding, and you never saw a happier pair—
Rosy, who never expected to find a husband, and good old Browne, grinning with upper teeth not meeting the lower, because he’d never expected to have a fortune. And off to one side Admiral Hughes, looking as if he’d just won a battle against the French.”

Nelson was forgiving: “Hughes can’t be as bad as everyone says. After all, he did lose his eye in combat and I respect him for it.”

“Have you never heard how he really lost it?”

“In battle with Rodney against the French, I presumed.”

“No. He was in his kitchen in Barbados trying to kill a giant cockroach with a fork. Missed the dirty beast but stabbed himself in the eye.”

Now came the terrible years which would have destroyed a lesser man. Most men did not realize how terrible they were, because they were accompanied by no hurricanes, no exploding fires at night, no sudden deaths, no incarceration, no dismemberment, no imbecility. What the years did bring were fierce storms that did not ruffle the surface of a country lake but that tore at a human soul, and left it so ravaged that the visible outer shell might have disintegrated had not the owner firmed his courage and his will and cried: “No! It cannot be so! I will not let this happen!”

When Nelson brought H.M.S.
Boreas
home to the Thames in England he was handed the instructions he feared: “Your ship is to be decommissioned and your crew paid off.” The words
paid off
had a sinister ring, for they meant that the ordinary sailors who had served long and faithfully would be thrown ashore with a few pounds—in some cases, only four or five—and no promise of employment or money for medical bills in case they had lost an arm or a leg. Midshipmen received nothing, and even the officers left the ship they had tended so faithfully without enough pay to enable them to live decently in the empty years ahead.

Of course, if France kicked up her heels, and ominous rumors kept coming out of that unfortunate country, the
Boreas
would be expected to sail staffed by a group of Englishmen like the ones who were now being tossed aside. So Horatio Nelson left his first senior command with only half-pay and some assurance that he would be recalled to active service “if and when the need arises.”

What was he to do at age twenty-nine—with a new wife, a young son, no fortune, and not even a house into which he might move? He
did what other officers like himself did in peacetime: he moved back into his father’s home at Norfolk. There he tended the garden, planting vegetables in the spring, flowers in the summer, and “neating up the place” throughout the year.

Nelson’s neighbors, watching him occupied with rural tasks and seeing him in attendance at fairs where vegetables were judged and loaves of bread compared, accepted him as one of themselves, and when this happened a curious shift occurred: everyone began calling him familiarly by his boyhood name, Horace. Weeks would go by without his ever hearing his real name, and before long he started thinking of himself as Farmer Horace.

But he never lost that other side of his nature, for often after attending some rural festival, he would return to his father’s rectory and sit at a desk long into the night, writing innumerable long and pleading letters to his wealthy friends, imploring them to find him an assignment with the navy, and in a shocking number of cases, beseeching them not to lend him money but to “settle upon me that degree of money you can well afford and which I need so desperately if I am to maintain my position as one of the king’s naval captains.”

His pleas, and there were scores of them each year, went unanswered; he was given no ship; he was the recipient of a miserable amount of half-pay; and for five desperate years he continued to live by begging from his father’s meager largesse, all the while depriving his faithful but tedious wife of new dresses and the other small enjoyments to which she was entitled. The Horace Nelsons were living in genteel poverty, for their £200 a year allowed them no frivolities and not too many essentials.

However, the couple did scrimp so that Horace could, at intervals, make the journey to London, where he trudged from one government office to another, begging for a ship. He told the Lords of the Admiralty: “I’m trained to be a naval officer. I know how to command a ship, ensure the courage of my crew, and fight the enemy as he has never been fought before. Sirs, I must have a ship.” Never given a logical reason, he was consistently rebuffed.

And then late one afternoon in 1792, after he had dragged himself from one insulting interview to another, he chanced upon an old naval friend coming out of one of the Admiralty offices. It was his former first lieutenant, Alistair Wrentham, very handsome in the braid of a navy captain. Greeting each other with embraces, they
repaired to a coffeehouse, where Wrentham reported with obvious pleasure that he had recently been given command of a 64-gun vessel headed for a patrol of the French coast, but as soon as he said these words he saw Nelson stiffen, and from this he deduced that his friend, six years older than himself and with a vastly superior understanding of ships, was “on the beach,” with scant prospects of getting off.