Memoirs of Emma, lady Hamilton, the friend of Lord Nelson and the court of Naples; (39 page)

Nelson was in a fever of impatience and suspense, for Emma, for his country—his two obsessions—for all but himself. He was ever a creaking door, but his health, though in his eagerness for action he protested it restored, was now beyond measure miserable. His eye grew inflamed, his heart constantly palpitated, his cough seemed the premonitor of consumption. And

1 He wanted a real, not a nominal, £2000 a year from Lord Grenville, and £8000 compensation.

vexations, public as well as private, troubled him. The authorities, whether in the guise of Cato, or of Paul Pry, or of Tartuffe, hampered his every step, while the curs of office snapped about his heels. Added to this, he had been forced into a lawsuit—an " amicable squabble " he terms it—with his admired and admiring Lord St. Vincent, who laid claim to the prize-money of victories won during his absence. St. Vincent had retired into civil service, and was now the mainspring of the Admiralty, in which the new Sir Thomas Troubridge, who owed his rise entirely to Nelson, had also found the snuggest of berths. Both the men who had taught Nelson, and the men that he had taught, were setting up as his critics and often his spies. His coming expedition was to be a thirteenth labour of Hercules. Yet the tribe of cavillers could only insinuate (for aloud they dared not speak) of his dalliance with Omphale. At least they might have remembered that Nelson had saved them and his country, and that if his impulsiveness gave himself away to their self-satisfied ingratitude, he was at this moment called to give himself up on the altar of duty. On Hardy, and Louis, and the two Parkers, and Berry and Carrol, he could still count; like all chivalrous leaders, he had his round table, and this was his pride and consolation. But it was also his solace to remain magnanimous, and even now he sent the most generous congratulations on his adversary's birthday, which were warmly and honourably reciprocated. He had hoped for supreme command, but Sir Hyde Parker was preferred: Nelson was only Vice-Admiral of the Blue. Scarcely had he been in London a fortnight when, with his brother William, he repaired to his flagship at Portsmouth, to superintend the equipment of the fleet. He had already taken his seat in the House of Lords, though he had still to complain that

his honours had not yet been gazetted. He had accompanied the Hamiltons on their Wiltshire excursion. He had nominated Hardy his captain. On January 13 he quitted Emma, it might be for the last time, and with Emma he left both his new hopes and old ties. His wife, who had beaten her retreat to Brighton, he had now irrevocably renounced; his mind was " as fixed as fate," and of none does the adage " Vestigia nulla retrorsum " hold good more than of Nelson; it was not long before he wrote significantly, alluding to her West Indian extraction, " Buonaparte's wife is of Martinique." Lady Nelson had made no advance, not the slightest attempt to provide him for the voyage. " Anxiety for friends left," he informed his " wife before heaven " the day after he set out, " and various workings of my imagination, gave me one of those severe pains of the heart that all the windows were obliged to be put down, the carriage stopped, and the perspiration was so strong that I never was wetter, and yet dead with cold." And some days afterwards: " Keep up your spirits, all will end well. The dearest of friends must part, and we only part, I trust, to meet again."

By mid-January he had hoisted his flag on the San Josef. In March he was commanding the St. George, the vessel which, he wrote with exaltation, " will stamp an additional ray of glory on England's fame, if Nelson survives; and that Almighty Providence, who has hitherto protected me in all dangers, and covered my head in the day of battle, will still, if it be His pleasure, support and assist me."

Emma had earned her lover's fresh admiration by steeling herself to undergo a test that would have prostrated even those who would most have recoiled from it. She and Nelson had resolved to hide from Sir William what was shortly to happen. But Emma

would take no refuge in absence from home; sne would stand firm and face guilt and danger under her own roof-tree. Though this trial might cost her life, she would be up and doing directly it was over. If for a few days she kept to her room with one of those attacks which had been habitual at Naples, who but her mother and herself need be the worse or the wiser? The sudden blow of their parting under such circumstances had been exceptionally severe. It recalls the famous line of Fenelon:

" Calypso ne pouvait se consoler du depart d'Ulysse."

In their mutual anxiety they framed a plan of correspondence, in which Emma and Nelson were to masquerade as the befrienders of a Mr. Thomson, one of his officers, distracted with anxiety about the impending confinement of his wife, who was bidden to entrust herself and the child to the loving guardianship and " kind heart " of Lady Hamilton. These secret letters were all addressed to " Mrs. Thomson," while Nelson's ordinary letters Xvere addressed as usual to Lady Hamilton. Without some such dissimulation they could have very rarely corresponded, for their communications were constantly opened; and, even so, Hamilton's curiosity must have been often piqued by his wife's receipt of so many communications in Nelson's hand to this unknown friend. But they did manage to exchange fragments even more intimate than the interpolations in the body of these extraordinary ' Thomson " letters. Not all these, nor all of such as he possessed, were given by Pettigrew in his convincing proof of Horatia's real origin. The Morrison Collection presents many of Pettigrew's documents in their entirety, and adds others confirming them; so also do the less ample Nelson Letters, and others from private sources.

Emma's agitated feelings must be guessed from Nelson's answers, for, as he assured her afterwards, he deliberately burned all her own " kind, dear letters," read and fingered over and over again; any day his life might be laid down, and he feared lest they might pass into hostile hands. From one of hers, however, written at Merton a year later in commemoration of the victory he was now about to win, something of their tenor may be gathered:—

" Our dear glorious friend, immortal and great Nelson, what shall I say to you on this day? My heart and feeling are so overpowered that I cannot give vent to my full soul to tell you, as an Englishwoman grate-full to her country's saviour, what I feel towards you. And as a much loved friend that has the happiness of being beloved, esteemed, and admired by the good and virtues Nelson, what must be my pride, my glory, to say this day have I the happiness of being with him, one of his select, and how gratefull to God Almighty do I feel in having preserved you through such glorious dangers that never man before got through them with such Honner and Success. Nelson, I want Eloquence to tell you what I feil, to avow the sentiments of respect and adoration with which you have inspired me. Admiration and delight you must ever raise in all who behold you, looking on you only as the guardian of England. But how far short are those sensations to what I as a much loved friend feil! And I confess to you the predominant sentiments of my heart will ever be, till it ceases to beat, the most unfeigned anxiety for your happiness, and the sincerest and most disinterested determination to promote your felicity even at the hasard of my life. Excuse this scrawl, my dearest friend, but next to talking with you is writing to you. I wish this day I ... could be near for your

sake. . . . God bless you, my ever dear Nelson. Long may you live to be the admiration of Europe, the delight of your country, and the idol of your constant, attached Emma."

She is " still the same Emma." A rhapsody of " None but the brave deserve the fair " rings in every line. It is melodrama, but genuine melodrama; and melodrama of the heart, Nelson loved. It was what all along he had missed in his wife, who had lived aloof from his career; whereas Emma and he had lived through its thrilling scenes together. It was what he himself felt, and that to which Emma answered with every pulse. At no time was she in the least awe of her hero, whose strong will and gentle heart marked him off from those she had best known. With Nelson she was always perfectly natural, using none but her own voice and gestures. Had she been really the conventional " serpent of old Nile " (and it is odd what an historical affinity the " Nile" has had to " serpents " ), that part would thoroughly have clashed with her unchanging outspokenness of tone. Nelson was always emphatic and picturesque; he possessed to an eminent degree, both in warfare and otherwise, the intuition of temperament for temperament. Admitting idealisation, I cannot think that he was absolutely mistaken in Emma's.

" I shall write to Troubridge this day " is Nelson's communication to Lady Hamilton, in the earliest letter extant of the " Thomson " series, penned on the passage to Torbay only four days before the child was born, " to send me your letter, which I look for as constantly and with more anxiety than my dinner. Let her [Lady Nelson] go to Briton, or where she pleases, I care not; she is a great fool, and, thank God! you are not the least bit like her. I delivered

poor Mrs. Thomson's note; her friend is truly thankful for her kindness and your goodness. Who does not admire your benevolent heart? Poor man, he is very anxious, and begs you will, if she is not able, write a line just to comfort him. He appears to feel very much her situation. He is so agitated, and will be so for 2 or 3 days, that he says he cannot write, and that I must send his kind love and affectionate regards. ... I hate Plymouth." Yet Plymouth had just conferred on him the freedom of the city. Nelson's whole soul was with Emma; in the suspense of fatherhood he shrank into himself and recoiled from publicity. He had no compunctions about Lady Nelson. On the very evening of the Plymouth honours he had despatched a remarkable epistle, published by its owner last year. Nelson was never rich, and his allowance of £2000 a year to his wife had been handsome in the extreme. Nelson had already heard with incredulity " 0 nonsensical reports " that Lady Nelson was instructing the agent to buy a " fine house for him." From his wife, he now acquaints Emma, he had received but half one side of a slip of paper to tell him of her cold and her withdrawal from London. He alludes to a rumour that she was about to take Shelburne House. He treats it with scornful ridicule. He had just met Troubridge's sister who lived at Exeter, " pitted with small-pox and deafer far than Sir Thomas." Emma need never be jealous. " Pray tell Mrs. Thomson her kind friend is very uneasy about her, and prays most fervently for her safety—and he says he can only depend on your goodness. . . . May the Heavens bless and preserve my dearest friend and give her every comfort this world can afford, is the sincerest prayer of your faithful and affectionate Nelson and Bronte."

Nelson is all prayer and piety for Emma. It is one of the most singular features of his erratic greatness

that he lays her, the coming child, and himself as humble and acceptable offerings before God's throne. His sincerity resembles in another plane that of Carlyle, who, in some of his epistles to his mother, translated his own earnest free-thought into terms of the Scotch Covenanter. But at the same time the reader is often tempted to echo what the same Carlyle objected to in French eighteenth-century sentimentalism: " So much talk about Virtue. In the devil and his grandmother's name, be Virtuous then! "

Every night Nelson withdrew after the day's fatigues, and amid incessant occupations, to hint (when he feared to pour forth) his torture of anxiety and passionate fulness of unbounded affection. He bade her be of good cheer. He assured " Mr. Thomson " of her " innate worth and affectionate disposition." But during these weary days of waiting, a full month before Oliver had been chosen to convey his famous and self-convicting letter, he must have disclosed his inmost soul to its idol through him, or perhaps through Davison, who at this very time had travelled over two hundred miles to pay him a visit. Another letter of far less reserve, and one never, so far as I know, cited, exists in relation to the coming birth of the second child—the little Emma who died so soon—in the earlier months of 1804. It is so remarkable, and probably so identical with others which he must have written on this earlier occasion, that I subjoin a portion of it here, venturing to fill in some of the excisions :—

" MY DEAREST BELOVED, —. . . To say that I think of you by day, night, and all day, and all night, but too faintly expresses my feelings of love and affection towards you. [Mine is indeed an] unbounded affection. Our dear, excellent, good [Mrs. Cadogan]

is the only one who knows anything of the matter; and she has promised me when you [are well] again to take every possible care of you, as a proof of her never-failing regard to your own dear Nelson. Believe me that I am incapable of wronging you in thought, word, or deed. No; not all the wealth of Peru could buy me for one moment; it is all yours and reserved wholly for you. And . . . certainly . . . from the first moment of our happy, dear, enchanting, blessed meeting. . . . The call of our country is a duty which you would deservedly, in the cool moments of reflection, reprobate, was I to abandon: and I should feel so disgraced by seeing you ashamed of me! No longer saying, ' This is the man who has saved his country! This is he, who is the first to go forth to fight our battles, and the last to return!' . . . 'Ah!' they will think, 'What a man! What sacrifices has he not made to secure our homes and property; even the society and happy union with the finest and most accomplished woman in the world.' As you love, how must you feel! My heart is with you, cherish it. I shall, my best beloved, return—if it pleases God—a victor; and it shall be my study to transmit an unsullied name. There is no desire of wealth, no ambition that could keep me from all my soul holds dear. No; it is to save my country, my wife in the eye of God. ... Only think of our happy meeting. Ever, for ever I am your's, only your's, even beyond this world. . . . For ever, for ever, your own Nelson." 1

Emma certainly inspired the Nelson who delivered England; and for all time this surely ought to outweigh the carping diatribes of half-moralists who narrow the whole of virtue to a part. It cannot be too much emphasised that Nelson loved her and not merely 1 Nelson Letters, vol. i. p. 175, "August 26 [1803]."