On a Making Tide (23 page)

Any medicines or treatments they purchased occasioned great expense, swelling Graham’s profits. But to prove his philanthropic credentials, Dr Graham opened his temple during daylight hours to anyone who was sick or infirm at no charge for either treatment of curatives, leading to a queue made up of London’s unhealthy. This displeased everyone in the neighbourhood, except the quondam benefactor busy dispensing his free supply of pills and mild shocks. When they entered both groups, rich and poor, had to pass two enormous footmen, dressed as the heirs of Hercules, followed by a pile of walking sticks and crutches, physical evidence that the remedies proposed and administered were truly efficacious. The clients limped in and walked out.

Graham’s lectures were concerned with long life and procreativity, with much reference to the causes of sterility, and were full of expressions like ‘the staff of creation’ and the ‘valley of man’s entry to the light of life’. He would thunder at the point where he insisted that a dutiful act was no bar to that same manifestation occasioning pleasure. Fluids unmentionable by name took on different properties from their natural state when, using the properties of electricity, he had a hand in preparation for the ‘act of conception’.

At the centre of the room, roped off to the audience but preached over by Graham, stood his celestial bed, a gorgeous construct covered in silk and decorated with gilded lilies. This was available to childless couples for the princely sum of fifty pounds per night, the Latin inscription above reminding these educated patrons that it was a sad thing for a rich man to have no heir to his property. That was the last act of the night, when all others had gone home. Graham would admit whichever couple had booked his facility, treat them to the prescribed regimen, then leave the pair to cavort on his bed, assuring them that their union, previously unblessed, could not now be but fruitful.

For a man who spent so much time talking in a roundabout way about sexual congress, Graham was strangely indifferent to the possibilities he had created for himself in the fanum. The ladies who occupied his alcoves, indeed Mary Cadogan herself, were not prudes, and as a wealthy man – as well as their employer – he was in prime position to take advantage. Mary watched him closely, with particular regard to his dealings with Emma. But
she had no cause to worry: he was benign in his dealings with all his female employees, vague and paternalistic rather than libidinous.

With the stipend from Dr Graham, Emma and her mother were free to depart Arlington Street, leaving at an early hour when only the skivvies were at large to see them go. They repaired to the Liberties of the Savoy, just south of the Strand. The streets might be narrow and the smell of the Thames too close for comfort, but it was a safe place, beyond the reach of bailiffs and the like. As Emma’s mother explained, ‘It’s where I came to when that scrub Glynne left me high, with debts that he failed to pay. That’s the first thing you must do if ever debt threatens, get into the Liberties where those who nab for Newgate are barred from operating. Change your name, as I did, so that everyone knows you by it. You’re safe in the Liberties but it’s no spot to make the means to eat. You has to go out for that, and a new name is just the thing to keep you out of debtors’ prison. So, as soon as I ran for here, I ceased to use the Lyon name.’

‘Can you not go back to it?’ Emma asked.

Emma’s mother had no desire to tell the truth, that she had no intention of ever reverting to the Lyon name, which held for her, in association, nothing but disappointment and hurt.

‘I’ve no desire to. The name Cadogan has a ring to it, which I’m fond of.’

‘I still wonder who they are addressing when people say Mary Cadogan.’

‘You’ll get used to it, Emma. I just hope that you’ve no cause one day to change your own.’

The shared room was small and cramped yet comfortable and Emma’s mother seemed content, although her daughter was not. She liked singing well enough, but when performing she was hidden from view. She longed to appear before the audience, ached to don one of her mother’s simple Greek costumes. And, though it was never mentioned, she missed the gaiety of Arlington Street, the gossip and the laughter shared with the other nuns, the picnics and the open carriages that made those people forced to walk regard her with envy. The comfort was another thing, as well as the pleasure to be had from acting the temptress while serving the tables.

Often she lay awake at night, listening to the sound of her mother’s gentle snoring, reflecting on the way that her life had been ordered by parental instruction. From the attempt at schooling to every domestic post she had occupied her mother’s hand had been present. Liberty from that held fear as well as anticipation and she would sometimes fall asleep wondering if she would ever be allowed to lead a life of her own.

1776

‘Remarkable, sir,’ exclaimed Captain James Pigot, ‘close to a miracle given the depth of your last bout. You begin the New Year a new man.’

Nelson was sitting up for the first time in a week, able to feed himself. The faint tinges of pink in his cheeks were a long way from being termed colour, but it was a distinct improvement on the translucence that had been his lot since leaving Calcutta. The yellow tinge was fading too, though the weakness in his legs prevented him walking on a heaving deck.

‘I have a question to ask you, sir.’

The voice was still far from strong, but Pigot noted that uncertainty made it soft, not want of good health. Nelson seemed nervous. ‘Ask away.’

There was a pause of several seconds before the question was posed, during which Nelson rehashed all the pros and cons of enquiry that had filled his mind since the fateful day when his fever had reached crisis.

‘Do you believe in visions?’

‘Visions?’

‘They are related often in scripture, sir,’ he said, aware that he was speaking too quickly, ‘as being afforded to saints and the like.’

Pigot’s face darkened at the mention of saints. ‘There is a danger here, Mr Nelson that you may border on blasphemy.’

‘I do not mean to claim any such elevation for myself, sir,’ Nelson protested. ‘I only wish to enquire if mere mortals, a sinner even, is also open to such divine favour.’

‘I detect a notion here. You feel you have experienced such?’

He had to force out the reply. Divine retribution for blasphemy was not something to be trifled with. ‘I do, sir.’

‘The nature of this is?’

‘I feel I have been close to death, yet spared, called forth by God to a heroic future, called to serve my country.’ Seeing the other man’s doubt he continued hurriedly. ‘I need no longer fear death, having been so spared.’

‘Death is not to be feared, Mr Nelson. Dying in sin is.’

‘I would not claim purity, sir, only purpose.’

He went on, stammering, to describe the experience, the images of a dead yet saintly mother, the golden halo that had attended the vision, until it had turned into a blinding orb attended by thunder that beckoned him to some distant but weighty destiny. As he spoke Pigot picked up the Bible that lay on the table by Nelson’s cot, as if by doing so he could protect himself from the risk of transgression.

‘I cannot believe,’ Pigot said, as the youngster’s voice trailed off, ‘that heavenly visions are confined only to candidates for sainthood. Many times myself I have felt close to God, in that time between waking and sleeping, and, I confess, on my own deck. But I’ve never mustered the arrogance to claim a vision.’

Nelson replied with genuine humility, ‘It is the thought of such arrogance that checks me.’

Pigot laid a hand on his shoulder, which was skin and bone with little flesh. ‘You have been ill, Nelson, very ill indeed. At one time I was rehearsing the words I would give to your uncle to describe your demise. Yet here you are, sitting up unaided, able to take victuals by your own hand. I do not doubt that you were close to death, and in that state you may have been blessed with insights denied to those who go through their days in robust health.’

The young man’s eyes flashed at that moment. ‘Then I should act upon it.’

‘If you believe it, yes. Damnation awaits you if it is fancy, just as it awaits you if, having been so sanctified, you ignore the divine injunction.’

‘My desire is to serve my country, sir. Whatever God has seen fit for me to achieve I would wish to place at the nation’s feet.’

Pigot was taken with the expression on the youngster’s face. The bright blue eyes, now in hollowed sockets, seemed to blaze. Colour filled the pallid cheeks and the cast of the head, as though fixed on a distant destiny, inspired rather than troubled him. Clutching his Bible harder he said with deep conviction, ‘We are all servants of God, and we are humbled before His majesty, just as we are all ordered by His grace.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘I think that what thanks might be offered are due to God,’ replied Pigot, sinking from his chair to his knees, Bible in hand. ‘Let us pray.’

Nelson was a walking invalid, albeit a weak one, when they raised the Cape of Good Hope, and able to stand as a member of a watch before they crossed the Equator going north. The cooling air seemed to invigorate him. Though not on the muster roll of HMS
Dolphin
he soon became a valuable member of the crew, taking on the full set of duties that went with the role of an aspiring officer. That included continuing his nautical education, which he pursued with a singular zeal that impressed his less driven colleagues and his uncle’s good friend, James Pigot.

Dolphin
sent a pinnace into Portsmouth with despatches, then touched at
the Downs to receive orders and return mail. It was there that Nelson heard the news that his uncle had been appointed to the office of Comptroller of the Navy Board, one of the most powerful positions to which a
commissioned
sailor could aspire. Ordered ashore at Deal, he was to join Captain Robinson with all despatch as acting fourth lieutenant aboard HMS
Worcester
at Portsmouth.

Setting foot ashore in England once more, on the steep shingle of Deal beach, Horatio Nelson was no longer what he had once been in the Indian Ocean, a shadow of his former self. But the disease had marked him in another way: there was an air about him, a look in the eye of a man who was sure of his course in life.

To be cosseted as an invalid had a certain natural ring to it. But to receive equal attention when in good health was a surprise. One-legged Captain Mark Robinson of HMS
Worcester
greeted Nelson like a visiting dignitary rather than a midshipman yet to pass his lieutenant’s exams. The letters Nelson brought were taken kindly and read without delay. Enthusiasm shone out of the Captain’s knobbly face, which was set off by long whiskers and a pair of eyebrows bushy enough to hide half his forehead. He had hardly had time to stow his dunnage before Robinson yelled for his coxswain and whisked him off in his own barge to meet his patron, Admiral Sir James Douglas.

A sense of normality came with the next dawn, as Nelson set about his duties, victualling the ship for convoy duty to Gibraltar, craning livestock aboard – no easy task in the case of cows and bullocks, which might be dangerous if allowed to get loose. The water hoy was alongside pumping full barrel after barrel in the holds while other hands were set to hump all manner of provender up the long sloping gangplank.

Later, he was summoned once more to the great cabin to be told that he was to be taken to dinner with the Mayor of Portsmouth. The reason for the invitation was obvious, now that he was the Comptroller’s nephew. By the nature of his office his uncle Maurice would assume the parliamentary seat of the town when it became vacant. Ignoring the relative of such a powerful individual was poor policy.

It was a long time since Nelson had been treated as a child, but he had never been afforded full adult status. He found the dinner trying because of that one fact. He was not left, as most men of his rank would have been, to eat his food and respond politely to the odd remark designed to keep him in the conversation. Both the mayor and Captain Robinson consulted him for an opinion on all manner of topics. The state of the Navy was high on the agenda, a discussion of ships building and those close to being broken up, and especially the nature of Spithead as the main naval base for the future.

The mayor insisted that France was the enemy and a prevailing westerly wind would force the southernmost naval base into pre-eminence, that to sink more money into the Medway ports, Woolwich, Rochester, Sheerness
or Chatham, to face the Dutch was foolish. This was a message he wished passed on to Nelson’s uncle, the man who ran all of the Navy’s dockyards, with a plea that any available funds should come to his town.

Matters took a less favourable turn when they alighted on the actions of the American colonists in refusing to agree to be taxed, the mayor insisting that they were ‘Damned rebels, sir, half of them of criminal stock.’

‘I believe the problem hangs on representation, sir,’ said Nelson.

The mayor choked and would have added a crushing rebuttal if he hadn’t known the connections of the youngster who had made the remark. But he was not to be overborne and the next few minutes were taken up by the natural dissenting sentiments of a Norfolk Whig set against the certainty of the mayor that such rebellion should be punished.

Robinson intervened and moved the pair to safer ground: the cost of poor relief falling on Portsmouth when sailor’s wives took up residence in the town. The dinner concluded in a sober but friendly mood, with the mayor pressing on his young dining companion an invitation to come ashore the next day and partake of his hospitality before the ship sailed.

When the
Worcester
raised Gibraltar, Nelson had another example of the status granted him by his relationship to his uncle. Captain Robinson sent him ashore with the letters and despatches. Naturally these included one that alluded to Nelson’s connections so he found himself once more in receipt of invitations that bore little relation to his station. By the time he returned from his first voyage, he was laden with messages, both written and verbal, for his uncle Suckling.

But the news he received on his return was better: dates had been set early in the following spring for his examination for a commission, to be chaired by his uncle and served by a committee of officers Captain Suckling knew and trusted. Over the forthcoming winter the Gibraltar voyages would complete his sea time, and he was abjured to set his mind to his manuals in the intervening period so that he could answer the questions the panel of captains would pose.

When the day came, it was a nervous and fragile looking Midshipman Nelson who presented himself at the offices of the Navy Board. The
high-ceilinged
room was forbidding in the way that it echoed the voices of those asking the questions, four unsmiling captains who had already reduced a drove of aspirants to weak-kneed jelly. His uncle, occupying the central seat of honour, showed no sign of recognition. He examined the logs as if the man before him was a stranger, books from
Carcass,
Raisonable,
Triumph,
Seahorse
and
Worcester
that proved the candidate had the requisite six years’ sea time.

No one questioned the figure inscribed in the muster roll on which he had first been entered that put him a good two years above his real age. But they did test his competence as a seaman, firing questions at him like a rolling barrage. As he answered his nervousness eased, but he was still unsure if the examiners saw before them an officer whose competence
could never be in dispute, a man who had a right to a lieutenant’s rank. The grim faces never relaxed as they conferred in hushed tones, even when Maurice Suckling rose to his feet.

Nelson wasn’t privy to what was coming, and the dull sensation in the pit of his stomach, the fear that he was going to fail, was not assuaged by the avuncular smile. Suddenly the room took on a frightening air, the echoes of voices from the plastered walls and bare floorboards threatening. To founder here would see his career stalled. Perhaps he would become like those midshipmen he had encountered too frequently, men past their prime, going nowhere and bitter because of it.

The reaction when his uncle introduced him as a relative was very strange, the way the examining officers expressed surprise seemed insincere. The view that Captain Suckling had not wished to see a relative unduly favoured was greeted with pronounced nodding that did nothing to convince the candidate that these gentlemen were not playacting.

But when called to attest to his obvious abilities the voices were honest enough, and slowly it dawned on Nelson that he was going to be passed for lieutenant. Fear turned to an almost uncontainable joy, and while he had to stop himself from leaping to his feet and shaking every hand in the room the whole examination was brought to a cheerful conclusion. Nelson walked out knowing his commission was a certainty, smiling into the worried faces of those who were slated to follow him.

The following morning he received orders to join a new ship, HMS
Lowestoffe,
captained by one William Locker.

Every King’s ship was a self-contained world, which applied just as much to
Lowestoffe
as it did to any other frigate. Joining a new vessel was a rite of passage endured by every commissioned officer and all the members of the wardroom had similar experience. On first acquaintance members of the wardroom were generally guarded, careful of what they said as much to protect themselves, as to avoid offending newcomers. But a shared profession, with ports, journeys and sometimes acquaintances in common, usually helped to break down the reserve.

Lieutenant Waddle, the premier, didn’t like Nelson from the moment he clapped eyes on him and he made no secret of the fact. There was no apparent reason for this other than a natural antipathy, which was troubling, especially since his relations with his new commanding officer began well. Captain William Locker tried to be a friend to all his officers. Open, cheerful and more inclined to advise than criticise, he was a stocky red-faced man of thirty-six years, with a cheerful open countenance. He walked with a permanent limp, from a wound which still pained him, a pike thrust to his knee received boarding a French privateer off Alicante.

Coming from a naval family himself, and having married into another, the Captain was mired in the history of his profession. His hero was the late Admiral Hawke, though he was honest enough to admit to that man’s
trying temperament: Hawke had been foul-mouthed, bellicose and
intolerant.
To Locker that counted for nothing when compared with his exemplary behaviour in the face of an enemy, a policy the Captain had committed himself to follow. Over dinner in a shore tavern he regaled his officers with the mass of opportunities that might come their way: he had just heard that his ship had been ordered to service in the Caribbean.