The Howes remained great supporters of the royal family. Since the death of Princess Amelia, Caroline had become a regular visitor to Queen Charlotte at Buckingham House. When a second son named Leicester was born to Charlotte Curzon in 1792 (“my additional Grandchild,” Caroline called him), George Augustus Curzon, just four years of age, stood on the table at the christening and sang “God Save the King.” Britain was not yet at war with France, but Caroline, as always, was well informed about what was going forward. “Our preparations both land & sea go on vigorously,” she reassured Lady Spencer rather inaccurately, “so that we are ready both to quell home commotions or to go to war, in whatever mode fate may call upon us.”58
Louis XVI went to the guillotine on January 21, 1793. A week later, Caroline described the atmosphere at the Court of St. James’s. George III canceled his engagements, his royal drawing room, and his levee, “nor did he hunt on Saturday, yesterday the mourning was put on.” The French ambassador, the Marquis de Chauvelin, was asked to leave, on the pretext that since his sovereign was now dead, his diplomatic accreditation as representative of the unrecognized new republic was not valid. Caroline recalled how Chauvelin was obliged to creep out of town, using the ruse that he was merely “going out a visiting,” in order to avoid the hostile London crowds. The expulsion of Chauvelin was used by the French revolutionaries as provocation for an immediate declaration of war against Britain on February 1, 1793.59
As the French ambassador was slinking out of London, the Howe men were preparing once again for military service. In the same letter, Caroline reported that Lord Amherst was to be appointed commander in chief of the army: “The Lieutenants Genls. are to be five, Genl. [James] Johns[t]on, Sr W. Pitt, Sr W. Howe, Ld. George Lennox, & [Prince Frederick] the Duke of York, it is expected they will receive their Letters of service perhaps this day.” “Sr W. Pitt” was Mary’s husband, General William Augustus Pitt, who had been knighted in 1792. Sir William Pitt had not served in foreign lands since being a wounded prisoner during the Seven Years’ War. Mary was afraid he would be sent to serve on the Continent. “Ly P[itt] is very happy,” wrote Caroline, when, after all, he was not.60 Both William Pitt and William Howe became full generals in 1793. For the next two years, General Howe would play an important role in supervising the training of troops and the defense of Britain.61
As Britain’s new war with France began, Lady Spencer was on the Continent touring with her daughters and son-in-law. The escalation of fighting along France’s borders had already prompted the little party to retreat from Switzerland to Italy, and they encountered French émigrés everywhere. On her homeward journey in 1794, Lady Spencer described the French refugees she saw as she passed through Bonn, Cologne, and Dusseldorf, “many of whom could not get lodgings or horses to go forwards & were sleeping & eating in their Carriages which crowd the Streets__many whom I am personally acquainted with are in actual & great distress. . . .”62
When Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire started for home in the summer of 1793, Lady Spencer remained in Rome because her younger daughter, Harriet, was too ill to travel.63 By the time the duchess reached the port of Ostend in Flanders in early September, the French army was not far away, forcing the Duke of York and his troops into retreat near Dunkirk. English refugees were stranded and desperate at Ostend, looking for berths on any vessel to cross the Channel. A friend managed to squeeze the lovely duchess into his pleasure boat, and she was obliged to watch as her fellow countrymen faded into the distance, standing forlorn on the quayside. She was back in London by the time news arrived of the execution of Marie Antoinette in October.64 The duchess had been a personal friend of the doomed queen.
Mainland Europe had become a dangerous place; some of the victims of the guillotine were known to both Caroline and Lady Spencer.65 It is no wonder that Lord Howe berated his son-in-law, Lord Altamont, for traveling with Louisa and their little son by sea from Lisbon, where they had gone for Altamont’s health, to their home in Cork, Ireland, in the summer of 1794. The Lisbon packet had already been taken by the enemy on one occasion, in the act making a prisoner of Lady Anne FitzRoy, sister to Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington. Richard noted, “[A]nd I had heard by an American ship come the same morning from Brest, that there was no indignity a Woman could receive, which she had escaped from that savage people.” Richard bluntly insisted that the same crude treatment would not be meted out to any daughter of his: “I trust therefore, that it will be totally unnecessary for me to urge you not to hazard a similar disaster by her passing back to Lisbon again, pending the War.”66
Lady Anne FitzRoy was in her twenties when she was captured by the French. She remained a prisoner for several months. In keeping with the egalitarian ideology of the revolutionaries, her rank was ignored at first and she was incarcerated in a squalid common prison in Quimper, Brittany. Eventually she was allowed to take rooms in a local house and engage a servant, but she remained closely guarded.67 These facts became known to the British public within a year or so of her ordeal, but Lord Howe’s letter hints at something worse than squalor.
At sixty-seven, when he assumed command of the Channel Fleet in 1793, Richard felt he was too old to go to sea again. But once in post, he showed his characteristic diligence. One aspect of his work that he resumed with zeal was his long-standing professional interest in rationalizing and improving the system of signaling used in the Royal Navy. In the eighteenth century, communications between ships used a system of flags that could signal only vague instructions. Richard was not the only naval officer trying to improve signaling, but he was one of the foremost.
Since the Seven Years’ War, Richard had clarified, enlarged, rearranged, and improved the existing signaling system, producing the first printed reference book in 1758. His objective was to bring the operations of battleships during an engagement more directly under the control of the fleet commander. Signals from their commander during the action—rather than the written fighting instructions dispatched from the Admiralty prior to the battle—were what the fleet captains needed to heed first. This was a lifelong project for Richard, and in 1794 he finally arranged for the printing of all signal books and standing orders and their distribution to the fleet. One historian has written that Richard’s interest in signals was an “enduring paradox,” because he had a “crippling inability” to express himself, not only in speech but in writing. Horatio Nelson once received a letter from Howe that he described as a “jumble of nonsense.”68 In fact, Richard’s speech and language issues, whatever the exact diagnosis may have been, probably sharpened his appreciation of the need for clear and rapid communication in a battle situation.
By the spring of 1794, a confrontation with the enemy was inevitable. The French navy had overcome a period of disorientation under the new revolutionary regime to reemerge as a credible fighting force. Richard knew that the French now had a considerable force of warships based at Brest, Brittany’s largest port. In April 1794, he was ordered to intercept a large convoy of French merchant vessels loaded with provisions from the Caribbean and escorted by French ships of the line. On May 2, Richard departed from Portsmouth; on May 28, the enemy convoy was sighted.
For four days, the two fleets maneuvered on the high seas, both sides inflicting and taking damage, as Richard sought to bring the enemy to a full engagement.69 At 5 a.m. on June 1, Admiral Howe finally placed himself in position upwind of the French and was able to force them to battle. Richard’s intention was to sail downwind into the French line, break it, and fight the battle as an unstructured melee. The British were superior in discipline, sailing, and gunnery, and Howe wanted to make use of these advantages. At 7:15 a.m., Richard signaled his fleet to head directly for the French line; his flagship, the HMS Queen Charlotte, would attack the center of the line. Each of the British ships was directed to “break through the enemy line and engage the French ships from leeward.” A second signal at 8:30 a.m. directed “each British ship to steer independently for and enga
ge her opposite number in the enemy line.” This last signal confused some captains, who interpreted it to mean they did not need to pass through the French line; as a result, only six British ships broke through.
Nevertheless, the battle descended into the free-for-all Richard had sought, as individual British and French ships took each other on. Within minutes of the start of the engagement, dense smoke everywhere obscured visibility. The Queen Charlotte bore down on the French flagship the Montagne, in the process taking fire from the ships Vengeur and Achille. Richard, cool as usual at the cannon’s mouth, ignored the Vengeur, fired on the Achille with guns from his upper deck, and then blasted the stern of the Montagne with guns from the lower tiers of the Queen Charlotte. The Montagne was obliged to withdraw from the battle. The British flagship then moved forward to engage the Juste. Thinking the enemy sought to break off the engagement, Howe gave the signal for a general chase.
The battle began at 9:30 a.m. and firing ceased by 1 p.m. The French admiral now managed to draw his remaining ships into a line of battle. In his one mistake, Richard, consulting with his staff, decided not to pursue, on the assumption that the enemy was determined to fight on. In fact, the French formation was wholly defensive, and much of the French fleet was in tatters. Richard returned to Portsmouth as a hero, with six enemy prizes in tow, a seventh French ship sunk, and the holds of the British warships packed with enemy prisoners.70
The Glorious First of June, as it became known, was Britain’s first major naval victory of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and the greatest in living memory at the time. Lord Nelson’s later victories would be even greater, but for now the British public was elated. Actually, Richard had not achieved his objective of intercepting the French food convoy, and the French even claimed the battle as a victory for themselves. But the British public was far more interested in seeing a fighting victory over the hated French than in intercepting food supplies. The St. James’s Chronicle crowed, “[T]he extacy of joy displayed by the public on receiving the news of Lord Howe’s glorious victory, proves how much more Britons are delighted by success at sea than on land.”71
Richard was exhausted. He had been awake for almost eight days, only occasionally resting in an armchair. The homeward journey, however, gave him an opportunity to relax, for the Queen Charlotte reached Spithead, Portsmouth, on June 13. Half of his fleet had been sent on to Plymouth for repairs.
Richard had sent Sir Roger Curtis ahead of his battered fleet to carry news of the victory to Britain; Curtis reached Plymouth on June 9, and Caroline knew of her brother’s triumph by the following morning.72 Two days later, she found time to write to Lady Spencer, her letter redolent not only of her own joy at witnessing the pinnacle of her brother’s career, but also the ungrudging admiration of all of London:
Half out of my senses, & wild with Joy ever since ½ past nine last Tuesday my dear Lady Spencer, you must not expect more than a few lines, & were I sober I could not send many, having hardly had a moment to myself since Wednesday morn, all my friends & acquaintances, some even who have never visited me before, have come to give me joy, & except a quarter of an hour that I was obliged to shut my doors whilst I answered a Letter I had from the King, wrote before he left Windsor to come to his Levee on Wednesday, I have never been able to resist seeing every one who have chose to come in. I have millions of notes very few I have had time to answer, this morn at intervals Julie sitting by me I have contrived to do a little; the King wrote a most excellent Letter too to Lady Howe & we had each one later in the day from the Queen.73
Caroline had suffered from “a headache of agitation” for three days, but she did not want to miss anything. She was out on Wednesday evening, enjoying the sight of London illuminated in celebration of her brother’s great victory, and did not return until 2 a.m. Her only message to Richard, she told Lady Spencer happily, was that she was glad she did not die of her recent bout of scarlet fever and miss the whole thing.
Wednesday, June 11, saw London engulfed in what was effectively an open-air party. Drury Lane Theatre lit up its cupola, then set off a display of fireworks for the appreciative crowds below. Patriotic groups patrolled the streets, compelling those in unlit dwellings to light their windows—“even the stingy, the reluctant, and the disaffected [were made] to join in the general joy.” The famous wedding-cake steeple atop St. Bride’s Church dazzled Fleet Street, and the Royal Opera House and St. James’s Street were brilliant with lanterns. The newspapers reported, “We never recollect to have witnessed more general joy, than was manifested on every countenance throughout Wednesday, in consequence of the glorious victory. . . .”74 Even into the next morning, the bells were ringing, and “every FLAG, excepting those bearing the THIRTEEN STRIPES [of the United States] were hoisted in compliment to Lord Howe.”75
The Howes had been spurned by an unappreciative British public in the previous war; now they were welcomed back with open arms. “The scene at the Opera & play houses was the most delightful glorious thing,” scribbled joyous Caroline in her letter of June 13, “& hardly to be bore.” But she did bear it, of course.
Lady Mary Howe had received word of her husband’s victory a few hours earlier than Caroline. At 2 a.m. on June 10, horses were heard outside of Porter’s Lodge. Mary, still in bed, heard the messenger’s arrival, along with his cry, “Glorious news, my lady.” Lady Elizabeth Foster, the intimate friend of the Duchess of Devonshire, recounted the humorous scene that ensued when Lady Howe called to the servant to enter her room: “ ‘I can’t, my lady, I am naked.’ ‘Well,’ says Lady Howe, ‘I will get into bed again. Don’t stay to dress but lay the letter on the table and get away.’ ” Caroline herself, who probably told this anecdote to Lady Elizabeth, “was quite nervous with the happiness,” noted Lady Elizabeth.76
Lady Mary Howe reached London from Porter’s Lodge on Wednesday morning, and on Thursday she set out for Portsmouth with her daughter Mary to greet her victorious husband. William and Fanny followed on Friday, the day that Lord Howe arrived in port. It was almost a complete Howe family gathering, with the Pitts there as well. Only Caroline and Julie, who was “as proud & happy as I am,” Caroline assured Lady Spencer in her letter of June 13, remained in London. She added, “Sr Roger Curtis assures us Ld Howe is in perfect health, but that we shall find him thin, as well he may be, he & many officers not having taken off their cloaths for four nights.”
The world now descended on Portsmouth, as word got out that the royal family would be honoring the victory with a fleet review. The House of Commons was adjourned for ten days to allow its members to join the throng.77 Mary, Richard’s middle daughter, who had been a Lady of the Bedchamber to the royal princesses since 1791, sent a description of the celebrations to her sister.78 The royal family boarded the Queen Charlotte, where Mary and her mother were waiting to receive Queen Charlotte and the princesses. As they were with the royal ladies, the Howe women did not see the meeting between Lord Howe and the king, but it was described to them. “My father’s knees trembled with emotion when he kissed the King’s hand, who presented him with a most magnificent sword set with diamonds, and afterwards with a gold chain, to which is to be hung a gold medal struck for the occasion.”79 It is no wonder that Richard trembled, for this was the crowning moment of his life; he had vindicated his name, his family, and his claim to partake of national glory.
Once again, as in the Seven Years’ War, the newspapers told of the daring of Black Dick Howe, the dynamic hero of old. The slurs and slanders of the American War of Independence now were entirely forgotten. The maneuvers of his flagship on June first were reported in detail to an appreciative public. “Never since England had a navy,” concluded the report, not action better contested on both sides, or which terminated with so much honor to the British flag.”80
King George III presenting Admiral Lord Howe with a diamond-hilted sword aboard the Queen Charlotte.
Richard’s new sword was valued at three thousand guineas, and the crew of HMS
Queen Charlotte lined up after the presentation to touch it.81 The royal family dined in the admiral’s cabin and then walked the line of the ship’s company, the king loudly praising the courage of the crew. The royals remained in Portsmouth until Monday, June 30; the town was the scene of pleasure cruises, dinners, fireworks, and balls. Young Mary had the thrill of being the leading lady at a Grand Ball.82
Caroline, in London with the delicate Julie, was not forgotten. As the eldest sister of the Howe dynasty, she was recognized by all as being entitled to bask in the reflected glory of her brothers’ martial deeds. The king praised her “becoming ardour for the glory of her family.” One of the “millions of notes” she received after the battle spoke of “the Joy, the Pride you must feel both as an Englishwoman and a Sister in your Glorious Brothers well acquitted Fortune.”83
Five days after the close of the festivities in Portsmouth, Caroline wrote to Lady Spencer that Richard would finally have a few days’ rest at Porter’s Lodge. In fact, he would remain there for the summer. His “fine things” would be gratefully put aside in exchange for some much-needed recuperation. But his sword, she could not help enthusing, “is the most mag[nificent]: & the most beautiful they say that ever was seen.”84
A few weeks later, many of London’s “fashionable belles” were sporting an expensive new accessory, a memento of Lord Howe’s victory. It was a chain made of gold, “twisted into the form of a cable, and worn loosely round the neck, to which is suspended a golden anchor.”85 For high society’s young ladies, national triumphs were an opportunity for conspicuous consumption. But who should deserve to wear the necklace more than Lord Howe’s sister, now in her early seventies but still his most ardent admirer? Young Lord Spencer presented his virtual aunt Caroline with one of the nautical baubles—an “honor,” she termed it happily, and a conversation piece for someone who, throughout her life, had never really needed an excuse for bringing up the accomplishments of her remarkable brothers.86
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