338 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON
be in company with that great man :—I call him the Nelson of Ministers. But I will not tire you with my sad story."
Emma had a real appreciation of greatness, and she always admired Pitt; but the Minister died so soon after Nelson that no guess can be made as to whether he would have done anything to satisfy her claims and to honour Nelson's las-request to his country.
Nelson himself while living had no though of making such a request. He still believec Emma capable of economy; he foresaw (o thought he did) a frugal and happy future—"w< shall not want with prudence." In one letter h< declares, " I have often said, and with hones pride, what I have is my own; it never cost th j widow a tear, or the nation a farthing. I go ? what I have with my pure blood, from the enemie of my Country. Our house, my own Emma, i . built upon a solid foundation ; and will last to us.
Yet that was written within a month or tw . of the opening of the year of Trafalgar, the yes which was to see Nelson's death and the endiri of all his dreams of domestic happiness. Th, long waiting and watching in the Gulf of Lyon the long separation from home and all that horr meant to him, wore heavily upon his spirit. Tb call to action, as always, found him ready ; bi: it was so long in coming. " This is an odd war he said once in disgust, " not a battle ! " But ci
TO THE LAST BATTLE 339
[jthe i Qth of January, 1805, the weary watching bff Toulon was ended. Two of Nelson's look-fDut frigates came in sight in a heavy gale, bringing the news that the French fleet had at last put T.o sea. And so the final act in the great sea-jurama began: the fate-fraught months moved J: ;teadily onwards to Trafalgar.
The situation, as it stood in the opening nonths of this momentous year, was a com-)licated and threatening one for England. Upon he French side of the Channel was encamped Napoleon's mighty army of invasion, looking vith rapacious eyes across "the ruffled strip of alt," which was all that barred their progress ! o London; but that was an insurmountable carrier, as fate and Nelson were to prove. " I 't say the French can't come," said wise old Vincent; " I only say they can't come by
The French fleet was in three divisions— jnty ships at Brest, ten at Toulon, five at :hefort. With these three squadrons, Napo-m's object was so to decoy and bewilder the •itish fleet that he might obtain that temporary imand of the Channel which would make >sible the invasion of England. By striking three directions he hoped to confuse the real ic. The ships from Toulon and Rochefort to proceed independently to the West lies, rendezvous there and do what damage
340 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON
they could, and return to Rochefort together. The Brest division was to land an army corps in Ireland, and then to cover the crossing of the troops waiting at Boulogne.
It must be remembered that Nelson had not the key to these Napoleonic schemes. We see ( the whole huge combination ; he saw only a little bit of it—that the Toulon fleet which he had been watching had at last put to sea. Amid all the maze of possible French motives and very evident English dangers, Nelson had one thread to guide him : his lifelong determination, on all occasions and wherever possible, to find and destroy the French fleet. The old fire came down on him and the old anguish of anxiety. " I am in a fever," he wrote; " God send I may find them !" He went to Egypt after them, and returned disconsolate, to find that the French had put back into Toulon, much battered by the storms and the encounter with the open ses after so many months in harbour. " Buonaparte,' wrote Nelson later, "has often made his brag! that our Fleet would be worn out by keeping the sea,—that his was kept in order, and increasing by staying in Port; but he now finds, I fane) if Emperors hear truth, that his Fleet suffer more in one night than ours in one year."
Buonaparte's first combinations had broken u in some disarray ; his squadrons had made useles outings and failed to meet, while the British wer
TO THE LAST BATTLE 341
still masters of the sea-situation. But a second effort soon followed. The Toulon fleet broke out again, and made for the West Indies, and once more Nelson followed. His long, close chase to the West Indies and back again was unsuccessful in its object of catching the French fleet; but Villeneuve, with Nelson so close on his track, could do nothing save fly. Jamaica was I saved, the sugar ships were saved, and, driven |irresistibly by the terrible British admiral, the I French fled back to Europe, where, owing to jthe warning sent by Nelson, they were met off iCape Finisterre by Sir Robert Calder. After ja partial fleet action, Villeneuve put into Vigo, and a month later retreated to Cadiz. So Napoleon's sea-plans were upset; Nelson's vigilance had defeated them, and he was free to turn his face homewards—for the last time.
He reached Merton on the igth of August, find all his agitated and happy family assembled receive him. But warm as was Nelson's affec->n for his brother and sisters and their children, was Emma and the little dark-eyed Horatia linging to her skirts, who made the centre and ie radiance of his home. Each day as it fled is precious and too short. He was happy and tore at peace than he had been for years in his mind; but over all hung the foreboding lat his work was not yet finished, that this ;pite was only snatched before the storm of
342 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON
war once more broke around his head. After a short week or two the summons came : England needed Nelson for the last and final effort, an< without a thought of self he gave up all he hel< most dear and went forth to fight his last battle.
Emma Hamilton was a brave woman, as sufficiently proved by her past actions, but sh< did both herself and Nelson a wrong when sh< later claimed that it was she who spurred the hero to his final sacrifice. Harrison's version of the story (written under her influence) is well known; she tells it again in a letter to Nelson's chaplain, Dr. Scott, written nearly a year after the admiral's death. " Did I ever keep him at home ?" she asks. " Did I not share in his glory ? Even this last fatal victory, it was I bid him go forth. Did he not pat me on the back, call me brave Emma, and said, ' If there were more Emmas there would be more Nelsons' ?" Instead of her having to urge him to his duty, impartial study of Nelson's correspondence reveals that it was he who was constantly setting a high ideal of devotion to England before Emma, Two years earlier he had written to her—
" 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 THE LAST BATTLE 343
to go forth to fight our battles, and the last to return ! ' And, then, all these honours reflect on you. . . . 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 speaks a man who needed no woman's word to spur him to his duty! Though written in August, 1803, it almost exactly expressed Nelson's feeling in September, 1805. The only difference was a deeper tone, a sense of solemnity and fate shadowing his hopes. After saying his last farewell to Emma and Horatia—he spent his parting moments praying over the cot of his little sleeping daughter—he wrote in his letter-book on September the i3th—
" Friday night, at half-past ten, drove from dear, dear Merton, where I left all that I hold dear in this world, to go and serve my King and country. May the great God whom I adore enable me to fulfil the expectations of my country, and if it is His good pleasure that I should return, my thanks will never cease being offered up to the throne of His mercy. If it is His good providence to cut short my days upon earth, I bow with the greatest submission, relying that He will protect those so dear to me that I leave behind. His will be done. Amen. Amen. Amen."
Before he finally left the shores of England
344 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON
and set sail for Trafalgar—then "a name by fame unchronicled "—he was followed by tearful notes from Emma; and wrote her encouragement and hope even while the shadow of parting lay heavy on
his heart. Some of Emma's later letters he never lived to read ; her last little stories of Horatia fell unheeded into the void where he had gone.
"You will be even fonder of her when you return," wrote Emma, on the 8th of October. " She says, ' I love my dear, dear Godpapa, but Mrs. Gibson told me he killed all the people, and I was afraid. 1 Dearest angel she is! Oh! Nelson, how I love her, but how do I idolise you,—the dearest husband of my heart, you are all in this world to your Emma. May God send you victory, and home to your Emma, Horatia, and paradise Merton, for when you are there, it will be paradise. My own Nelson, may God preserve you."
There is a cry of foreboding fear in those words. But Nelson knew neither fear nor foreboding when the great occasion of his life faced him at last. He had a growing conviction, as the time drew on, that he would not live through the battle, but he had also a spirit " fraught with fire unquenchable." The momentous hours must be shared by Emma, so to her he wrote—
" My dearest beloved Emma, the dear friend of my bosom, the signal has been made that the
LADY HAMILTON
J. J. MASQUERIER
TO THE LAST BATTLE 345
Enemy's Combined Fleet are coming out of Port. We have very little wind, so that I have no hopes of seeing them before to-morrow. May the God of Battles crown my endeavours with success; at all events, I take care that my name ishall ever be most dear to you and Horatia, both jof whom I love as much as my own life. And las my last writing before the Battle will be to iyou, so I hope in God that I shall live to finish my letter after the Battle/'
This letter was found open on Nelson's desk
after he had fallen. His last thoughts before
She went into action were of Lady Hamilton: he
iwrote the famous Codicil to his Will, in which
he so confidently commended her to the care of
jhis King and country, and as her portrait was
'moved from his cabin in the general clearance
before a ship goes into action, he cried, " Take
care of my Guardian Angel! "
The great incidents of that battle off Cape
j Trafalgar are engraved imperishably in the
hearts of the English people. When the fatal
bullet from the Rcdoutabtts top had done its
jwork, when Nelson lay dying in the Victory's
dark cockpit, in death as in life he had but two
j thoughts—the two that were one in his heart,
! Emma and England. In the last hours of mortal
j anguish he spoke constantly of the woman he
had so devotedly loved. "Pray let my dear
Lady Hamilton have my hair, and all other
346 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON
things belonging to me," was his first request after he had satisfied his anxiety as to the fortunes of the fight. When the surgeon told him that unhappily for his country his injuries were past aid, Nelson said, " I know it. I feel something rising in my breast which tells me I am gone." After a few minutes he murmured, "What would become of poor Lady Hamilton, if she knew of my situation?" When Hardy visited him for the second time, Nelson begged him to "take care of my dear Lady Hamilton, Hardy. Take care of poor Lady Hamilton." In a low but emphatic voice, he said to Dr. Scott, his chaplain, " Doctor, I have not been a great sinner;" and after a pause, "Remember, that I leave Lady Hamilton and my Daughter Horatia as a legacy to my Country; never forget Horatia." Then as speech grew more difficult, his last words expressed the ideal which had guided him all his life, which had inspired his final signal: " Thank God, I have done my duty."
So died Nelson. And Emma in England, writing to him on the 24th of October—all unknowing that he was already dead and immortal, gone far beyond her tears—had called him, in a touching and tender little phrase, her "all of good."
CHAPTER XV
AFTER TRAFALGAR
AFTER Trafalgar the sun had set, the glory had gone out of Emma Hamilton's life. Her uncertain position was no longer buttressed by the magic of Nelson's name, the might of his personality. But she had lost so much more than mere material advantage and protection: she had lost the heart that trusted and believed in her, that held her without flaw. In a truer and deeper sense than she herself half understood when she wrote it, Nelson was her "all of good." His faith in her had been the spur to her nobler nature, had enabled her to reach after qualities that were not innate. This aspect of her loss she probably never realized; when the blow fell, it was the bitter personal side that wounded her, the sense that Nelson himself would return no more. But she was an easy creature even in her grief, which, though passionate enough, had something of the facile quality of a child's outcries, and also something of a child's subcon-sciousness that she was making herself interesting and conspicuous. She took to her bed, and
348 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON
passed her days in reading over Nelson's letters, which she declared were " sacred, and shall remain so," and weeping over the past. But her prostration did not prevent her from seeing people, and she was anxious that her sufferings should be realized. Mrs. Cadogan, Emma's mother, wrote to George Rose, telling him that , Nelson's sister and her family " at this moment surround her ladyship's bed, bewailing their sad loss and miserable state." Emma's own condition, according to her affectionate mother, " is beyond description." The silent grief which eats inwards, so that—
" She nothing heeds And nothing needs— Only remembers,"
was totally alien to Emma's expansive nature.
She wrote herself to George Rose at the end of November from Clarges Street, " I write from my bed, where I have been ever since the fatal sixth of this month, and only rose to be removed from Merton here." She tells him, " My dear Sir, my heart is broken. Life to me now is not worth having; I lived but for him. His glory I gloried in ; it was my pride that he should go forth; and this fatal and last time he went I persuaded him to it. But I cannot go on;—my heart and head are gone; . . . My mind is not a common one; and having lived as a confidante and friend with such men as Sir William
Hamilton, and dearest, glorious Nelson, I feel myself superior to vain tattling woman."
In this same letter there are signs that she had already got a little across with the Reverend 'William Nelson, the admiral's place-hunting brother, who had been made an earl in honour of the name of the great dead seaman. She calls him " leaky " in regard to confidences. She says, !" The Earl you know ; but a man must have great ! courage to accept the honour of—calling himself by that name."
England conferred honours upon Nelson's brother ; but the woman whom he had loved, and left expressly to the care and the generosity of his country, was ignored. There is little need to go into all the familiar details. Pitt might have done something, but then Pitt died within a week or two of the day on which Nelson was laid to his last glorious rest under the dome of St. Paul's. Before the great State funeral Nelson's chaplain, Dr. Scott, kept devoted watch over the dead hero at Greenwich. From there he wrote to Lady Hamilton, speaking from the depth of his own grief to hers, " Every thought and word I have is about your dear Nelson. Here lies Bayard, but Bayard victorious. ... So help me God, I think he was a true knight and worthy the age of chivalry."
When Nelson was buried, and Pitt, "the Nelson of Ministers," was dead, Emma Hamilton
350 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON
was left to fight her case against the apathy and self-righteousness of officialdom as best she might. The case did not rest on her merits, but on Nelson's dying wish and pathetic confidence that his country would grant his last request. But that was something which the powers of the day entirely failed to realize. It is true that efforts were made on her behalf, particularly by the Honourable George Rose, who, as his biographer says, " considered that every one belonging to Lord Nelson was a legacy to himself;" though it is plain from the tone of his letters to her that Lady Hamilton did not please him personally. But he drew up petitions for her to present to successive Ministers,
and took considerable trouble, all without avail. Her claims to a pension because of her services in the Mediterranean were not sufficiently authentic in the eyes of the Government, and, moreover, as Rose said to her in the midsummer of 1806, "the difficulty in affording you relief is increased to a great extent by the length of time that has elapsed since your claim arose, in which period there have been three administrations." He based some hope, however, on the codicil to Nelson's Will. But a year later he was writing to her—
"The reward recommended by Lord Nelson for yourself, on the score of public services, seems to be now quite desperate. The only hope I can venture to hold out the remotest prospect
}f to you is, that Mr. Canning may possibly :>n some favourable opportunity propose to the Duke of Portland to recommend to the King i small pension to the child."
Thus Emma Hamilton's hopes dwindled, as Ministers grew more cautious and more cold, and :he " favourable opportunity" receded yet further nto the grey distance of things undone. But if :here was caution in official quarters, there was ilso some justification for it. Lady Hamilton's :ase was undoubtedly a difficult one to deal with ; ler connection with Nelson was not one that :ould be publicly and officially acknowledged; ler services to the country rested more on her )wn and the dead hero's assurances than on any Dapers which could be tabulated and pigeon-loled in a satisfactory official manner: altogether, i thorny and awkward matter.
But if the behaviour of British Ministers was ndifferent, that of Earl Nelson was cruel and :ontemptible. When his great brother was iving, when Emma was the dispenser of patron-ige and the fount of power, he fawned upon her. Though a clergyman, he chose to shut his eyes :o the manner of her life ; he let her bring up his laughter Charlotte, and be the intimate friend of lis wife; he accepted everything she had to offer, 'ind was not above asking for more. He flattered ler fulsomely, and when he wished to get any-;hing from his generous and unsuspicious sailor
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