These thoughts filtered to Emma through Nelson’s sermon on how his daughter should be raised; education both religious and mathematical, and she must be taught languages from an early age so she did not grow up as deficient as her father. How to walk, how to talk – on and on until Emma decided he sounded like his father.
Sir William, back from his fishing with a basket of mackerel, had changed into dry clothes. He was informed by Emma’s Nubian maid, Fatima, that her mistress had gone to see Parker, and since he liked the young man, he decided to call himself on the invalid. It was Langford, still with his foot up in the parlour, who saved what might have been blushes by telling him that Nelson had gone there before him. Sir William was obliged to root out Tom Allen, to go to the house and inform all there of his intention to call.
By the time he arrived Emma and Nelson were back at Parker’s bedside, and Emma was again reading to him. But a canny soul like Sir William was a master of atmosphere, and had no trouble in deducing what had been going on. He could not resist a little gibe.
‘Ah, my dear Emma, I swear that to see you baring your soul beside an invalid is to see you at your very best.’
Emma glared at him, while one-armed Horatio Nelson went bright red.
It remained their trysting place, with Merry Ed pleased at the time both Emma and his hero spent with him. He wanted more than anything for Nelson to be happy, and when an amputation was finally decided upon declared that he would lose ten limbs in the service of his admiral. Emma and Sir William, who had intended to stay two weeks, put off their departure for a few days. Nelson had written to Parker’s family and greeted a father, penniless, he said, from having been robbed of his wallet on the way through London.
The operation, performed by Dr Baird, was a horrid occasion, made worse by the flickering candles that surrounded the operating table. Nelson had witnessed amputations many times but it was not something he had ever got used to. Dosed with both laudanum and rum, young Parker, strapped to the table, was in the rolling-eyed state of the drunk, babbling away and laughing at his own incomprehensible sallies. His eyes continued to dance merrily as Giddings placed the leather strap between Parker’s teeth. At the same time Baird was busy with the ligature and wooden spike that, wound tight, would act as a tourniquet.
Baird sliced the flesh below where he would cut the bone, so that it could be folded over the stump and stitched. Watching, Nelson recalled his own amputation; the pain and the despair of knowing he would never be whole again. The knife went in deep further up, to dissect clean flesh above the corruption in the lower thigh. Pain seared through Parker’s drunken brain and the smile changed to a rictus, the back arched, and it took Giddings and two of the brawniest members of Nelson’s barge crew to keep the patient on the blood-drenched table.
Speed was all in these situations, so Baird worked quickly, ignoring Parker’s stifled grunts and the mucus that shot out from his nose to mingle with the saliva at his mouth. The flesh surrendered to the blade in half a minute, and swiftly Baird took his saw from his assistant. If the pain of cut flesh was severe, that of the sinews of a bone was worse; the grinding sound of the saw sent a feeling of horror through Nelson. Parker was swearing to God and his mother through the muffling round his mouth as Baird, through the thighbone, tossed the leg aside and went to work with clean cloths to stem the blood enough for him to begin the work of repair.
One strip of hanging skin was folded under another, a third put in place before the suture, string attached, was sewn into the wound. When that string was pulled and caused no pain, when it came out easily and without a following of blood or pus, the doctor would know that the wound had healed.
It was over. Parker had passed out, and the barge crew, streaming with sweat, lifted the still comatose Parker back onto the bed.
At first Merry Ed seemed to rally, to recover some of his gaiety. But it didn’t last and with the smell of corruption wafting up from the stump he began once more to sink. The Hamiltons were gone when he died, with Nelson sitting by the bed, praying with his equally distraught father.
He had never told Edward Parker that he saw him as a son. Happy as he was with his daughter, his desire for a male heir was strong, and Josiah Nisbet had been such a disappointment. He felt now as he imagined his own father had felt as his offspring had expired. The first Edmund and Horatio, gone before he was born, Maurice, his sister Anne, a second Edmund, Suckling, and his younger sibling George, who had lasted less than a year, dying before Nelson went off to school.
Edward Parker was laid to rest in the cemetery of St George’s Church, so close to the sea that the faint sound of the surf on the shingle could just be heard through the narrow alleyways that led to Deal beach. And for what? The envoys had already crossed the Channel to discuss peace, and Nelson had been informed in a less than polite and public letter from Evan Nepean that any offensive action he contemplated must be put on hold. No French ship, no French port was to be touched.
Nepean represented the same Admiralty that had refused to pay for Parker’s lodgings, his treatment or his funeral. In a rare public outburst, Nelson claimed that the young man could have stunk above ground or been thrown into a ditch for all they cared. The father had nothing, so Nelson paid for the interment and gave the fellow enough money to get back to his home.
It gave him no pleasure to find out that Parker pére had touched half his officers for money, before proceeding to call upon a debt of Langford’s that had still time to run, adding a premium that was not due. ‘What to say, Hardy,’ he sighed to the Ghost, fingering a silver gilt cup that he had had Emma buy as a gift to the surgeon who had looked after his Boulogne wounded. ‘The man shames Merry Ed, but how can I complain when everyone knows Viscount Nelson is so very rich?’
Peace preliminaries were signed at Amiens at the beginning of October and, effectively, Nelson’s service in the Channel was over, though it was weeks before he could take any leave since both St Vincent and Troubridge urged that his continued presence in Deal was necessary. Nelson had to suffer colds, seasickness and being tossed about in rough seas just to satisfy the fears of his superiors that the peace might not hold.
Nelson, himself, did not believe in this peace: it was too advantageous to Bonaparte, giving the Corsican menace time to regroup. And it had meant handing back to France and the Dutch many possessions that had been taken from them at some cost in British blood: the West Indian sugar islands, Ceylon, the Cape of Good Hope. Even Malta was returned to the Knights of St John.
The day he struck his flag was one of necessary visits: to William Pitt at Walmer Castle, his because he held the sinecure post of Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, to old Admiral Lutwidge and his wife, and, most demanding of all, to the wounded sailors in Deal hospital. His pennant was lowered in the gloom of a late October evening and Nelson set off for Merton, a home he had never seen, travelling through the night with the intention of being there for breakfast.
Merton had been his for a month, and improvements had started, so the house and grounds were all ahoo with builders and gardeners when the master made his first entrance. Stopping his coach, Nelson got out at the gate and walked slowly up the drive, savouring the appearance of a residence that looked very fine in the early dawn light.
A stronger sun would show many things requiring attention, but in this light the place looked perfect: large but not awesome with a fine central block fronted by a classical porch, a perfect array of ten windows, the whole surmounted by a pediment roof that mirrored that of the porch. To one side the wing was square with a large window lighting what he assumed to be the main reception room. The other octagonal wing with windows on each face would no doubt hold the library on the ground floor and a withdrawing room on the upper, so shaped as to allow the windows on each face to catch whatever light there was at any time of day.
The front door, already painted navy blue, was open and the servants were about, raking and laying fires, lighting stoves, cleaning and polishing while the
ir betters lay abed. Admiral Viscount Nelson, who knew none of them, was obliged to introduce himself. Behind him Tom Allen was unloading his sea chest, with his master having to ask where it should go.
His bedroom located, it was good to wander round the place while Emma was still asleep, touching the furniture he now owned, fingering books in the library that peace might give him time to read. He entered rooms in which shafts of sunlight were filled with motes of dust, others in which sat the decorator’s trestles and pots of paint. He recalled how many times he had gone on board a ship that was still being readied, his cabin unpainted, his few pieces of furniture not yet arranged. Merton brought that to mind, and the thought was pleasing for being so familiar.
Then, as the clock in the hallway struck nine, he went to find Fatima, Emma’s maid, so that she could tell her mistress Nelson was here, and that he intended to call. Fatima grinned, her full cheeks pushed out and her white teeth lighting up her face. Her eyes held the knowing look that said she was well aware of why Nelson would be calling.
Half an hour later, he and Emma were breakfasting together in her bedroom.
Having dreamed for so long of owning a comfortable residence Nelson was prepared to be disappointed. At one time, speculating with Fanny, he had hankered after a small cottage with roses round the door and children gambolling in the garden. Merton was much more than that, but it felt intimate. Over the following weeks rooms were put to rights, the roof repairs completed, and Emma put in her plate glass doors so that light was brought to the previously dim hallway. Plumbers plumbed, painters painted and carpenters sawed while a steady stream of visitors came and went.
James Perry, owner of the Morning Chronicle, and still a partisan of Emma, was a neighbour and welcome guest with whom both Sir William, who resided in the house at weekends, and Nelson, could happily converse. The adjoining property was owned by Mr Goldshmid, a banker, who was a mine of good cheer and information regarding the progress of international affairs. The folk of the parish, under the pastoral care of the vicar, Mr Lancaster, were delighted to have the nation’s hero in their midst and took pains to ensure that Nelson knew it.
Naturally the William Nelsons were early visitors. The Viscount was pleased to learn that his brother had been made a Prebendary at Canterbury. It pleased William less: he had sought higher ecclesiastical preferment using the Nelson name, and reckoned that with his bloodline he should be a bishop.
Christmas was celebrated in a house still full of dust and noise, but it fulfilled Nelson’s hopes by being a place to which his family could come. The Boltons and the Matchams arrived with their large and noisy broods, all of whom were eager to play with and hold ten-month old Horatia.
The younger members of the family might be unaware of her parentage but the adults were not, and even if they had not suspected before they could be in no doubt now, seeing father and daughter together, of the blood connection. Horatia even looked like him and no man spent so much time playing with and talking about a foundling. And if Emma could carry off the lie of the connection, Nelson could not.
If they disapproved, no one hinted that it was so. Fanny Nelson, whom they had all related to in their own way in the past, was forgotten now and never mentioned. Indeed, if Nelson’s father had not still been a supporter she might have been cut out of the family altogether. Emma headed Nelson’s table, created the entertainments, oversaw the running of the house, ordered and supervised the improvements, and sat as the centre of attention in the evening when the family played cards or performed their party pieces.
Sir William, more frail than ever, but still with a sharp mind, was like an adopted grandfather. Like most men who had never had to suffer the behaviour of his own children he saw nothing but good in the breed. He was patient with them all, by the river teaching them to fish, in the library assisting them with their reading and their languages, or joining in with their noisy parlour games.
The person he was not patient with was Emma: since she was living here, and he used Merton as a weekend retreat, he felt a bounden duty to share in the expense of the upkeep. The strain that that put on his finances was considerable: he still had the rent in Piccadilly to pay, plus all the other costs, for carriages and the like, that were necessary to get him and his wife up to town and back again. And on top of that there was Emma’s extravagance.
She could not be brought to see that the life they had lived in Naples could not be replicated in England: he did not have the means. She spent Nelson’s money with the same prodigality, and Sir William had it on good authority from Alexander Davidson that the admiral was not wealthy. Successful warrior he might be, but when it came to prize money every other admiral outstripped him. Davidson was of the opinion that Nelson did the hard graft, while others, more assiduous in the stroking of their connections and the Admiralty, got the plums.
And Emma had made this very much Nelson’s house. Portraits and trophies lined the walls, everything that Nelson had ever been given, won or sat for, even framed songs that had been composed in his honour. That was as it should be but Sir William felt that he was ever more set on the margin of Emma’s life, for at Merton she never bothered to pretend that they were still a married couple. All he ever got was Nelson this and Nelson that, with no compensation in the article of consideration when they were together. As to Nelson himself, he was the same social misfit he had always been, never noticing, Sir William was sure, the way Emma treated him, so he was left out of any strictures Sir William felt he had to raise. Not that he got very far. Every time he taxed Emma with some slight it ended with his writing to make the peace.
Naval acquaintances called at the house they had named as Circe’s Cave, especially the members of the Crocodile Club. There, his Nile captains, while often deprecating the way the place was a shrine to their hero, toasted the success of one of their number. Sir James Saumarez, just before the peace, had dished the Spaniards in Algeciras Bay. That occasioned bumper after bumper, but only after they had refought the battle on the dining room table. If many of them still held in doubt the whole association of Emma and their admiral, then they said nothing, for they were too attached to him to sour the atmosphere.
Winter turned to spring, and for a short time there were no builders present. Outside, those improvements he had discussed with Cribb, the gardener, began to show themselves; shrubs and plants budded nicely, early daffodils and tulips bloomed, the lawn was a mass of daisies, while bluebells spread like a carpet under the trees.
For the first time in nearly ten years, Nelson was not in uniform but in civilian clothes. He went to church on Sundays to occupy his own pew, and conversed outside with his fellow parishioners about the needs of the locality: improvements to roads, the provision of a canal, the next local Member of Parliament. He would walk home as Emma and Sir William coached, nodding to acquaintances, every inch the country squire, returning usually to a scene of domestic tranquillity.
The tributary of the river Wandle that cut through his property had been cleared and renamed the Nile by Emma. It had also been stocked with fish so that Sir William could while away his time with the rod. To Nelson, especially when Horatia was present, the weekends were bliss. There was always a guest and always a good dinner, and usually, in the evening, a performance of an attitude or two by Emma.
Walks would be taken on what Nelson liked to call his quarterdeck, the strip of gravel that fronted the house. There, with a friend or relative alongside, he liked to pace, converse and ruminate on the world beyond his front gate. His residence was no longer ‘The Farm’. It was ‘Paradise Merton’ now, the place in which everything was contained that Nelson loved.
On Monday mornings, Viscount Nelson and Sir William Hamilton would take coach to join the throng of gentlemen heading for London to banks and law chambers, insurance brokerages and government offices. Or like Sir William, to Sotheby’s or Christies for an auction. Nelson went to the Admiralty to discuss naval matters, often to the House of Lords, to listen to the deb
ates and to work hard at the thing that he wished for most; that Lady Emma Hamilton should be accepted at court.
23
‘Your Highness,’ said Nelson, with a nod to a very round and bulbous-eyed Duke of Clarence.
Prince William Henry had been plump even as a boy when Nelson had first met him, although height had offset the worst effects. It was a family trait that had shown itself to a greater extent when he had made his cruise around the Caribbean. As a post captain the Prince had embarked on a voyage designed to bring closer to the House of Hanover the subjects of the sugar islands, and to show them that their royal family were employed and useful, not the rakish and idle spendthrifts of rumour. Thanks to him, it had done the opposite, reinforcing an image of boorish superiority. In the process it had put a blight on Nelson’s career.
They had remained friendly, corresponding frequently. Clarence provided Nelson with a conduit to his father, however little it was appreciated, and the man who liked to be known as the ‘Sailor Prince’ had basked in his association with Nelson. At court, he could claim to know Nelson’s mind, and had, at the time of the Nile, been a rock of optimism when all around him people had begun to despair.
‘Damn good to see you Nelson,’ he boomed, ‘and looking so damned well. Life ashore surely suits you. Mind you, sir, no man’s health was ever improved by being tossed about on the ocean.’
‘I have Lady Hamilton to thank for that, sir. She has made for me a home at Merton that would restore the most jaded sailor.’
‘Quite,’ the duke replied, warily, ‘and I know I have an invitation to visit you which I assure you I will take up soon.’
‘I would be most obliged if you would, Your Highness.’
There was a pause, Nelson hoping that Clarence might name a day, his host wondering if he could change the subject. He had no intention of visiting Merton under present circumstances, for to do so would anger his father. Upsetting the man who held the family purse strings was not wise for a man whose debts always exceeded his income. One day he would go, but not yet.
Breaking the Line Page 30
