by Amanda Elyot
Emma Carew returned to Manchester a week before Nelson departed. Mam had suggested to me that since “little Emma” was making her way in the world as a governess herself, it might do the girl a good turn if we was to employ her instead of taking on Cecilia.
“After all, we’ve been telling ’er she’s our cousin, and if we’re asking Cecilia, ’oo’s got no experience in teaching, we might as well give little Emma the income instead, y’nau?” But I could not bring myself to hire one of my girls to educate the other, and neither one to know they were my daughters. My heart could not have withstood such a situation, nor could I handle being ever on my toes that the least thing might slip from my lips.
I urged the husband of my heart to write to me of every little thing; he should not spare a single detail. On October 22, I received a letter from him dated October 1, in which he told me he prayed that the ministry would send him more ships of the line but that he hoped to prevail nonetheless. He apologized for the brevity of his letters since his departure. But had I a ream of paper at my disposal, all I might write could be comprised in one short sentence: I love you dearly, tenderly, affectionately. He did find the time to write a poem for me, which he enclosed with the October 1 letter.
HENRY (OFF CÁDIZ) TO EMMA
The storm is o’er,
The troubled main
Now heaves no more,
But all is silent—hushed—and calm again,
Save in this bosom—where a ceaseless storm
Is raised—by love and Emma’s beauteous form.
No calm, at sea,
This heart shall know,
While far from thee,
Midst lengthening hours of absence, and of woe,
I gaze—in sorrow, o’er the boundless deep,
With eyes—which were they not ashamed would weep.
But hark, I hear
The signal gun.
Farewell, my dear.
The Victory leads on. The fight’s begun.
Thy Picture, round this cannon’s neck shall prove,
A pledge—to valour, sent by thee and love.
Should conquest smile,
On Britain’s fleet,
(As at the Nile,)
With joyful hearts, upon the beach we’ll meet.
No more I’ll tempt the dangers of the sea,
But live, in Merton’s groves, with love and thee.
Horatio Nelson
Our letters always had a way of calming each other. Just knowing how much we were beloved in each other’s eyes was a balm to the troubled soul. I had suffered many anxieties whilst Nelson was away this time, but his poem arrived as a reassuring caress. I folded the sheet of paper and wore it every day tucked beneath my stays, next to my bosom. I knew that beneath his shirt and stock, about his neck he wore a chain, and from that chain hung a miniature copy of me as Vigée Le Brun’s Reclining Bacchante. It was the image he always wore by his heart, while the Schmidt pastel of me graced his great cabin and Romney’s Emma as St. Cecilia blessed him nightly from one of the walls in his sleeping cabin.
On November 6, I was lying in bed at Merton when I thought I heard the Tower guns, for it was quite possible that such a loud report could travel the six miles from London. Susannah Bolton knocked upon my bedroom door, having heard the noise as well, and surmised that it heralded a happy victory. If that was true, soon, then! Soon, Nelson would be coming home!
Four minutes later, a carriage clattered up to the front door. The horses whinnied and snorted. As I was dressing, I sent to inquire who was arrived. They brought me word, Mr. Whitby, from the Admiralty. “Show him in directly,” I said. I threw on a dressing gown—I was far too impatient to be laced into my stays—and dashed downstairs.
Captain Whitby, an older gentleman, was standing in the front room in full dress uniform, his hat in his hand and his countenance grave. “We have gained a great victory,” he said, his voice faint and feeble.
All I wanted was news from my beloved Nelson. I had not heard from him in weeks. “Never mind your victory! My letters—give me my letters!”
Captain Whitby was unable to speak—tears in his eyes and a deathly paleness over his face made me comprehend him. I believe I gave a scream and fell back, and for ten hours after, I could neither speak nor shed a tear.
“Her heart has been shocked by grief, Mrs. Cadogan. It’s a catalepsy induced by the dreadful news of Lord Nelson’s passing. I’ve seen one or two cases of a similar nature in my time. I regret that there’s nothing I can do for her, nor nothing any of you can do, but remain by her side and offer her every possible tenderness.”
“Thank you, Dr. Heaviside.”
“I don’t want your guineas, Mrs. Cadogan. I couldn’t live with myself if I was to charge you a fee for coming down here. I daresay the whole country is in mourning. In London there is not a dry eye in the streets. When the news came, there were people who stood stock-still wherever they were when they heard it, bawling as if they’d just lost their mothers. They’d never heard of ‘Traffle-gar’ before today, but the word was on everybody’s lips. Lord Nelson was greatly loved, ma’am. And he will be sorely missed by his countrymen.”
“There’s no one going to miss him like my Emy.” Mam was sobbing so hard her shoulders heaved up and down as if she were a marionette.
“I do suggest that you bring Lady Hamilton back to London as soon as possible that I may be just a few steps away, should you need my services again.”
I could hear them, but I felt as if my body were inside a glass dome trapped underwater. Everyone around me was weeping, but there was no salt water for my eyes. Not then. Not yet.
I do not remember being dressed. I do not remember being bundled into the coach. I do not remember the journey up to town. I do not remember how I came to be in my bed at Clarges Street, but when my senses began to return, I found myself propped up against the bolsters, with a ring of concerned faces about me: those of Mam, and Nelson’s family, my dear friend Lady Betty Foster. Cecilia Connor was to mind Horatia back at Merton. In such a state as I was in, I could not properly attend to her, nor did I feel it meet to disturb with my grief the routine of a child who was not yet five years old. The time would come soon enough—and I despaired of it—when I should have to tell our daughter that she would see her dear papa no more.
“What shall I do? ’Ow can I exist?” They told me that these were the first words I spoke when I came out of the catalepsy. Completely stunned, I repeated those two questions over and over again, searching the faces around me. One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . fifteen countenances I counted, and not one of them had an answer for me. They stared back at me like figures in a wax-works. “ ’Ow can I exist? What shall I do?” I shouted.
Captain Blackwood, who had commanded the frigate Euryalus during the action at Trafalgar on October 21—that fateful day when my heart was torn from me—was, along with Captain Hardy, the first among Nelson’s men to pay me a call. Blackwood had been aboard the Victory pacing her quarterdeck with Nelson right before the battle commenced.
I could not stir a leg to come downstairs and I asked that the captains be shown up. Blackwood came up alone, and I dismissed those who had kept so constant a vigil over me. “Tell me, tell me everything that ’appened, and do not spare a single detail,” I insisted.
“I fear for your ladyship’s delicate condition, should I—”
“I must know everything. ’Ow he spent his last hours. What my beloved Nelson said in ’is last breaths.”
“Your name was on his lips, milady.” The usually stalwart Blackwood reached for his handkerchief. “You were on his mind and in his heart at the very last. But Hardy can tell you exactly what it was he said. He was with Nelson when he . . . when he departed this earth.”
“Hardy . . . was there? You know that ’e and I did not always . . .”
“He wants to speak to you directly,” Blackwood confided. “Hardy may have spoken his mind on former occasions more freely than you c
ould have wished, but depend upon it that the last words of our lamented friend will influence his conduct. He desires me, in the most unequivocal manner, to assure you of his good intentions towards you. This, I hope, will ease your mind.”
Hardy was then sent up, by my request. He came bearing a large satchel and a packet of correspondence, including my own letters, written during October, that had never reached Nelson, and the last of Nelson’s letters to me.
“His very last was begun two days before the action,” Hardy said gently. I sifted through them and found my lover’s final words to me.
Victory Octr 19th: 1805 Noon
My Dearest, beloved Emma the dear friend of my bosom the Signal has been made that the Enemy’s Combined Fleet are coming out of Port. We have very little Wind so that I have no hopes of seeing them before tomorrow. May the God of Battles crown my endeavors with success at all events. I will take care that my name shall ever be most dear to you and Horatia, both of whom I love as much as my own life and as my last writing before the battle will be to you, so I hope in God that I shall live to finish my letter after the Battle. May Heaven bless you prays your Nelson & Bronte. Octr. 20th in the morning we were close to the mouth of the Streights, but the Wind had not come far enough to the Westward to allow the combined fleets to weather the shoals off Trafallgar, but they were counted as forty Ships of War, which I suppose to be 34 of the Line and six frigates, a Group of them was seen off the Lighthouse of Cadiz this Morng, but it blows so very fresh & thick weather that I rather believe they will go into the Harbour before night. May God Almighty give us success over these fellows and enable us to get a peace.
I bosted into hysterical sobs as I read it, the which neither officer begrudged me in the slightest, for their own eyes was misty as well, and it was many minutes before I could regain any semblance of composure.
I kissed the letter and pressed it to my bosom. Then I touched my lips to each of Nelson’s other letters to me. “Tell me, now,” I urged them. “That I might learn for myself ’ow my brave, beloved Nelson won the day . . .” My voice dropped to the merest whisper. “And ’ow he lost his life.” Hardy and Blackwood exchanged glances. “The Admiralty would keep me in the dark, I am certain. But you, if you loved Nelson, as I know you did—and do—you will tell me ’ow it ’appened.”
“The fleet was sighted on the morning of October twenty-first, with the nearest enemy ships just under two miles away. Nelson and I were on the Victory’s quarterdeck when the shout went up. He turned to me and said, ‘Blackwood, I’ll now amuse the fleet with a signal. Do you think there is one yet wanting?’
“I could not suppress a chuckle, ma’am, for I replied, ‘I think the whole of the fleet seems to understand very clearly what they are about.’ For Nelson always sat down with his captains before a battle; every man was apprised of his duties and responsibilities, so that when the action commenced, each knew just what was expected of him, and that Nelson entrusted him to carry it out. He called it the Nelson Touch . . . but I expect you know that.”
I nodded. “But was there a signal hoisted then?” I wanted to know.
“Nelson walked over to Pasco, the signal officer, and ordered him to raise a signal to the Africa, which was sailing towards us over on the larboard beam, near the head of the enemy’s line. ENGAGE THE ENEMY MORE CLOSELY, it was to say, and then he commanded Pasco to run up another for the entire fleet to PREPARE TO ANCHOR DURING THE ENSUING NIGHT. He thought for a bit—no more than a few seconds it was, I daresay—before telling Pasco, ‘I wish to say to the fleet, ENGLAND CONFIDES THAT EVERY MAN WILL DO HIS DUTY,’ adding, ‘You must be quick, for I have one more to make, which is for CLOSE ACTION.’ Now, Pasco puzzles it over for a moment or so, and finally tells Nelson, ‘If your lordship will permit me to substitute expects for confides, the signal will soon be completed, because the word expects is in the vocabulary’—Popham’s telegraphic vocabulary, that is—‘and confides must be spelt.’ ‘That will do, Pasco,’ Nelson replied. ‘Make it directly.’ Thus, ENGLAND EXPECTS THAT EVERY MAN WILL DO HIS DUTY was the phrase carried in each brave heart as we prepared to engage the combined fleet.
“The crew was clearing his furniture and personal effects out of Nelson’s cabin to make room for the guns, and he was very anxious that the seaman transporting your picture—the only one I’ve ever seen where you have short hair, ma’am—should honor it properly. ‘Take care of my guardian angel,’ he told the youth, who then was careful to handle the frame as though you yourself were inside it and he feared to drop you. Not a few minutes earlier, Nelson had gazed upon that picture and told me, ‘This is what inspires me; she loves glory and will either triumph in my fame or weep over my grave.’ ”
A sob caught in my throat. “ ’E really said that?”
“Had you a Bible, milady, I would swear upon it.” Blackwood mopped his brow. “Forgive me, Lady Hamilton. I fully appreciate how difficult the hearing of this news must be for you.” He looked shattered.
“I am not insensible to the pains it must cause you to relive it for me. But pray continue. It’s all I ’ave. Even the saddest news of Nelson keeps ’is name upon our lips.”
“The combined fleet had formed themselves into a surprisingly haphazard pattern, when suddenly, at half past eleven, they hoisted their colors and began firing,” Hardy said. “The action progressed well, though we were receiving heavy fire at close range.” The large man’s voice began to quaver a bit. “A lot of carnage on deck, milady. Perhaps I should omit—”
“Omit nothing, Captain ’Ardy. I am already dead. Nothing you say can kill me.”
Hardy blinked a few times to scare back the threatening tears. His pale blue eyes were rimmed with red. “At fifteen past one in the afternoon, Nelson and I were walking the quarterdeck. He was wearing his admiral’s frock coat, with all the stars and orders stitched upon it—”
“I stitched ’em on myself.”
Hardy looked at me, and for the first time in our long acquaintance I thought he finally saw the woman before him as Nelson’s true wife. “I urged him to go below and change his coat, for he was a walking target with all that glitter upon him—”
“ ’E couldn’t ’ave done,” I interrupted softly. “ ’E ’ad five coats, all identical. At ’is request Mam and I made ’em so. Where was ’e when it ’appened, and ’oo did it that I might pray ’is soul is forever consigned to hell?”
Hardy inhaled the courage to continue. “We were so close to the Redoutable then that her rigging was tangled amid the Victory’s. Nelson was in the act of turning near the hatchway when a sharp-shooter positioned in the mizzen of the Redoutable, fired upon him. The ball traveled about fifteen yards, striking Nelson’s left epaulet.” He paused, and looked away from me.
“But ’ow could anyone make out Nelson—or any man—in all the smoke from the bombardments of cannon and musket?”
“That’s why the sharpshooters are in the rigging,” replied Blackwood. “They’re above much of the direct fray. In the odd moments when the smoke clears enough for them to get a decent view of the enemy, they take aim. And Nelson’s golden epaulet, catching the light . . .”
“The musket ball went clean through the shoulder to penetrate his chest,” Hardy said. “He fell to the deck on the exact spot where his secretary, Mr. Scott, had been torn in two by a cannonball. A pool of Scott’s blood was still warm upon it. ‘They have done for me, Hardy,’ he whispered to me. ‘I hope not,’ I replied. ‘Yes, my backbone is shot through.’ Two marines lifted him up and brought him down the companionway, where he noticed that the tiller ropes had been shot through, and—a commander to the last— ordered them replaced immediately. Then, afeared that his men should lose heart if they saw him in such bodily distress, he asked that a handkerchief be opened to the fullest and spread across his face and decorated coat that he should not be recognized.” Hardy reached into his pocket, withdrew a white linen square, and handed it to me. There was no need to explain its provenance.
/> “He insisted on waiting his turn for the surgeon, but Dr. Beatty attended to him right away. It was a butcher’s shambles down there, and I cannot conscience further disturbing your sensibilities, ma’am, to tell you what bloody horrors I saw before me. When I left Nelson there on the orlop deck to return topside, he was calling for relief and water and air, saying ‘fan, fan, drink, drink, rub, rub’ over and over. They brought him water, lemonade, and watered-down wine to soothe his suffering. Dr. Scott, his chaplain, remained by Nelson’s side, rubbing his chest. Nelson had continued to call for me, and until I returned to the orlop and stood before him, he refused to believe that I was not killed myself.
“He was so relieved to see me and took great comfort when I told him that fourteen or fifteen of the enemy’s ships had struck their colors and were now ours. We were winning the day. ‘Come nearer to me, Hardy,’ Nelson whispered, his voice so faint I had to kneel beside him to hear his words. He was propped up against a bolster. ‘Pray let my dear Lady Hamilton have my hair, and all other things belonging to me.’ He asked that when he departed this world I should remove your portrait from about his neck and return it to the original. ‘God be praised, I have done my duty,’ he murmured, squeezing my hand. ‘By your leave, sir, I should return to the deck,’ I said, though I hated to quit his side. The pain was so severe that Nelson said he wished he were already dead that he might not be sensible of it. ‘Yet one would like to live a little longer, too. What would become of Lady Hamilton, if she knew my situation?’ ”
I had opened Nelson’s handkerchief across my palm and was caressing the fabric as if my own flesh beneath it were his dear, dear face. “What indeed?” A tear splashed into my hand.
“I returned to the orlop a second time,” Hardy said, “to report to him of our great victory. Not fifteen minutes after Nelson was hit, the Redoutable herself struck her colors. ‘Anchor, Hardy, anchor, ’ he said as emphatically as he could manage. ‘Shall I have Collingwood assume command, sir?’ I asked him.” Hardy’s voice became more choked with emotion. “ ‘Not while I live, I hope,’ he replied. His spirits seemed to rally. ‘If I live, I’ll anchor.’ Then his thoughts turned inward. ‘Don’t throw me overboard,’ he begged me, and added, ‘Take care of my dear Lady Hamilton, Hardy; take care of poor Lady Hamilton.’ ” The brave Hardy, now racked with sobs, took my hands in his. “And then he said, ‘Kiss me Hardy,’ and I knelt beside him and touched my lips to his cheek. ‘Now I am satisfied,’ he said. It seemed to be a sort of benediction he’d requested. ‘Thank God I have done my duty,’ he whispered. I kissed him again, on the forehead. ‘Who is that?’ he asked, as if a fever had suddenly taken hold of his senses. ‘It is Hardy,’ I replied. ‘God bless you, Hardy!’ he exclaimed, mustering another burst of strength.”
