The Life of Nelson Volume I Part 3

The threatening aspect of affairs necessitated the "Boreas" being kept in commission,--the more so because the economies introduced by Mr.

Pitt into the administration of the two military services had reduced the available naval force below that which France could at once send out. "The Boreas is kept in readiness to go to sea with the squadron at Spithead," wrote Nelson; "but in my poor opinion we shall go no further at present. The French have eight sail in Brest water ready for sea: therefore I think we shall not court the French out of port,"--singular ill.u.s.tration of the unreadiness of Great Britain in the years immediately preceding the French Revolution. He looks for war, however, the following summer. As not only ships, but men also, were urgently needed, the impress service was hastily organized. His friend Locker was summoned from his long retirement to superintend that work in Exeter, and the "Boreas" was ordered to the Thames on the same business, arriving on the 20th of August at the Nore. There her duty was to board pa.s.sing vessels, and take from them as many of their crew as were above the number barely necessary for the safety of the ship. She herself, besides acting as receiving ship for the men thus pressed, was to be kept in readiness to sail at a moment's warning.

Mrs. Nelson had therefore to leave her and go to London. "Here we are," wrote Nelson on the 23d of September, "laying seven miles from the land on the Impress service, and I am as much separated from my wife as if I were in the East Indies;" and he closes the letter with the words, "I am this moment getting under sail after some ships."

His early biographers say that Nelson keenly felt and resented the kind of service in which he was then engaged; so much so that, moved also by other causes of irritation, he decided at one time to quit the Navy. No indication of such feeling, however, appears in his letters.

On the contrary, one of the surest signs with him of pleasurable, or at least of interested, excitement, was now manifested in his improving health. As he himself said, many years later, "To say the truth, when I am actively employed I am not so bad."[17] A month after reaching England, though then midsummer, he wrote: "It is not kind in one's native air to treat a poor wanderer as it has me since my arrival. The rain and cold at first gave me a sore throat and its accompaniments; the hot weather has given me a slow fever, not absolutely bad enough to keep my bed, yet enough to hinder me from doing anything;" and again, "I have scarcely been able to hold up my head." In bl.u.s.tering October, on the other hand, while in the midst of the detested Impress work, he says: "My health, thank G.o.d, was never better, and I am fit for any quarter of the globe;" although "it rains hard, and we have had very bad weather of late." Whatever momentary vexation he may have vented in a hasty expression, it was entirely inconsistent with his general tone to take amiss an employment whose vital importance he would have been the first to admit. Lack of zeal, or haggling about the duty a.s.signed him, was entirely foreign to his character; that the country needed the men who were to be pressed was reason sufficient for one of his temper. If, indeed, there had been an apparent intention to keep him in such inglorious occupation, and out of the expected war, he might have chafed; but his orders to be constantly ready indicated the intention to send him at once to the front, if hostilities began. Doubtless he was disappointed that the application he made for a ship-of-the-line was not granted; but he knew that, being still a very young captain, what he asked was a favor, and its refusal not a grievance, nor does he seem to have looked upon it otherwise.

There were, however, some annoyances, which, joined to the lack of appreciation for his eminent services to the interests of the nation in the West Indies, must have keenly stung him. Without the slightest necessity, except that laid upon him by his own public spirit, he had fought and struggled, and endured three years of hot water to serve the Government. He might have gone easy, as did the admiral and the other captains; but instead of so doing he had destroyed the contraband trade, and re-established the working of laws upon which the prosperity and security of the kingdom were thought to depend. For this he had received a perfunctory, formal acknowledgment, though none apparently from the Admiralty, the head of his own service. But he soon found that, if slow to thank, they were prompt to blame, and that with no light hand nor disposition to make allowances. He had run his head against various regulations of the bureaucracy; and this let him know, with all the amenities of official censure, that if they could not recognize what he had done well, they were perfectly clear-sighted as to where he had gone wrong.

So far from appreciation, there seems even to have been a prejudice against Nelson in high quarters, due not only to the discomposure felt by the routine official, at the rude irregularities of the man who is more concerned to do his work than nice about the formalities surrounding it, but also to misrepresentation by the powerful interests he had offended through his independent course in the West Indies. After Hughes had gone home, Nelson, as senior officer on the station, began to examine the modes of conducting government business, and especially of making purchases. Conceiving that there were serious irregularities in these, he suggested to the Civil Department of the Navy, under whose cognizance the transactions fell, some alterations in the procedure, by which the senior naval officer would have more control over the purchases than simply to certify that so much money was wanted. The Comptroller of the Navy replied that the old forms were sufficient,--"a circ.u.mstance which hurt me," wrote Nelson; while all the civil functionaries resented his interference with their methods, and seem to have received the tacit support, if not the direct sympathy, of the Navy Board, as the Civil Department was then called. His disposition to look into matters, however, had become known, and the long struggle over the contraband trade had given him in the islands a reputation for tenacity and success. It was probably in dependence upon these that two merchants came to him, two months before he left the station, and told him of the existence of very extensive frauds, dating back several years, in which were implicated both civil officials of the Navy and private parties on sh.o.r.e. It is possible that the informants themselves had shared in some of these transactions, and they certainly demanded in payment a part of the sums recovered; but, as Nelson truly said, the question was not as to their character, but how to stop the continuance of embezzlements which had then amounted to over two millions sterling.

The reports made by him upon this subject reached London about a month before the return of the "Boreas;" but the war scare, and the urgent call upon all departments of the Navy to mobilize the available force, prevented any immediate steps being taken. His letters were acknowledged, and the intention expressed to investigate the matter, but nothing more was then done. October, however, the Prussian troops occupied Amsterdam, reinstating the Stadtholder in all his privileges, and restoring to power the partisans of Great Britain; while France remained pa.s.sive, her power for external action paralyzed by the dying convulsions of the monarchy. The curtain had just risen upon the opening scene in the great drama of the Revolution,--the first a.s.sembly of Notables. Warlike preparations consequently ceased, and on the 30th of November, 1787, the cruise of the "Boreas" came to an end.

It was during this last month of servitude, and immediately before quitting the ship, that Nelson is said to have used the vehement expressions of discontent with "an ungrateful service," recorded by his biographers, concluding with his resolve to go at once to London and resign his commission. In the absence of the faintest trace, in his letters, of dissatisfaction with the duty to which the ship was a.s.signed, it is reasonable to attribute this exasperation to his soreness under the numerous reprimands he had received,--a feeling which plainly transpires in some of his replies, despite the forms of official respect that he scrupulously observed. Even in much later days, when his distinguished reputation might have enabled him to sustain with indifference this supercilious rudeness, he winced under it with over-sensitiveness. "Do not, my dear lord," he wrote to Earl Spencer a year after the battle of the Nile, "let the Admiralty write harshly to me--my generous soul cannot bear it, being conscious it is entirely unmerited." This freedom of censure, often felt by him to be undeserved, or at least excessive, and its sharp contrast with the scanty recognition of his unwearied efforts,--of whose value he himself was by no means forgetful,--though not unusual in the experience of officers, are quite sufficient to account for the sense of neglect and unjust treatment by which he was then outraged. This feeling was probably accentuated, also, by a renewal of the legal persecution which had been begun in the West Indies; for towards the end of the year he received formal notice of suits being inst.i.tuted against him for the seizure of the American vessels, and it is likely enough that some intimation of what was coming reached him before leaving the "Boreas." Scanty thanks, liberal blame, and the prospect of an expensive lawsuit based upon his official action, const.i.tuted, for a poor man lately married, causes of disturbance which might well have upset his equanimity.

Lord Howe, who was then at the head of the Admiralty, though formal and unbending in outward bearing, was a just and kind man, and one fully appreciative of professional worth. A mutual friend acquainted him with Nelson's irritation, and Howe wrote a private letter asking that he would call upon him as soon as he came to town. Though quick to resent, Nelson was easily soothed by attention and pleased by compliment, even when it rose to flattery,--which Howe's was not likely to do. A short interview gave the First Lord a clearer idea than he before had of the extent, value, and wholly voluntary character of the services rendered by the young captain in the West Indies; and he indicated the completeness of his satisfaction by offering to present him to the King, which was accordingly done at the next levee. George III. received him graciously; and the resentment of Nelson, whose loyalty was of the most extreme type, melted away in the sunshine of royal favor.

Thus reconciled to the service, and convinced, as in his less morbid moods he often said, that grat.i.tude and honor, though long deferred, were sure to follow upon steadfast performance of duty, he speedily renewed his efforts to bring to light the frauds practised in the colonies. His letters on the subject to Mr. Pitt, the Prime Minister, had been turned over to the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. George Rose, and upon the latter Nelson now called. Rose received him at first with that courteous nonchalance which is the defensive armor of the beset official,--the name of his visitor, and the business with which it was connected, had for the moment slipped his mind. Nelson's mastery of his subject, however, and his warmth in it, soon roused the attention of his hearer, who, being then pressed for time, asked to see him again the next day, stipulating only that the interview should be early, before office hours. "It cannot be too early for me,"

replied Nelson, whose habit, in his career as admiral, was to get through his correspondence before eight o'clock,--"six o'clock, if you please."

The arrangement was so made, and the consequent meeting lasted from six to nine the next morning. Of its general nature and results we have an authentic outline, given in later years to Nelson's biographers by Rose, who became, and to the last remained, his warm personal friend. The conversation ranged, apparently, over all the chief occurrences in the West Indies during the cruise of the "Boreas," including both the naval frauds and the contraband trade.

The breadth and acuteness of Nelson's intellect have been too much overlooked, in the admiration excited by his unusually grand moral endowments of resolution, dash, and fearlessness of responsibility.

Though scarcely what could be called an educated man, he was one of close and constant observation, thereby gaining a great deal of information; and to the use of this he brought a practical sagacity, which coped with the civil or political questions placed before it, _for action_, much as it did with military questions--for, after all, good generalship, on its intellectual side, is simply the application, to the solution of a military problem, of a mind naturally gifted therefor, and stored with experience, either personal or of others. As a strategist and tactician, Nelson made full proof of high native endowments, of wisdom garnered through fruitful study and meditation, and of clear insight into the determining conditions of the various military situations with which he had to deal. To Mr. Rose, the young captain of barely thirty years displayed a precise knowledge of several political subjects, connected with the commerce of the country, that would not naturally come under his notice as an officer, and which therefore the mere seaman would probably not have imbibed.

Not only so, but his suggestions for dealing practically with the interests at stake were so judicious, that Rose, a valued a.s.sociate of Pitt and intimately acquainted with the financial measures of that brilliant administrator, complimented him warmly upon the justice and correctness of his views, the result, as they were, of reflection based upon a mastery of the data involved. With Nelson's consent, he undertook to lay them before the prime minister, as the direct testimony of a singularly competent first-hand observer.

It is to be noted, however, of Nelson, that this accuracy of mental perception, this power of penetrating to the root of a matter, disregarding unessential details and fastening solely on decisive features, was largely dependent upon the necessity laid upon him for action; which is probably equivalent to saying that it was usually elicited by a sobering sense of responsibility. In his letters and despatches may be found many wild guesses, inconsistent from week to week, colored by changing moods and humors,--the mere pa.s.sing comments of a mind off guard,--the records of evanescent impressions as numerous, fickle, and unfounded as those of the most ordinary mortal.

It is when urgency presses and danger threatens, when the need for action comes, that his mental energies are aroused, and he begins to speak, as it were, _ex cathedra_. Then the unsubstantial haze rolls away; and the solid features of the scene one by one appear, until, amid all the unavoidable uncertainties of imperfect information, it becomes plain that the man has a firm grasp upon the great landmarks by which he must guide his course. Like the blind, who at first saw men as trees walking, and then saw everything clearly, so his mental illumination gradually reduces confusion to order, and from perplexity evolves correct decision. But what shall be said of those flashes of insight, as at Cape St. Vincent, elicited in a moment, as by the stroke of iron on rock, where all the previous processes of ordered thought and labored reasoning are condensed into one vivid inspiration, and trans.m.u.ted without a pause into instant heroic action? Is that we call "genius" purely a mystery, of which our only account is to give it a name? Or is it true, as Napoleon said, that "on the field of battle the happiest inspiration is often but a recollection"?

From Rose Nelson went to the Comptroller of the Navy, Sir Charles Middleton, who afterwards, as Lord Barham, sent him forth to Trafalgar. Middleton had replied promptly to the first report of the fraudulent transactions, giving a.s.surance of his readiness to act, and urging that all the information possible should be secured, as he feared that the allegations were substantially true. He now showed the instructions of the Navy Board, under which its colonial employees acted, to Nelson, who said that, if honestly followed, they must prevent the unlawful practices; but that he believed they were habitually violated, and that he himself, though senior officer on the station, had never before seen the instructions. This failure to intrust supervision to the one person upon whom all responsibility should ultimately have rested, practically neutralized the otherwise laudable methods prescribed by the Board. It was simply another instance of the jealousy between the civil and military branches of the naval organization, which, as is well known, resulted in constant strained relations between the Admiralty and the Naval Commissioners, until the latter Board was at last abolished.

It is, fortunately, unnecessary to follow farther this dreary record of old-time dishonesty. Nelson continued to interest himself strenuously in the matter for two years after his return to England, both by letter and interview with persons in authority. His own position and influence were too insignificant to effect anything, except by moving the home officials, whose administration was compromised and embarra.s.sed by the malpractices of their representatives. Though uphill work, it was far from fruitless. "His representations," said Mr. Rose, in a memorandum furnished to his biographers, "were all attended to, and every step which he recommended was adopted. He thus put the investigation into a proper course; which ended in the detection and punishment of some of the parties whose conduct was complained of." The broad result appears to have been that the guilty for the most part escaped punishment, unless, indeed, some of them lost their positions, of which no certain information exists; but the corrupt combination was broken up, and measures were adopted to prevent the recurrence of the same iniquities. Upon Nelson himself the effect was twofold. His energy and intelligence could not fail to impress the powerful men with whom he was in this way brought into contact. The affair increased his reputation, and made him more widely known than as a simple captain in the Navy he would otherwise have been. As the various public Boards whose money had been stolen realized the amount of the thefts, and the extent of the conspiracy to rob the Government, they felt their obligations to him, and expressed them in formal, but warm, letters of thanks. On the other hand, the princ.i.p.al culprits had command of both money and influence; and by means of these, as so often happens, they not only impeded inquiry, but, according to Southey, who wrote not very long after the events, "succeeded in raising prejudices against Nelson at the Board of Admiralty which it was many years before he could subdue." Clarke and M'Arthur make the same a.s.sertion.

That these prejudices did at one time exist is beyond doubt, and that they should have been fostered by this means is perfectly in keeping with common experience. Such intrigues, however, work in the dark and by indirection; it is not often easy to trace their course. The independence and single-mindedness with which Nelson followed his convictions, and the outspoken frankness with which he expressed his views and feelings, not improbably gave a handle to malicious misrepresentation. His known intimacy with Prince William Henry, upon whose favor he to some extent relied, was also more likely to do him harm than good; and he entertained for the royal captain prepossessions not far removed from partisanship, at a time when the prince avowed himself not a friend to the present minister. "Amidst that variety of business which demanded his attention on his return to England," say his biographers, "he failed not, by every means in his power, to fulfil the promise which he had made to his Royal Highness Prince William of counteracting whatever had been opposed to the merited reputation of his ill.u.s.trious pupil, and to the friendship they had invariably preserved for each other." It was a difficult task. Opinionated and headstrong as the King, his father, the young man was an uneasy subordinate to the Admiralty, and made those above him realize that he was full as conscious of his personal rank as of his official position as a captain in the Navy. It was, indeed, this self-a.s.sertive temperament that afterwards frustrated his natural ambition to be the active head of the service. Having such an ally, there is something ominous for Nelson's own prospects to find him writing in evident sympathy: "The great folks above now see he will not be a cypher, therefore many of the rising people must submit to act subordinate to him, which is not so palatable; and I think a Lord of the Admiralty is hurt to see him so able, after what he has said about him. He has certainly not taken a leaf out of his book, for he is steady in his command and not violent." Upon this follows, "He has wrote Lord Hood what I cannot but approve,"--a sentence unquestionably vague, but which sounds combative. Nelson had already felt it necessary to caution the prince to be careful in the choice of those to whom he told his mind.

In fact, at the time when the letter just quoted was written, the conduct of the prince had been such as necessarily, and not wholly unjustly, to prejudice an officer who displayed marked partisanship for him, such as certainly was indicated by Nelson's expressions. He had brought his ship from Newfoundland to Ireland in flat disobedience of orders, issued by the commander of the station, to go to Quebec. When this action became known to the Admiralty by his arrival at Cork, in December, 1787, it was at once reported to the King, who himself directed that the prince should proceed to Plymouth with his ship, should remain within the limits of the port for as many months as he had been absent from his station, and should then be sent back to Halifax. The Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV., who was already at variance with the King, took advantage of this flagrant breach of discipline to flaunt his opposition before the world. In company with his second brother, the Duke of York, he went down to Plymouth, and paid a ceremonious visit to Prince William on board his ship. The round of festivities necessitated by their presence emphasized the disagreement between the sovereign and the heir to the throne, and drew to it public attention. Immediately after this, in January, 1788, Nelson also visited the prince, having been summoned by him from London. He could, indeed, scarcely decline, nor was he at all the man to turn his back on a friend in difficulty; but, in his fight against corruption, the matter could scarcely fail to be represented by his opponents under the worst light to the King, to whom corruption was less odious than insubordination. If, in conversation, Nelson uttered such expressions as he wrote to his friend Locker, he had only himself to blame for the disfavor which followed; for, to a naval officer, the prince's conduct should have appeared absolutely indefensible. In the course of the same year the King became insane, and the famous struggle about the Regency took place. The prince had meantime returned to America, in accordance with his orders, and by the time he again reached England the King had recovered. He could, therefore, have refrained from any indication of his own sympathies; but instead of this he openly a.s.sociated himself with the party of the Prince of Wales, whose course throughout, when it became known to his father, had bitterly displeased the latter, and accentuated the breach between them. At a banquet given by the Spanish amba.s.sador in celebration of the King's recovery, the three princes sat at a table separate from the rest of the royal family. A formal reconciliation took place in September, 1789; but the Duke of Clarence, as he had then become, continued attached to the Prince of Wales's clique. Those who know how party considerations influenced naval appointments at that time, will in these facts find at least a partial explanation of the cloud which then hung over Nelson.

Lord Chatham, brother of the minister to whom Prince William was not a friend, became head of the Admiralty in July, 1788, and so remained until after the war with France began in 1793. With him was a.s.sociated Lord Hood, between whom and Nelson there arose what the latter called "a difference of opinion," which led to a cessation of "familiar correspondence." The exact date at which this occurred does not appear, but it was probably before May, 1790; for Hood refused to use his influence to get Nelson a ship, in the armament which was then ordered on account of a difficulty with Spain, whereas eighteen months before he had a.s.sured him that in case of hostilities he need not fear not having a good ship. This refusal was the more marked, because "almost the whole service was then called out." On the same occasion, Nelson wrote, "he made a speech never to be effaced from my memory, viz.: that the King was impressed with an unfavourable opinion of me."

Knowing Nelson's value as an officer as well as Hood did, there can scarcely remain a doubt that some serious indiscretion, real or imagined, must have caused this alienation; but of what it was there is no trace, unless in his evident siding with the prince, who was then out of favor with both the King and the administration.

The five years--from 1788 to 1792 inclusive--intervening between the cruise of the "Boreas" and the outbreak of war with the French Republic, were thus marked by a variety of unpleasant circ.u.mstances, of which the most disagreeable, to a man of Nelson's active temperament, was the apparently fixed resolve of the authorities to deny him employment. He was hara.s.sed, indeed, by the recurring threats of prosecution for the West India seizures; but both the Admiralty and the Treasury agreed that he should be defended at the expense of the Crown,--a fact which tends to show that his subsequent disfavor arose from some other cause than disapproval of his official action, however some incidents may have been misrepresented. On its private side, his life during this period seems to have been happy, though uneventful; but in the failure of children he was deprived, both then and afterwards, of that sweetest of interests, continuous yet ever new in its gradual unfolding, which brings to the most monotonous existence its daily tribute of novelty and incident. The fond, almost rapturous, expressions with which he greeted the daughter afterwards born to him out of wedlock, shows the blank in his home,--none the less real because not consciously realized.

The lack of stimulus to his mind from his surroundings at this time is also manifested by the fewness of his letters. But thirty remain to show his occupation during the five years, and seventeen of these are purely official in character. From the year 1791 no record survives.

His wife being with him, one line of correspondence was thereby closed; but even to his brother, and to his friend Locker, he finds nothing to write. For the ordinary country amus.e.m.e.nts and pursuits of the English gentry he had scant liking; and, barring the occasional worry over his neglect by the Admiralty, there was little else to engage his attention. The first few months after his release from the "Boreas" were spent in the West of England, chiefly at Bath, for the recovery of Mrs. Nelson's health as well as his own; but toward the latter part of 1788 the young couple went to live with his father at the parsonage of Burnham Thorpe, and there made their home until he was again called into active service. "It is extremely interesting,"

say his biographers, "to contemplate this great man, when thus removed from the busy scenes in which he had borne so distinguished a part to the remote village of Burnham Thorpe;" but the interest seems by their account to be limited to the energy with which he dug in the garden, or, from sheer want of something to do, reverted to the bird-nesting of his boyhood. His favorite amus.e.m.e.nt, we are told, was coursing, and he once shot a partridge; but his habit of carrying his gun at full c.o.c.k, and firing as soon as a bird rose, without bringing the piece to his shoulder, made him a dangerous companion in a shooting-party. His own account is somewhat different: "Shoot I cannot, therefore I have not taken out a license; but notwithstanding the neglect I have met with I am happy;" and again, to his brother, he says: "It was not my intention to have gone to the coursing meeting, for, to say the truth, I have rarely escaped a wet jacket and a violent cold; besides, to me, even the ride to the Smee is longer than any pleasure I find in the sport will compensate for." The fact is that Nelson cared for none of these things, and the only deduction of real interest from his letters at this time is the absolute failure of his home life and affections to content his aspirations,--the emptiness both of mind and heart, which caused his pa.s.sionate eagerness for external employment to fill the void. Earnestness appears only when he is brooding over the slight with which he was treated, and the resultant thwarting of his career.

For both mind and heart the future held in store for him the most engrossing emotions, but it did not therefore bring him happiness.

Of his frames of mind during this period of neglect and disfavor, his biographers give a very strongly colored picture, for which, it is to be presumed, they drew upon contemporary witnesses that were to them still accessible. "With a mortified and dejected spirit, he looked forward to a continuance of inactivity and neglect.... During this interval of disappointment and mortification, his latent ambition would at times burst forth, and despise all restraint. At others, a sudden melancholy seemed to overshadow his n.o.ble faculties, and to affect his temper; at those moments the remonstrances of his wife and venerable father alone could calm the tempest of his pa.s.sions." That Nelson keenly felt the cold indifference he now underwent, is thoroughly in keeping with the sensitiveness to censure, expressed or implied, which his correspondence frequently betrays, while his frail organization and uncertain health would naturally entail periods of depression or nervous exasperation; but the general tenor of his letters, few as they at this time were, shows rather dignified acceptance of a treatment he had not merited, and a steady resolve not to waver in his readiness to serve his country, nor to cease asking an opportunity to do so. Many years later, at a time of still more sickening suspense, he wrote: "I am in truth half dead, but what man can do shall be done,--I am not made to despair;" and now, according to a not improbable story, he closed an application for employment with the words, "If your Lordships should be pleased to appoint me to a c.o.c.kle boat, I shall feel grateful." Hood, whose pupil he in a sense was, and who shared his genius, said of himself, when under a condition of enforced inactivity: "This proves very strongly the different frames of men's minds; some are full of anxiety, impatience, and apprehension, while others, under similar circ.u.mstances, are perfectly cool, tranquil, and indifferent."

The latter half of the year 1792 was marked by the rapid progress in France of the political distemper, which was so soon to culminate in the worst excesses of the Revolution. The quick succession of symptoms, each more alarming than the other,--the suspension of the royal power at the tumultuous bidding of a mob, the September ma.s.sacres, the abolition of royalty, the aggressive character of the National Convention shown by the decrees of November 19 and December 15,--roused the apprehensions of most thoughtful men throughout Europe; and their concern was increased by the growing popular effervescence in other countries than France. The British cabinet, as was natural, shifted more slowly than did the irresponsible members of the community; nor could Pitt lightly surrender his strong instinctive prepossessions in favor of peace, with the continuance of which was identified the exercise of his own best powers.

During this stormy and anxious period, Nelson shared the feelings of his day and cla.s.s. It is noteworthy, however, that, in regarding the perils of the time, he was no mere panic-monger, but showed the same discriminating carefulness of observation that had distinguished him as captain of the "Boreas," and had elicited the admiration of Mr.

Rose. Strenuous and even bigoted royalist as he always was, satisfied of the excellence of the British Const.i.tution, and condemning utterly the proceedings of the more or less seditious societies then forming throughout the kingdom, he yet recognized the substantial grievances of the working-men, as evident in the district immediately under his eye. The sympathetic qualities which made him, fortune's own favorite in his profession, keenly alive to the hardships, neglect, and injustice undergone by the common seaman, now engaged him to set forth the sad lot of the ill-paid rural peasantry. In his letters to the Duke of Clarence, he on the one hand strongly blames the weakness and timidity of the justices and country gentlemen, in their att.i.tude towards the abettors of lawlessness; but, on the other, he dwells upon the sufferings of the poor, prepares a careful statement of their earnings and unavoidable expenses, and insists upon the necessity of the living wage. The field laborers, he said, "do not want loyalty, many of their superiors, in many instances, might have imitated their conduct to advantage; but hunger is a sharp thorn, and they are not only in want of food sufficient, but of clothes and firing."

Under the threatening outlook, he considers that every individual will soon "be called forth to show himself;" and for his own part, he writes on the 3d of November, he sees no way so proper as asking for a ship. But, even at that late moment, neither Pitt nor his a.s.sociates had abandoned the hope of peace, and this, as well as other applications of Nelson's, received only a formal acknowledgment without encouragement. Roused, however, by the Convention's decree of November 19, which extended the succor of France to all people who should wish to recover their liberty, and charged the generals of the republic to make good the offer with the forces under their command, the ministry decided to abandon their guarded att.i.tude; and their new resolution was confirmed by the reception, on the 28th of November, of deputations from British revolutionary societies at the bar of the Convention, on which occasion the president of the latter affected to draw a dividing line between the British government and the British nation. On the 1st of December the militia was called out by proclamation, and Parliament summoned to meet on the 15th of the month. On the latter day the Convention put forth another decree, announcing in the most explicit terms its purpose to overthrow all existing governments in countries where the Republican armies could penetrate. Pitt now changed his front with an instantaneousness and absoluteness which gave the highest proof of his capacity as a leader of men. It was not so much that war was then determined, as that the purpose was formed, once for all, to accept the challenge contained in the French decree, unless France would discontinue her avowed course of aggression. Orders were immediately given to increase largely the number of ships of war in commission.

When danger looms close at hand, the best men, if known, are not left in the cold shade of official disfavor. "Post nubila Phoebus," was the expression of Nelson, astonished for a rarity into Latin by the suddenness with which the sun now burst upon him through the clouds.

"The Admiralty so smile upon me, that really I am as much surprised as when they frowned." On the 6th of January, 1793, the First Lord, with many apologies for previous neglect, promised to give him a seventy-four-gun ship as soon as it was in his power to do so, and that meanwhile, if he chose to take a sixty-four, he could have one as soon as she was ready. On the 30th he was appointed to the "Agamemnon," of the latter rate. Within the preceding fortnight Louis XVI. had been beheaded, and the French amba.s.sador ordered to leave England. On February 1, 1793, two days after Nelson's orders were issued, the Republic declared war against Great Britain and Holland.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] Nicolas, vol. v. p. 356.

[9] Thus Collingwood, rarely other than sober and restrained in his language, wrote to Hughes: "It is from the idea that the greatness and superiority of the British navy very much depends upon preserving inviolate the Act of Navigation, excluding foreigners from access to the colonies, that I am induced to make this representation to you." Nicolas, vol. i. p.

172.

[10] Nelson's letters are contradictory on this point. In a letter to Locker of March 3, 1786, he says, "Before the first vessel was tried I had seized four others;" whereas in the formal and detailed narrative drawn up--without date, but later than the letter to Locker--he says the first vessel was tried and condemned May 17, the other four seized May 23.

(Nicolas, vol. i. pp. 177, 178.) The author has followed the latter, because from the particularity of dates it seems to have been compiled from memoranda, that of Locker written from memory,--both nearly a year after the events.

[11] This word is used by Nelson, apparently, as equivalent to "season,"--the cruising period in the West Indies. "The admiral wishes to remain another station," he writes elsewhere.

[12] Lady Nelson's tombstone in Littleham Churchyard, Exmouth, reads that she died May 6, 1831, "aged 73." She would then have been born before May 6, 1758. Nicolas (vol. i. p. 217) says that she died May 4, 1831, aged 68, but does not mention his authority.

[13] Prior to May, 1785, the only stops of the "Boreas" at Nevis were January 6-8, February 1-4, and March 11-15. (Boreas's Log in Nicolas's Letters and Despatches of Lord Nelson, vol. vii. Addenda, pp. viii, ix.)

[14] The author is satisfied, from casual expressions in Nelson's letters to Lady Hamilton, that his famous two years' confinement to the ship, 1803-1805, and, to a less extent, the similar seclusion practised in the Baltic and the Downs, proceeded, in large part at least, from a romantic and chivalrous resolve to leave no room for doubt, in the mind of Lady Hamilton or of the world, that he was entirely faithful to her.

[15] The author has italicized these words because they accurately express the just penalty that military law would have required of Nelson, had he not shown adequate grounds for his disobedience. They measure, therefore, the responsibility he shouldered, and the reward he deserved.

[16] Sir Harris Nicolas (Nelson's Despatches and Letters, vol. i. p. 217) gives March 12 as the day of the wedding, upon the ground of a letter of Lady Nelson's. Her mention of the date is, however, rather casual; and March 11 is given in the parish register of the church in Nevis.

[17] The same symptom will be noted in the anxious pursuit of Villeneuve to the West Indies in 1805, where he grew better, although for some months he had had in his hands the Admiralty's permission to return home on account of his health.

CHAPTER III.

NELSON'S DEPARTURE FROM ENGLAND IN THE "AGAMEMNON."--SERVICES IN THE MEDITERRANEAN UNTIL THE RECOVERY OF TOULON BY THE FRENCH.--LORD HOOD IN COMMAND.

FEBRUARY-DECEMBER, 1793. AGE, 34.

Nelson's page in history covers a little more than twelve years, from February, 1793, to October, 1805. Its opening coincides with the moment when the wild pa.s.sions of the French Revolution, still at fiercest heat, and which had hitherto raged like flame uncontrolled, operative only for destruction, were being rapidly mastered, guided, and regulated for efficient work, by the terrors of the Revolutionary Tribunal and the Committee of Public Safety. In the object to which these tremendous forces were now about to be applied lay the threat to the peace of Europe, which aroused Great Britain to action, and sent into the field her yet unknown champion from the Norfolk parsonage.

The representatives of the French people had imparted to the original movement of their nation,--which aimed only at internal reforms, however radical,--a new direction, of avowed purposeful aggression upon all political inst.i.tutions exterior to, and differing from, their own. This became the one characteristic common to the successive forms of government, which culminated in the pure military despotism of Napoleon.

To beat back that spirit of aggression was the mission of Nelson.

Therein is found the true significance of his career, which mounts higher and higher in strenuous effort and gigantic achievement, as the blast of the Revolution swells fiercer and stronger under the mighty impulse of the great Corsican. At each of the momentous crises, so far removed in time and place,--at the Nile, at Copenhagen, at Trafalgar,--as the unfolding drama of the age reveals to the onlooker the schemes of the arch-planner about to touch success, over against Napoleon rises ever Nelson; and as the latter in the hour of victory drops upon the stage where he has played so chief a part, his task is seen to be accomplished, his triumph secured. In the very act of dying he has dealt the foe a blow from which recovery is impossible. Moscow and Waterloo are the inevitable consequences of Trafalgar; as the glories of that day were but the fit and a.s.sured ending of the ill.u.s.trious course which was begun upon the quarter-deck of the "Agamemnon."

With the exception of the "Victory," under whose flag he fell after two years of arduous, heart-breaking uncertainties, no ship has such intimate a.s.sociation with the career and name of Nelson as has the "Agamemnon." And this is but natural, for to her he was the captain, solely, simply, and entirely; identified with her alone, glorying in her excellences and in her achievements, one in purpose and in spirit with her officers and seamen; sharing their hopes, their dangers, and their triumphs; quickening them with his own ardor, moulding them into his own image, until vessel and crew, as one living organism, reflected in act the heroic and unyielding energy that inspired his feeble frame. Although, for a brief and teeming period, he while in command of her controlled also a number of smaller vessels on detached service, it was not until after he had removed to another ship that he became the squadron-commander, whose relations to the vessel on which he himself dwelt were no longer immediate, nor differed, save in his bodily presence, from those he bore to others of the same division. A personality such as Nelson's makes itself indeed felt throughout its entire sphere of action, be that large or small; but, withal, diffusion contends in vain with the inevitable law that forever couples it with slackening power, nor was it possible even for him to lavish on the various units of a fleet, and on the diverse conflicting claims of a great theatre of war, the same degree of interest and influence that he concentrated upon the "Agamemnon," and upon the brilliant though contracted services through which he carried her.

Bonds such as these are not lightly broken, and to the "Agamemnon"