Chapter XI: Nelson

Lord Rosebery may have forgotten it, but in one of our perigrinations round and round Berkeley Square (I lived next door to him) he made a remark to me which made a deep and ineffaceable impression on me--that he felt sure one of the great reasons of Nelson being so in the hearts of his countrymen was the conviction that he had been slighted by Authority and even so after his death. Unquestionably his brother Admirals were envious. He was kept kicking his heels at Merton on half pay in momentous times, and so poor as to necessitate his getting advances from his Banker. He was cavalierly treated when he was told to haul down his flag and come home after the Battle of the Nile. I know all about the Queen of Naples and Lady Hamilton; but what was that in comparison with his astounding genius for war and his hold on the Fleet? And I want to draw attention to this delightful trait in his glorious character. Supposing (what I don’t admit) that there was any irregularity in his attachment to Lady Hamilton, he never disguised his feeling for her, or his gratitude to her for all she did for his grievously wounded and frail body after the Nile and her splendid conduct in getting his Fleet revictualled and stored by the Neapolitans through her influence with the King and Queen, when all the Authorities were against it. He used to ask his Captains to drink her health, and said (in my opinion quite truly), that if there were more Emmas there would be more Nelsons.

Then look at the Battle of the Nile! It was an incomparable battle--but it only made Nelson into a Common or Garden Lord; when the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, which was practically won by Nelson, made Sir John Jervis into an Earl. History is so written that no end of literary gentlemen will endeavour to confute all I am saying by extracts (or, as they will call them, facts) from Contemporary Documents and Newspapers. Well now, to-day, read the _Morning Post_ and _Daily News_ on the same incident! (For myself I prefer the _Daily News_.) Again, Nelson died poor. That appeals. What Prize Money might he not have accumulated, had he chased dollars as he chased the enemy! Then with his dying breath, mortally wounded in the hour of the greatest of sea victories, he asks his country to provide for his friend as he could do nothing for her himself; and, whatever may have been her faults, she had nursed and tended him, not only when sorely wounded after the Nile, but afterwards when his frail body was almost continuously racked with pain. She died in penury and found a pauper’s grave in a foreign land. A passing Englishman paid her funeral expenses. It makes one rise up and say “Damn!”

That vivid immortal spirit, whose life was his country’s, who never flogged a man; whose heart was tender and “worn on his sleeve for daws to peck at,” has to suffer even now for miscreants who published his letters to this friend of his that only her eye was meant to see. Also, Prudes nowadays forget how very different was the standard of morals at that time. Does not history tell us that Dukes were the honoured results of illicit relationships? And we don’t think any the worse of Abraham because he was the husband of more than one wife. But let that pass. I heard yesterday that a distinguished Bishop said he loved my sentiments but not my words. But fancy! Nelson left on half-pay in War! It’s unbelievable, but yet it so happened. It was envy; and he was no sycophant, so he couldn’t be a courtier. It was so with him as with our great Exemplar: “The Common People heard him gladly.” And what a “Send-off” it was on Southsea beach at Portsmouth when he embarked for Trafalgar! What a scene it was, with these Common People surging round him--none else were there, and neither the King nor the Admiralty sent a dummy, as is customary, to represent them. But isn’t it always the way? General Booth and Doctor Barnardo weren’t buried in Westminster Abbey; but they had a more glorious funeral--millions of the “Common People” followed them to their graves, unmarshalled and unsolicited. Give me the Common People, and a fig for your State ceremonial!

Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth.]

Perhaps in this cursory view of Nelson one may be permitted to seize on what appears to me the central incident of his life, which so peculiarly illustrates his extraordinary genius for War. His audacity! His imagination! His considered rashness! I think myself the Battle of the Nile is that incident--for this reason: that it has been recorded in writing what actually occurred to Lord Nelson and to the French Admiral at the very same instant of time--each having at his side the very same officer in each Fleet. It was sunset. Nelson was walking the deck with the Navigating Officer of the Fleet--the “Master of the Fleet” was his technical title. The look-out man at the mast-head reports seeing on the horizon the mast-heads of a mass of ships at anchor--it was the French Fleet in Aboukir Bay. Nelson instantly stops in his walk and orders the signal to the Fleet to make all possible sail and steer for the enemy. He is remonstrated with, both by his own officers on board and by his favourite Captain of the Fleet at going in to fight the French Fleet without any charts. If he waited till the sun rose, they would be able to see from aloft the shoal water and so steer with safety alongside the enemy. Nelson answers his favourite Captain that if that Captain’s ship does get on shore, as he fears, then she’ll be a buoy to show him where anyhow one shoal is. Troubridge _did_ get on shore, and he _was_ a buoy. Nelson went in. The French Admiral blew up at midnight in his flagship the “Orient” and Casabianca, his Captain, and his son are the theme of a great poem: “The boy stood on the burning deck.”

The French Admiral was walking up and down the deck with _his_ Master of the Fleet, when _his_ look-out man at the mast-head reported on the horizon the topmast sails of a number of ships. The French Admiral stopped in his walk as abruptly as Nelson and at the very same instant that Nelson stopped in his walk; but he said “It’s the English Fleet, but they won’t come in to-night. They have no charts!” So he did not recall his men from the shore--and in the result his fleet was destroyed, and the one or two ships that did escape under Admiral Dumanoir were captured. And Napoleon wrote, “But for Nelson at the Nile I would have been Conqueror of the World”--or words to that effect. And yet Nelson was only made a common or garden Lord for this great battle, and spent two years on the Continent kicking his heels about to pass the time before returning to England. Imagine! he wasn’t wanted! I think Lord Rosebery was right--Nelson being slighted has led to his greater appreciation.

Again--even a greater slight, a slight he feels more--when he looks down from his monument in Trafalgar Square, does he see anywhere those splendid Captains of his? But let alone those Captains of his--does he see anywhere a single Admiral? _Not one._ And yet who made England what she is? Those splendid Sea Heroes are in very deed “_England’s forgotten worthies_”! Yes! Nelson looks down from his isolated column, and looks in vain for Hawke, Dundonald, Howe, Hood, Rodney, Cornwallis, Benbow, “_and a great multitude which no man can number_”--all Seamen of Deathless Fame, fighting single frigate actions, cutting out the enemy’s ships from under the guns of forts, sending in fire ships and burning the enemy’s vessels thought to be safe in harbour under the guns of their forts--Doers of Imperishable Deeds![13] Death found them fighting. We have heaps of statues to everybody else. Indeed such a lot of them that they reach down as far off as Knightsbridge. But who knows about Quiberon--one of the greatest of sea fights? And if you mention Hawke, your friend probably thinks only of his worthy descendant--the cricketer.

An old woman eating a penny bun asked a friend of mine called Buggins, when she was passing through Trafalgar Square, “_What are them lions a-guarding of?_” Buggins told her that her penny bun would have cost her threepence if it hadn’t been for the man them lions were a-guarding of.

When I see the Duke of York’s Column still allowed to rear its futile head, and scores of other fifth-rate nonentities glorified by statues, I thank God I’m a sailor--we don’t want to be in that galley!

I began my sea life with the last of Nelson’s Captains, through Nelson’s own niece; and I fitly, I think, among my last words may ask the Nation to do justice to Nelson’s Trade! This country owes all she has to the sea, it was the sea that won the late war, and if we’d stuck to the sea we should not now be thinking of bankruptcy and some of us imagining Carthage! We were led away by Militarist folly to be a conscript Nation and it will take us all we know to recover from it. We shall recover, _for England never succumbs!_