Chapter II (2)

On August 13th, 1808, off Cadiz, Collingwood learnt that the French General, Dupont, and some officers who had capitulated, had been brought to Port St Mary, for their better security to be embarked on board a Spanish Man-o'-war. The mob, however, attacked and wounded Dupont before he could be got on board, and on August 26th Collingwood relates to Mrs Stanhope:--

The Mob of Port Santa Maria seized on Dupont's baggage, for the
Generals and Juntas may make Conventions as they please, but the
People is the only _real Power_ at the present moment, and they
will observe as much of them as they like. On breaking open the Trunks
they were found to be filled with plunder--Church Plate mostly--but
everything that was gold or silver was acceptable. I went to see it
yesterday at the Custom House, and an immense quantity of it there
was--from a silver Toy to the Crown of Thorns which they had torn from
the head of Jesus Christ. I heard at first that the mob had been
raised against the French by the black servant of a Frenchman having
part of the robe of a Bishop for his dress, but this was not the case.
The black man had the Bishop's Cross hung with a chain of gold round
his neck--it was of large amethysts and diamonds worth about 2000
pounds.

Dupont was so very silly as to write to the Governor complaining of
the people who had _robbed_ him, saying that he felt sensibly for
the honour of Spain and desired that his "property" might be returned
to him. He had nothing but those trunks of plundered silver!

Collingwood's own reception by the Spanish people afforded a remarkable instance of the estimation in which he was held and the extraordinary recognition of his integrity even by a lawless, unreasoning mob. John Stanhope, some years afterwards, recorded:--

"When, at an earlier period of the war, our expedition under the command of General Spencer appeared off Cadiz, there prevailed so great a jealousy against the English Army that the authorities refused to allow them to land.

"Such, however, was not the case with Lord Collingwood when he appeared with his fleet.

"He was received by high and low with the greatest enthusiasm. A publick fête was given to him, and my brother William who accompanied him on shore described the scene as one of the most striking sights he ever witnessed. One only feeling seemed to pervade the immense crowd of all ranks assembled to receive the Admiral, the desire of showing their respect and admiration for his character. What a triumph for one who, in the hour of victory, had succeeded to the command of a fleet that had annihilated the Spanish Navy, and since that time had been constantly blockading their coasts! But what must have been Lord Collingwood's feelings _when the only pledge required before they permitted an English force to land in a place of so much importance, was his word of honour!_ They felt in him a confidence which they denied to our Government."

But in the midst of a situation so unique, Collingwood ignored the unparalleled homage paid to him, to revert persistently to each item of news respecting his distant home. The splendid fetes of which he formed the central figure, the adulation of an entire nation, find no mention in his letters to Stanhope, and are of less account to him than the most trivial circumstance regarding his family or his native county, on which his thoughts dwell tenderly, lingeringly. From Cadiz, in August, he laments the tidings conveyed to him by Stanhope of the death, at the age of eighty-nine, of his former Commander and neighbour, in Northumberland, Admiral Roddam.

Poor Admiral Roddam! I have indeed mourned his death, because I lost
in him a kind friend who had always taken a sincere interest in my
welfare; but he was become too infirm to enjoy comfort, and then to
die is a blessing. I am glad he left your son his estate, but it was
want of knowing the world if he thought of improving the Property by
keeping him out of it so long.

For little William, on attaining the age of twenty-five, was to succeed to the estate of Collingwood's former Commander, and this must, if possible, have strengthened the link between the Admiral and the midshipman in whose progress he took a profound interest. Collingwood's own character is perhaps never more clearly portrayed than in his criticism of the little lad who had been committed to his care. "Of William," he wrote to Stanhope, in 1808, "everything I have to say is good--and such as must give you and Mrs Stanhope much satisfaction. He is the best-tempered boy that can be--has a superior understanding, which makes everything easy to him. He is very inquisitive in what relates to his duty, and comprehends it with a facility which few boys do, at this time I believe he has more knowledge than many twice his standing. He is never engaged in disputes, and this not from a milkiness and yielding to others, but he seems superior to contention, and leaves a blockhead to enjoy his own nonsense." In December of the same year he reiterates, "Your son always gives me satisfaction. He behaves well and always like a gentleman and I endeavour to instil in him a contempt for what is trifling and unworthy. When I come home I will leave him in a frigate and I hope I may soon, for I grow very weak and languid."

It was to be regretted that while evincing to the utmost his own contempt for what was "trifling and unworthy," it was impracticable for Collingwood to follow the example of his small midshipman and contentedly "leave a blockhead to his own nonsense." The realisation was torment to him that the very conditions of his service were dictated by those who had only a partial conception of his requirements, that his representations--his advice--were alike incessantly ignored, yet, none the less, that his tactics would subsequently be criticised pitilessly by men incapable of appreciating the difficulties with which he had been beset at the time of action. "I have lately had a most anxious and vexatious life," he wrote on May 16th, 1808, "since the Rochefort ships came into the Mediteranean and joined the Toulon, I have been in constant pursuit of them, but with bad intelligence and never knowing whether I was going right or not." Yet though compelled to act thus blindly, in that torturing uncertainty, the eyes of the world were upon him, and men, wise in the cognisance of after- events, would unhesitatingly judge him in the light of that knowledge.

More than once in his letters to Mrs Stanhope did the pent up bitterness of this recognition find vent. On May 16th, 1807, he wrote:--

I am sorry to see Mr Pole's speech about the Rochefort Squadron and
Sir R. Strachan, insinuating that he was well provided with
everything--and that had he been in the station that it was expected
he should have held, they could not have escaped. The fact is they
came here destitute of everything, one of his ships had not 20 tons of
water, and none of them were in a condition to follow the enemy to a
distant point. Those insinuations, though they advance nothing
positive, are disgusting--the season of the year and the situation of
the fleet on such an errand were sufficient reasons. Let your
Politicians beware how they sour the minds of such men--men whose
lives are devoted to their country. If ever they accomplish that, your
State would not be worth half-a-crown.

And again, in December of that same year, on discovering that he, personally, had been the subject of brutal slander, his indignation burst forth:--

_December 29th, 1808._

I have just seen in the newspapers what I conceive to be exceedingly
mischievous, and to officers who are bearing the brunt and severities
of war, is exceedingly disgusting, when the whole nation is clamorous
against the convention of Lisbon and the treaty which Sir Chas. Cotton
made with the Russian Admiral about the ships, it is stated that _I_
had made a proposition of the same kind to the Russian Commander at
Trieste which had been rejected. There is not a syllable of truth in
it. _I_ have had no correspondence with Russia, nor anything happened
that could have given rise to such a conjecture. It must therefore be
sheer mischief. There are such diabolical spirits, who, incapable of
good, cannot rest inactive but fester the world with their malignant
humours.

And meanwhile the ardent patriotism of Collingwood was deeply wounded by the attitude of the politicians of his native land.

OCEAN, OFF TOULON, _May 16th, 1808._

The contentions in Parliament are disgraceful to our country and have
more to do with its reduction than Bonaparte has. They grieve my
heart; when all the energy and wisdom of the Nation is required to
defend us against such a Power as never appeared in Europe before--the
contest seems to be who shall hold the most lucrative office. I abhor
that kind of determined opposition; if the Ministers have not that
experience it were to be wished they had, they the more need support
and assistance. We have resources to stand our ground firmly, until
this storm is over--but it depends on the use we make of our means,
whether we shall or not.

It would appear to me good policy to make and preserve peace with all
the nations who have the smallest pretention to independence--we
should shut our eyes to many things which during the regular
Governments in Europe would deserve to be scrutinised--the laws and
rules of former times are not suited to the present--a man cannot
build a Palace during the convulsions of an earthquake, and I
sincerely hope our differences with America will be accommodated--if
favourable terms we can grant them. Are not _we_ constantly in
storms obliged to take in our topsail?--and even sometimes limit
ourselves to no sail at all? But our ship is saved by it and when the
storm is over we out with them again, and so should the State do.

The truth was that, in much, Collingwood was a more able diplomatist than the men by whose authority he was circumscribed. His letters to Stanhope prove that he was a more apt tactician and had a profounder grasp of the political situation of his day than he has been credited with by posterity. Again and again, does he foretell that a particular line of action will be fraught with a particular result, or show how his representations had been ignored until, too late, events had proved their accuracy. Again and again, in some apparently trivial situation which he had the insight to recognise was big with import, did his tactfulness avert catastrophe which a lesser man would have hastened. "I have always found that kind language and strong ships have a very powerful effect in conciliating the people," he says in one letter to Stanhope, with dry humour. And meanwhile the incompetency of many of those with whom he had to work in alliance was a further source of trial to him. Only too shrewdly did he recognise wherein lay the efficiency of Napoleon and the incapacity of his opponents.

_October 7th, 1809._

Should the Austrians make their peace, which I am convinced they must,
the next object of Bonaparte will be Turkey, and probably the
Austrians be engaged to assist him in the reduction of it. All the
south part of Europe seems as if within his grasp the moment peace is
signed with Austria; he has long been intriguing with those countries,
sometimes with the Government, in other places with the people against
their Government; the arts, the dissimulations with which those
intrigues are conducted, avail him more than even the rapidity of his
armies--all the people he employs are equal to the task assigned them;
while in Austria and Spain, the operations are often directed by men
who, from Court favour, have got situations they are totally unfit
for. Catalonia has suffered much from this cause and everything has
gone wrong in Istria and Dalmatia, because there there was wanted a
man capable of conducting the war. It is true they have been removed,
but not until everything was lost by their want of skill.

And yet pitted against "such a Power as never appeared in Europe before," with the need of every faculty upon the alert, Collingwood was haunted ever more and more by the dread that his increasing bodily weakness must engender mental incapacity. A sinister note crept into his correspondence and so early as August 26th, 1808, he wrote:--

_August 26th, 1808._

I have been lately unwell. I grow weak, and the fatigue and anxiety of
mind I suffer has worn me down to a shadow. I do not think I can go on
much longer, and intend, whenever I feel my strength less, to request
that I may be allowed to come to England. I have mentioned this to
Lord Mulgrave, but have not to the Admiralty Board.

Yet, determined not to abandon his duty, over a year later he was still at his post.

"_Ville de Paris,_" PORT MAHON, _December 18th, 1809._

The truth is that I am so unremittingly occupied, that my life is
rather a drudgery than a service. I have an anxious mind from nature
and cannot leave to any what is possible for me to do myself. Now my
health is suffering very much, which is attributed to the sedentary
life I lead, and it may well be to the vexation my mind suffers when
anything goes counter. But when I _do_ come home, I hope I shall
not be thought to flinch, for I have worn out all the officers and all
the ships, two or three times over, since I left England.

Within a fortnight he wrote again:--

_December 29th._

I have no desire to shrink from a duty which I owe to my country, but
my declining health--the constant anxiety of my mind and fatigue of my
body--made me desire to have a little respite, and I asked to be
relieved from my command--a request which the Ministers seem to have
no disposition to grant to me, but if his lordship knew me personally
and was sufficiently acquainted with my sentiments he would know that
my request was not made without good reason. The service here requires
the most energetic mind and robust body--they cannot be hoped for in
an invalid, whose infirmities proceed from too long and unremitted
exertion of powers, but feeble at first.

Meanwhile, in Grosvenor Square, every item of news respecting the intentions of Lord Collingwood was eagerly looked for, since on these were dependent the movements of little William Stanhope. In the autumn of 1809 Mrs Stanhope wrote:--

William writes word that his height is 5 ft. 4 in., very fair for a
Stanhope of his age. What an affectionate creature he is, and how I
should delight in seeing him. I do not like the account he gives of
Lord Collingwood's health. If the French fleet would but come out and
he beat them, I doubt not he would then return immediately.

And on the 6th December she mentions an event which served to accentuate the sadness of that protracted absence:--

Lord Collingwood has actually a daughter grown up. She has made her
appearance in Newcastle, very shy and distressed.

_February 27th, 1810._

We came to Town, Sunday Se'nnight. Since then Captain Waldegrave, who
was eleven months in the ship with William, and Dr Gray who was his
shipmate two years and like a Father to him, have both dined with us
and agree in their favourable accounts. He is quite well and
breakfasts every day with Lord Collingwood, with whom he also dines
three times a week, and he teaches William himself. Your father said--
"I fear he is a Pet!" To which Waldegrave answered--"It can never do
anyone harm to be Pet to Lord Collingwood!" As soon as the weather is
warm I suppose Lord C. will come back, in his last letter he said he
should leave William in a Frigate, but Dr Gray is inclined to think he
would bring him home. All the reports respecting the Toulon Fleet
being out, will, I hear, prove false.

On March 20th Mrs Stanhope wrote--"It is said that Sir C. Cotton is going out immediately to take Lord Collingwood's command, for that he wrote word if they did not supersede him quickly he should supersede himself. I fear his health is very bad." Not till April, however, did this intelligence receive confirmation--"At last Sir C. Cotton has sailed, so that, by the end of June, Lord Collingwood may be back, having given up the command to Sir C. Cotton. He was better the last account. Captain Waldegrave dines here to-day, you would be exceedingly pleased with him, for his manners are agreeable and his intelligence great."

Little did Mrs Stanhope, as she penned the reference to her dinner-party, foresee the conditions under which this was destined to take place. Still less did the authorities who were sending out that belated relief to the wearied Admiral, or the family who now so joyously pictured his return, dream how that service had been already superseded or in what guise that return would take place. Weeks before, at Cadiz, the last act of a prolonged tragedy had been performed. Still firmly refusing to forsake his post till a competent successor had been appointed, Collingwood did not surrender his command to Rear Admiral Martin till March 3rd, when a complete collapse of strength made this imperative. Two days subsequently were lost in the vain endeavour to leave port in the teeth of a contrary wind, but on March 6th, the _Ville de Paris_ succeeded in setting sail for England.

The day of days in Collingwood's life had at last arrived--that day to which he had looked forward throughout the weary years, when, his task honourably concluded, he could know that every beat of the waves was bearing him towards home and his loved ones. Yet as, prostrated with weakness, he lay in his cabin, listening to the familiar fret of the waters, he understood that the burden had been borne too long, the promised relief had come too late.

With the same dauntless courage with which he had faced existence he now accepted the knowledge that this day--the thought of which had sustained him through loneliness and battle and tempest--was to prove the day of his death. History indeed presents few events of an irony more profound. At sunset on March 6th, Collingwood set sail for England; at sunset on the 7th, he lay dead, and that fortitude with which he met a fate, the harshness of which must have cruelly enhanced his bodily anguish, presents to all time a sublime ending to a sublime career.

Meanwhile in England those whom he had loved continued to count the lessening days to his return and to plan with tender solicitude every means for cherishing and restoring the enfeebled frame which they fondly believed needed but care and happiness to endow it with renewed health. Little as they recked of the burden which the waves were, in truth, bringing them, the knowledge, when it arrived, came with a blow which stunned. In the first announcement of the news, the very terseness of the communication seems to recreate more vividly the intense feeling which the writer knew required no insistence.

On April 17th, 1810, Stanhope wrote briefly to the Vicar of Newcastle:--

GROSVENOR SQUARE.

DEAR SMITH,

You are the fittest person I know at Newcastle to execute with
propriety a most painful & most melancholy office. I have only this
moment been apprised of the loss both the public and the Collingwood
family have sustained, and am so shocked with the intelligence that I
can hardly write legibly. I enclose the letter. I am sure you will
communicate it with all delicacy & due Preparation to Lady Collingwood
& Mr and the Miss Collingwoods. Mrs Stanhope will endeavour to see
Miss Collingwood to-morrow. Pray assure them of my readiness to be of
every assistance to them in my power.

Of the manner in which the news arrived, Mrs Stanhope furnishes more details.

GROSVENOR SQUARE, _April 23rd, 1810._

MY DEAR JOHN,

"I little thought when I wrote to you on Tuesday last that I should,
before that post went out, hear the afflicting intelligence of the
death of our great and valuable Friend, Lord Collingwood, whose loss
is a publick calamity. But I will enter into particulars.

"Just after I went out at three, a second post arrived from Captain
Thomas, desiring your father to communicate the dreadful tidings to
poor Lady Collingwood. It was five when we received the letter; your
father immediately enclosed the letter to the Vicar, to desire he
would break it to the family, and I wrote to the Mistress of the
School to acquaint the second girl. She wished to see no one or I
should have called the next day. Mr Reay heard of the event before we
did and recollecting that the Papers at Newcastle were delivered an
hour before the letters, wisely sent off an Express; therefore I trust
there was time for her to be somewhat prepared for the worst.

"With respect to ourselves, I need not tell you how shocked we were,
and unfortunately, we had not only a large party to dinner that night,
but some people in the evening. Amongst those who dined with us was
Captain Waldegrave, who had not heard of it till he came here, and I
never saw anyone so distressed, for Lord Collingwood had been a Father
to him as well as to William; and he is one of the most pleasing young
men I ever met with. Two days afterwards he brought here Mr Brown, the
flag-lieutenant of the _Ville de Paris_, who gave me many interesting
particulars, and spoke highly of William.

Your father has seen Lord Mulgrave twice, and it is settled that a
monument at the Publick expence shall be executed for Lord
Collingwood. He cannot have a publick funeral, but they wish the
family to bury him at St Paul's near Lord Nelson, which your father is
this day to write to propose, and I think it impossible Lady
Collingwood can have any objection, in which case it will be attended
by the Lords of the Admiralty & his own private friends. The Body is
now at Greenwich, for it arrived at Portsmouth as soon as the letters
announcing his death. He died like a hero, and when that character is
added, as it was in him, to the Christian, it is great indeed.

On the same date Mr Stanhope wrote to his son--"I saw Lord Mulgrave the night before last, who desired I would inform Lady Collingwood and the family that it was meant to move in the House for a monument for Lord Collingwood in St Paul's, next to Nelson's. Of course the Body, which has arrived in the Thames, will be deposited in that Church, and the funeral must be splendid without ostentation--at the expense of the executors, or rather of the family." It was not, however, till May 8th that Mrs Stanhope was enabled to furnish her son with full details of the manner in which the intended ceremony was to be performed.

GROSVENOR SQUARE, _May 8th., 1810._

I can tell you what Lord C.'s funeral is to be. It is to take place on
Friday at St Paul's. Mr C. and one of his sisters are in town. He is
anxious that it should be proper & your father has been his adviser,
but he was determined that it should be as private as possible, as
Lord Collingwood's wish on that subject was strongly expressed in his
Will.

The Body is now at Greenwich where the Hearse & ten mourning Coaches
will go. The company are to assemble at a room on the other side of
Blackfriars Bridge, where betwixt 20 & 30 are to get into the mourning
coaches, & their own are to follow, but no others. The company are, as
far as I can recollect, besides the ten relations & connections, the
first Lords of the Admiralty who have been in power since he had the
Command--Gray, Mulgrave, T. Grenville; Ld St Vincent declined on
account of health; the Chancellor & Sir Walter Scott; Admirals Ld
Radstock & Harvey, Capt Waldegrave, Purvis, Irvyn Brown, Haywood--
perhaps others; Doctors Gray & Fullerton, Sir M. Ridley & Mr Reay.

Government mean to vote him a national monument to be placed near Lord
Nelson & the Body will be placed as near his as it can be. You will be
glad to hear that there is a picture painted about a year & a half ago
which Waldegrave will get for Mr C. I therefore hope there will be a
print of him. His loss will be felt every day more & more. They say he
saved to the country more than any Admiral did before, in repairs of
the fleet; and to that country his life has been sacrificed.

A reference to Lord Collingwood written by the recipient of this letter, John Stanhope, although it presents no new reflection upon his career, is not without a peculiar interest in that it was a contemporary comment and one of unstudied pathos.

Lord Collingwood, [he wrote in 1810] has sacrificed his life to his
country and to the full as much as has done his friend and commander
Lord Nelson. But Nelson's death was glorious; he fell in the hour of
victory amidst a nation's tears. Poor Collingwood resigned his life to
his country, because she required his services; he yielded himself as
a victim to a painful disease, solely occasioned by his incessant and
anxious attention to his duties, when he knew from his physician that
his existence might be spared if he were allowed to return to the
quiet of domestic life. Must not his mind have sometimes recurred to
his home; to his two daughters, now grown to the age of womanhood, but
whom he remembered only as little children; so long had he been
estranged from his country! Must he not have felt how delightfully he
could spend his old age in the society of his family, at his own house
at Chirton, the ancient possession of his ancestors, which had been
left to him by my uncle, and in the enjoyment of a large fortune,
which he had gained during his professional career! What a contrast
did the reverse of the picture show! A lingering disease, a certain
death. He repeatedly represented the state of his health to the
Admiralty, but in vain; his country demanded his services; he gave her
his life; and without even the consolation of thinking that the
sacrifice he was making would be appreciated. "If Lord Mulgrave knew
me," said he in one of his letters to my father, "he would know that I
did not complain without sufficient cause."

It was thus that Collingwood came home--that the long exile ended and the tired frame attained to rest. On May 11th, he was laid by the side of Nelson in St Paul's, and the comrades of Trafalgar were re-united in a last repose. The ceremony on this occasion exhibited none of the pomp and circumstance which attended the obsequies of the hero of Trafalgar. In harmony with the wishes and the character of the dead man, so simple was it that the papers emphasise in surprise that "not even the choir service is to be sung on the occasion." And this, possibly, constitutes the sole particular in which England endeavoured to fulfil any desire of the man who had laid down his life in her service. His earnest request that the peerage which had been bestowed upon him might descend to his daughter, his pathetic representation that but for the unremitting nature of that service he would presumably have had a son to succeed him, were callously ignored. There were obvious reasons why Nelson's dying bequest to the nation of the woman he had loved remained unregarded, there was none that that of Collingwood should not have been granted and his barren honours thus made sweet to him. But his generation mourned him with idle tears, and succeeding generations have, possibly, done him scanty justice. Yet one, a master-mind in English Literature, has raised an eternal testimony to his worth--"Another true knight errant of those days," proclaims Thackeray, "was Cuthbert Collingwood, and I think, since Heaven made gentlemen, there is no record of a better one than that. Of brighter deeds, I grant you, we may read performed by others; but where of a nobler, kinder, more beautiful life of duty, of a gentler, truer heart? Beyond dazzle of success and blaze of genius, I fancy shining a hundred and a hundred times higher the sublime purity of Collingwood's gentle glory. His heroism stirs British hearts when we recall it. His love and goodness and piety make one thrill with happy emotion.... There are no words to tell what the heart feels in reading the simple phrases of such a hero. Here is victory and courage, but love sublimer and superior."

Nevertheless there is, in truth, little which appeals to the imagination of posterity in the story of that drab martyrdom. Moreover Collingwood is judged, not individually but by comparison. For ever he is obscured by the more dazzling vision of Nelson. It weighs little in his favour that, devoid of the vanity and the weakness which made of the latter a lesser man even though a greater genius, Collingwood, throughout his life, exhibited a nobility of soul which was never marred by one self-seeking thought, one mean word, one base action. That very fact militates against him. Collingwood had no dramatic instinct, and in the great issues of life he never played to the gallery; he has not even attached to his memory, as has Nelson, the glamour of a baffling and arresting intrigue. And there remains eternally to his disfavour that he did not die at the psychological moment. Whether he was, as some recent researches might lead us to believe, a greater strategist than Nelson, as he was undoubtedly a man of stronger principles and more disinterested motives, of wider education and of profounder political insight, it is not our province here to inquire. On his column in Trafalgar Square, to all time, Nelson stands aloft surveying the generations who do him homage; far away, on the shores of Tynemouth, a solitary figure of Collingwood, not erected till 1845, gazes out across the ocean of his exile. It is as though the loneliness which tortured that great soul in life haunts him beyond the grave, as the adulation which was balm to Nelson's soul remains his portion to all eternity. There might even be imagined an unconscious irony in the last reference to Collingwood which occurs in the Stanhope correspondence, wherein Mrs Stanhope, after the first horror which the news of her kinsman's death had evoked, sums up thus the immediate effect of that event upon her family life:--

_May 10th._

London is very gay now.... To give you some idea how we go on, I will
mention some of our engagements. To-night Opera; tomorrow, concerts at
Mrs Boehms and Lady Castlereagh's; Thursday, Dow. Lady Glyn, Lady de
Crespygny musick, and Lady Westmorland's; Saturday, Opera; 23rd., 24th
and 26th Balls. On Friday, of course, there are cards, but I shall not
go out on account of its being the funeral of our justly-lamented
friend.