Читать книгу Nelson - Cecil Louis Troughton Smith - Страница 6

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AT the height of the altercation at Nevis, when a large body of public opinion on the island was clamouring for Nelson’s arrest, and while Nelson was the most hated man within a thousand miles, there were a few prominent people who approved of his motives, if not of his actions, and offered him sympathy and support. The most distinguished of these was a Mr. Herbert, a man of some wealth and also President of the Council of the island, who assured him of his sympathy by the very practical method of offering to go bail for him in the event of his arrest.

Nelson had made a profound impression upon Herbert and his family—partly by the manner in which he went out of his way to do his duty, and partly by his extraordinary habit of not drinking more than was good for him at dinner. At the time of his coming into contact with the family Nelson was lonely and unhappy. His enforcement of the Navigation Acts had rendered him unpopular with the civilians and civil servants; his Admiral had no reason to love him; and Mrs. Moutray had gone home. Several times he had been on terms of close friendship, if nothing more, with women—the list begins with Lady Parker and continues with the unknown woman in Quebec for whom (according to the badly authenticated story) he nearly gave up the service, Miss Andrews at St. Omer, various fair ladies of Bath, the damsel with whom he was riding at Portsmouth when the “Boreas” was first commissioned, and ended at present with Mrs. Moutray, for whom it was time a successor was appointed.

Mr. Herbert had a widowed daughter almost exactly Nelson’s age, who had married a Dr. Nisbet, also of Nevis, and who had found herself a penniless widow with one son a year after marriage. Despite the survival of letters written by her and to her and about her, she remains only a shadowy figure after the most painstaking research. The most salient feature of her opinions, the one that comes readiest to the mind, is her belief in the efficacy of flannel worn next the skin. It is significant that Nelson, who wrote about most things in terms of superlative, never wrote in such fashion to or about his wife. To his brother he writes, “Her manners are Mrs. Moutray’s”—not a violent expression of praise, and possibly not one that would have delighted Mrs. Nisbet. To herself he writes, “Real love and esteem is, I trust, what you will believe I possess in the strongest degree towards you.” That is not unusual phraseology for an English love-letter of the year of grace 1785, but it is most unusual for Nelson. His official reports to the Admiralty breathe more fire and life than that. Perhaps Prince William—not an exceedingly keen-witted man—guessed right when he told Nelson that “he must have a great esteem for her, and not what is vulgarly called love”; Nelson certainly agreed with him. At the moment he had no use for love, even while he fretted when duty kept the “Boreas” away from Nevis and while he wrote that he was anxiously awaiting the wedding day. Six months’ tepid courtship saw them betrothed and an allowance promised him by his uncle, William Suckling, and fifteen months later they were married, Prince William giving the bride away.

Nelson’s letters after the event do not bubble with happiness. He seems to have entered into the condition of marriage after calm reflection, of the sort he brought to bear upon the study of naval tactics, but (unfortunately, it is to be supposed) the brilliance and the inspiration and the skill which came to him in action did not appear in counterpart in his dealings with his wife. He lost, in fact, very little time in telling his wife that in conditions promising activity he would much prefer to be employed at sea to being on land with her; a little less truth and common sense and a little more illusion and romance would not have appeared out of place, five months after marriage. In his relations with his wife, in fact, Nelson seems to have made no allowance for those things which he would have thought it an affectation to term “moral imponderabilia,” but which he generally reckoned upon most successfully. It is hard to understand why, if he never succeeded in forming an idealized view of his wife, he ever married her, and, conversely, how he ever managed to refrain from idealizing his wife after marrying her. Conceivably flannel next to skin may convey part of the explanation; there are some women whom one cannot idealize, and it is as well to remember that for several years after marriage Nelson lived with his wife in the distasteful inactivity of half-pay in circumstances of unpleasant monotony. A woman who could keep that restless mind happy during years of professional disfavour would have had to have been a woman of an intelligence and an instinctive intuition far above the average. Whether or not Nelson would have accomplished more than he actually did had Mrs. Nelson been of this class is a more difficult question still, and it is rather to be thought not, unless the matter is considered by one who holds the opinion that it was on Lady Hamilton’s account that Nelson later disobeyed Keith’s orders.

It is not a matter of cause and effect, but one of pure coincidence, that Nelson vanishes from history for five years following his marriage. He was out of employment and, as he was passing his time in England with his wife, in the company of his father and brother, and in frequent contact with Captain Locker, his correspondence is very scanty during this period. It is hard to trace his movements even, and impossible to find record of his activities. We know that upon more than one occasion he applied for a ship and was refused, and we know that once or twice he was threatened by a revival of the old lawsuits over his action in the islands, but that is all we know about him. There are stories of his utter discontent with the service, and of his fury against the Admiralty for their unwillingness to employ him, but the authority for these stories is unknown, and most certainly Nelson did not spend five years in a state of continual fury. What he did in the intervals can only be an object of guess-work.

Various explanations have been put forward to account for the Admiralty’s omission to employ him. Undoubtedly Nelson’s attitude regarding the West Indian dockyard frauds would bring upon him the enmity of powerful interests. His close friendship with Prince William, now become Duke of Clarence, might have been to his disadvantage, for Clarence had shown himself to be headstrong and undisciplined, while politically he had gone over to the Prince of Wales’s Opposition, and his endorsement of Nelson’s application (we know that he did put in a word for Nelson with Hood) might easily have done more harm than good. The suggestion is even put forward that there was a quarrel between Hood and Nelson, and rather hazy evidence is advanced to this effect.

Yet it all seems very unnecessary. Nelson was still a very junior Captain, and, with only six months’ interval, he had been in employment for over eight years. Pitt had reduced the navy’s numbers as far as any man could dare. There were numerous captains with records far more distinguished than Nelson’s also seeking their share of the small amount of employment that was open. It seems hardly more than natural that he should be left out, and from what we know of Nelson it is equally natural that he should look on this inevitable omission as deliberate neglect. If we accept the fact that Clarence’s influence was negligible, we find that Nelson was without friends of the right kind. Friends in the service he might have in numbers, but in time of peace and economy it is political friends who are of most use to a man in Nelson’s position, and as far as we can trace he had none of any power. Certainly we have Nelson’s own declaration that his collateral descent (on his mother’s side) from the Walpoles never did him a ha’p’orth of good. It has already been pointed out, too, that Nelson’s behaviour on the Leeward Islands station was not such as to make Admirals who desired peaceful enjoyment of authority clamour for his services, however much they might desire them in time of war. Certainly there seems to be no necessity to assume a quarrel with Hood for an explanation of Nelson’s lack of employment: Hood’s later behaviour makes it unlikely.

So that from December, 1787, to January, 1793, Nelson remained in England, staying in Bath, in London, and in Norfolk. His various applications for a ship, including one made at the time of the Nootka Sound crisis with Spain, had been unsuccessful. But during all this time the condition of France had been drifting from bad to worse. Well-meaning Louis XVI had been weak when he should have been strong, and strong only when strength brought unpopularity. The autocrats of Europe had eyed the developments uneasily, although Pitt had resolved not to make the political condition of France a cause of war between the countries. But both foreign aggression and internal influences tended to force France into a condition of hostility towards England, and in England a powerful and growing party was clamouring for English intervention in France. One stage followed another, until at last Pitt whole-heartedly flung aside his peace policy and made ready for war as lavishly as before he had in miserly fashion exploited the blessings of peace. The militia was called out and the navy made ready. There was employment now for every naval officer, especially for those who had displayed themselves as energetic, thoughtful and fearless of responsibility.

Three weeks after the Convention had declared itself the enemy of kings of all kinds Nelson was told that he could have a seventy-four gun-ship as soon as it was ready; if he did not feel inclined to wait he could have a sixty-four gun-ship at once. Did Nelson ever feel inclined to wait? Not when waiting was of no advantage to the service. He accepted the offer eagerly, and that is why the name of the sixty-four gun-ship “Agamemnon” is now so famous, for it was to the “Agamemnon” that he was appointed two days before the declaration of war against England by France.