Chapter 8 No.8

But whatever his ruling passion may have been, his belief in the Power that rules us all never forsook him. He believed in religious forms as of a spiritual force. He often committed himself to it, and claimed the privilege of asking for Heaven's guidance. Call it eccentricity or superstition, or what you like, but to him it was a reality. One of the many amusing instances of his devotion to religious rites was the occasion when he and Lady Hamilton stood as godfather and godmother at the christening of their daughter, Horatia Nelson Thompson,[7] by which name she was baptized.

To the puritanic, orthodox mind (keeping in view all the circumstances of parentage) this will be looked upon as an act of abominable hypocrisy and sacrilege, but to him it was a pious duty.

Like all highly strung and overwrought mortals, he was often moody, depressed, and, worst of all, a victim to premonitions of his early demise. His superstitious temperament was constantly worrying him, as did his faith in the predictions of a gipsy fortune-teller who had correctly described his career up to the year 1805, and then stopping had said, "I can see no further." This creepy ending of the gipsy's tale was afflicting him with a dumb pain and depression when he unexpectedly came across his sister Catherine in London. She referred to his worn, haggard look with a tenderness that was peculiarly her own. He replied, "Ah! Katty! Katty! that gipsy!" and then relapsed into morbid silence. The foreboding bore heavily on his mind, and the story may well make one's heart throb with pity for the noble fellow who was so soon to fulfil his tragic destiny. Well may we exclaim that fame seems to be the most wretched of mockeries!

The Duke of Wellington, of whom it is said no dose of flattery was too strong for him to swallow, has left on record an interesting account of his meeting Nelson at the Colonial Office. He gives the account of it, thirty years after Nelson's death, to John Wilson Croker at Walmer, and here is what he says of Collingwood's great comrade:-

WALMER, 1st October, 1834.

We were [that is, Croker and he] talking of Lord Nelson, and some instances were mentioned of the egotism and vanity that derogated from his character. "Why," said the Duke, "I am not surprised at such instances, for Lord Nelson was, in different circumstances, two quite different men, as I myself can vouch, though I only saw him once in my life, and for, perhaps, an hour. It was soon after I returned from India. I went to the Colonial Office in Downing Street, and there I was shown into the little waiting-room on the right hand, where I found, also waiting to see the Secretary of State, a gentleman, whom, from his likeness to his pictures and the loss of an arm, I immediately recognized as Lord Nelson. He could not know who I was, but he entered at once into conversation with me, if I can call it conversation, for it was almost all on his side and all about himself, and in, really, a style so vain and so silly as to surprise and almost disgust me. I suppose something that I happened to say made him guess that I was somebody, and he went out of the room for a moment, I have no doubt to ask the office keeper who I was, for when he came back he was altogether a different man, both in manner and matter. All that I had thought a charlatan style had vanished, and he talked of the state of this country and the probabilities of affairs on the Continent with a good sense, and a knowledge of subjects both at home and abroad, that surprised me equally and more agreeably than the first part of our interview had done; in fact, he talked like an officer and a statesman. The Secretary of State kept us long waiting, and certainly, for the last half or three-quarters of an hour, I don't know that I ever had a conversation that interested me more. Now, if the Secretary of State had been punctual, and admitted Lord Nelson in the first quarter of an hour, I should have had the same impression of a light and trivial character that other people have had; but luckily I saw enough to be satisfied that he was really a very superior man; but certainly a more sudden and complete metamorphosis I never saw."[8]

We must not be too critical of the Duke's opinions of the vanity of the Admiral, but it calls for some notice, inasmuch as the Duke himself is reputed to have had an uncommonly good amount of it himself, though it took a different form and created a different impression. Wellington showed it in a cold, haughty, unimaginative, repelling self-importance; fearful of unbending to his inferiors lest his dignity should be offended. Nelson's peculiarities were the very antithesis; it was his delightful egotism and vanity that added to his charm and made him such a fascinating personality. His direct slap-dash, unconventional phrases and flashes of naval brilliancy, whether in search of, or engaged in battle with the enemy, together with a natural kindness to his officers and men of all ranks, filled them with confidence and pride in having him as their chief. The "Nelson touch," the "drubbing" he swore in his own engaging way that Mr. Villeneuve-as he called him to Blackwood-was to have when he caught him, the putting of the telescope to his blind eye at Copenhagen when the signal was flying to leave off action, and then "No, damn me if I do," had an inspiring effect on his men and strengthened the belief in his dauntlessness and sagacity. "What will Nelson think of us?" remarked one of the men aboard one of the frigates that obeyed the signal. But Nelson went on fighting with complete success. "Luckily," says Wellington, "I saw enough to be satisfied that he was really a very superior man." Why "luckily"? What difference would his lack of knowledge have made? The Duke was hardly the type of man to understand the powerful personality whose style, "so vain and silly, surprised and almost disgusted" him. That view does not stand to his credit, and no one else held it.

But let us see what a greater man than either Wellington or Nelson says of both. Napoleon, at St. Helena, spoke in very high terms of Lord Nelson,[9] and indeed attempted to palliate that one stigma on his memory, the execution of Carraciolli, which he attributed entirely to his having been deceived by that wicked woman Queen Caroline, through Lady Hamilton, and to the influence which the latter had over him. He says of the Duke: "Judging from Wellington's actions, from his dispatches, and, above all, from his conduct towards Ney, I should pronounce him to be a poor-spirited man, without generosity, and without greatness of soul ('Un homme de peu d'esprit, sans générosité, et sans grandeur d'ame'). Such I know to be the opinion of Benjamin Constant and of Madame de Sta?l, who said that, except as a general, he had not two ideas. As a general, however, to find his equal amongst your own nation, you must go back to the time of Marlborough, but as anything else, I think that history will pronounce him to be a man of limited capacity ('Un homme borné')."[10]

"Nelson is a brave man. If Villeneuve at Aboukir and Dumanoir at Trafalgar had had a little of his blood, the French would have been conquerors. I ought to have had Dumanoir's head cut off. Do you not think more highly of Nelson than of the best engineers who construct fortifications? Nelson had what a mere engineer officer can never acquire. It is a gift of nature."

Captain Hardy (of the "Victory")

The Emperor, in his eulogy of Nelson, is not unmindful of the terrible crime he was led to commit at the instigation of that human viper, Queen Caroline, and the licentious Emma Hamilton. He, to some extent, whittles down Nelson's share of the responsibility by putting the whole blame on them. But who can read the gruesome story of the trial and hanging of the aged Prince Carraciolli without feeling ashamed that a fellow-countryman in Nelson's position should have stamped his career with so dark a crime? At the capitulation of St. Elmo, Carraciolli made his escape. He commanded a Neapolitan warship called the Tancredi, and had fought in Admiral Hotham's action on the 14th March, 1795, and gained distinction, accompanying the Royal Family to Palermo. He was given permission by the King to return for the purpose of protecting his large property. The French had entered Neapolitan territory and seized his estates, on the ground that he was a Royalist, and the only way he could recover them was by agreeing to take command of the Neapolitan fleet. The French were obliged to evacuate the country, and left their friends to settle matters for themselves as best they could. Carraciolli concealed himself, but was discovered in disguise and put on board the Foudroyant with his hands tied behind his back. Captain Hardy, who was a man with a heart, was indignant when he saw the old man subjected to such gross indignity, and immediately ordered his hands to be liberated.

Nelson committed him for trial, which commenced at ten o'clock, and at twelve he was declared guilty. At five o'clock he was hanged at the yardarm of the Neapolitan frigate Minerva. This poor old man was tried solely by his enemies without being allowed to have counsel or call witnesses. A miscreant called Count Thurn, a worse enemy than all, presided over the court. Carraciolli asked Lieutenant Parkinson to obtain for him a new trial. Nelson, who had ordered the first, could not or would not grant a second. Carraciolli asked to be shot, and this also was refused. On the grounds of former association, he sought the aid of Lady Hamilton, but she, being an approving party to the execution, only came from her concealment to enjoy the sight of the old Prince's dead body dangling at the yardarm. "Come, Bronte, come," said she, "let us take the barge and have another look at Carraciolli"; and there they feasted their eyes on the lifeless remains of their former associate, who had assuredly cursed them both with his last dying breath. It is the custom when sailors are buried at sea to weight their feet so that the body may sink in an upright position. The same course was adopted with Carraciolli; shot was put at his feet, but not sufficient, and he was cast into the sea. In a few days the putrified body rose to the surface head upwards, as though the murdered man had come again to haunt his executioners and give them a further opportunity of gazing at the ghastly features of their victim.[11] The sight of his old friend emerging again terrified Ferdinand, and he became afflicted with a feeling of abiding horror which he sought to appease by having the body interred in a Christian burial-ground. But the spirit of his executed friend worried him all his remaining days, and the act of burial did not save Naples from becoming a shambles of conflict, robbery, and revolution. Neither did Emma Hamilton escape her just deserts for the vile part she played in one of the most abominable crimes ever committed. Her latter hours were made terrible by the thought of the mockery of a trial, and the constant vision of the Prince's ghost glowering at her from the Minerva's yardarm and from the surface of his watery tomb from which he had risen again to reproach her with the inhuman pleasure she had taken in watching the dreadful act. Nor did her shrieking avowal of repentance give the wretched Jezebel of a woman the assurance of forgiveness. She sought for distractions, and found most of them in wickedness, and passed into the presence of the Great Mystery with all her deeds of faithlessness, deceit, and uncontrollable revenge before her eyes.

It is sad to read of and hear the insensate rubbish that is talked of new earths that are to evolve from war, as though it could be divorced from wounds and death, unspeakable crime, suffering in all its varied forms, and the destruction of property which must always be a direct result. The spectacle of it can never be other, except to the martially-minded, than a shuddering horror. I would ask any one who is imbued with the idea that out of wars spring new worlds to name a single instance where a nation that has engaged in it has not been left bleeding at its extremities, no matter whether it emerges as victor or vanquished. I would further ask the writer or orator who talks in this strain if he imagines that the sending of myriads of men to death can contribute to the making of new earths. The consequences are much too tragically serious to the nation, and indeed to the world, to be played with by smug diplomatists who seek to excite the populace into support of their calamitous efforts at statesmanship by shallow bursts of eloquence about the new conditions of life which are to accrue from their imitation of Germanism.

No doubt Nelson thought, when he had poor old Prince Carraciolli hung, that he would create a new earth by striking terror into the hearts of the Neapolitan race, but natural laws are not worked out by methods of this kind, and Nelson had the mortification of seeing his plan of regulating human affairs create a new and more ferocious little hell on earth. His judgment at this time was very much warped through the evil influence of the Court of Naples and more especially by his infatuation for Lady Hamilton.

Greville, and subsequently Sir William Hamilton, had taken great pains to educate Emma Hart. Hamilton writes to his nephew: "I can assure you her behaviour is such as has acquired her many sensible admirers, and we have good man society, and all the female nobility, with the Queen at their head, show her every mark of civility." Hamilton writes further: "Hitherto, her behaviour is irreproachable, but her temper, as you must know, unequal." Lady Malmesbury (with a decidedly sly scratch) says of her: "She really behaves as well as possible, and quite wonderfully, considering her origin and education." Sir George Elliot says: "Her manners are perfectly, unpolished, very easy, but not with the ease of good breeding, but of a barmaid; excessively good-humoured, wishing to please and be admired by everybody that came in her way. She has acquired since her marriage some knowledge of history and of the arts, and one wonders at the application and pains she has taken to make herself what she is. With men her language and conversation are exaggerations of anything I ever heard anywhere; and I was wonderfully struck with these inveterate remains of her origin, though the impression was very much weakened by seeing the other ladies of Naples." A naval lieutenant at Naples stated he "thought her a very handsome, vulgar woman." There is no stabbing with a sneer about this opinion. It expresses in a few words the candid opinion of the sailor. Mrs. St. George thinks her "bold, daring, vain even to folly, and stamped with the manners of her first situation much more strongly than one would suppose, after having represented Majesty and lived in good company fifteen years. Her dress is frightful. Her waist is absolutely between her shoulders. Her figure is colossal, but, excepting her feet, which are hideous, well shaped. The shape of all her features is fine, as is the form of her head, and particularly her ears; her teeth are a little irregular, but tolerably white; her eyes light blue, with a brown spot in one, which, though a defect, takes nothing away from her beauty or expression. Her eyebrows and hair, which, by the bye, is never clean, are dark and her complexion coarse. Her expression is strongly marked, variable, and interesting; her movements in common life ungraceful, her voice loud, yet not disagreeable." This female critic seems to have been overburdened with the weight of Emma's defects, mental and physical! Elliot says: "Her person is nothing short of monstrous for its enormity, and is growing every day. Her face is beautiful." The latter view tones down the apparent desire not to say too much in her favour.

We are persuaded, in fact, that the foregoing views of Lady Hamilton's personal appearance are not correct. They give the impression that the opinions of her critics are based on the woman's lowly origin, and that they assume that because she was the offspring of poor parents she ought to be described as a fat hoyden with the manners of the kitchen. The people who knew her intimately do not make her out to be a stout, unwholesome, East-End Palestiner. The sister of Marie Antoinette, be it remembered, was her close companion, and many English ladies living in Naples and visiting there were scarcely likely to associate with a person who could not display better looks and manners than those set forth. Nelson, the Prince of Wales, and her many other men admirers, were hardly likely to tumble over each other in competition for her smiles and favours if "her dress was frightful," "her waist between her shoulders," "her hair dirty," "her feet hideous," "her bones large," "her complexion coarse," and "her person monstrous for its enormity, growing every day."

We are inclined to place little dependence on the accuracy of people who seem to have described her according to their moods or perhaps according to the manner of her admirers towards themselves. That she was clever and attractive there can be no doubt, and it is equally certain that she won for herself the mortal enmity of many ladies who saw her powerful influence over prominent men and women whom they themselves bored. Some importance must be given to her husband's position as British representative; his influence must have been great, especially in Neapolitan circles. This would help her natural gifts of fascination, even though her breeding and education did not reach the standard of her blue-blooded critics. She had something that stood her in greater stead than breeding and education: she had the power of enslaving gallant hearts and holding them in thrall with many artful devices. They liked her Bohemianism, her wit, her geniality, her audacious slang, and her collection of droll epithets that fittingly described her venomous critics of a self-appointed nobility. When she could not reach the heights of such superior persons she proceeded to ridicule them with a tongue that rattled out vivid invective which outmatched anything they could say of her. It probably made her more enemies, but it satisfied her temper and pleased her admirers. She never appears to have been conscious of any inferiority in herself. We are inclined to agree with the opinion expressed by the naval lieutenant at Naples, who said "She was a very handsome, vulgar woman." All her portraits confirm what the sailor says about her beauty, and the most reliable records are confirmatory so far as his view of her vulgarity is concerned.

But in any case, whatever may have been her physical dimensions, they were not understated by the crowd who gave vent to their aversion in this and in many other deplorable ways. There are only a few evidences of Nelson being aware of and resenting some of the disparaging remarks made about his "wife in the sight of Heaven," and these do not seem to have diminished his infatuation for her. He was accustomed to say in connection with his professional duties that whenever he followed his own head he was in general much more correct in his judgment than by following other people's opinions. He carried this plan into his private life so far as Emma was concerned, but men and women who were his intimate friends would not support the view that by following his head in this particular case his judgment was sound. We may term the infatuation a deteriorated state of mind, but he was sustained by the belief that she was a spirit unto him while he lived, and with his last gasp, as he was passing into the shadows, he bestowed her as a legacy to his country. We shall have something to say hereafter as to how the British Government dealt with their great Admiral's dying injunction.

The Neapolitan atmosphere was vile enough, and might well have made even men and women who knew the loose side of life shrink from it, but it can never be claimed that it had a demoralizing influence on Emma, who at an early age became familiar with unspeakable vices which left her little to learn at the time Greville sold her to his uncle, who took her to a centre of sordid uncleanness, there to become his wife after a brief association as his mistress. We may have no misgiving as to her aptitude in acquiring anything she chose that was left for her to learn from a community of debauchees and parasites.

The wonder is that her brain did not succumb to the poisonous influences by which she was surrounded, and that the poor girl did not sink into the depths of that luxurious sensuality which characterized Neapolitan society at that time. It was a more distinguished and fascinating type of debauchery than that which she had known in other days in England, and from which Greville had rescued her. The temptation to plunge into the boisterous merriment of a higher order of depravity than that to which she had been accustomed must have been very great to such a temperament as hers. But she worthily kept her wild, wayward spirit under restraint, and, according to Sir William Hamilton, she conducted herself in a way that caused him to be satisfied with his reforming guidance. She adapted herself to the ways of the more select social community of her new existence, and at the time Nelson made her acquaintance she had really become a creditable member of the society in which she moved. In every respect she was congenial to him. He never lost a chance of applauding her gifts and brazenly exempting himself from all moral restrictions, except, as I have said before, when he was seized with a spontaneous fit of goodness. He would then clumsily try to conceal the passion that obsessed him. He did not brood long over trifles of this kind, merely because he had lost, if ever he possessed, the power of consecutive reasoning in matters of moral convention. His Neapolitan associates were a cunning, lying, luxury-loving, depraved lot, and however strongly his principles were fixed, there can be but one opinion-that such an atmosphere was harmful to him. He speaks of Naples himself as being a country of poets, whores, and scoundrels; and Southey does not attempt to mince words, for in vigorous terms he describes England's "alliances to superannuated and abominable governments of the Continent." These are the states that we shed British blood and squandered British money over, and in truth Southey describes them as they were!

The King of Naples was a great hero to stand up against the bravest, best-trained troops the world! He shivered at the thought of Nelson going out of his sight, and whimpered him into staying to guard him and his rotten kingdom. It was at this period of his gallant activity that Nelson became the victim of fulsome flattery and the associate of the most cunning, knavish charlatans in the world. These creatures never ceased to inveigh against the wrongs they were suffering for the uplifting of human rights, and because their great British ally was in need of their disinterested and distinguished co-ordination. Nelson was well aware of all this, but could not shake himself free. He loathed the slavering way in which flattery was extended to him, because it had a sickly resemblance to weeping. He declares of the Neapolitan officers, "They are boasters of the highest order, and when they are confronted with the duty of defending hearth and home, their courage ends in vapour." He avers that they "cannot lose honour, as they have none to lose," and yet he makes no serious effort to unshackle himself from a detestable position. Emma, the Queen, and King of Naples, and others, have a deep-rooted hold on him, and he cannot give up the cheap popularity of the Neapolitans. He persuades himself that the whole thought of his soul is "Down, down, with the French," and that it shall be his "constant prayer." Throughout the whole course of his brilliant career it was never doubted that the French were his great aversion, because they were his country's enemies. But the hysterical tears of Lady Hamilton and those of the Neapolitan Queen proved too strong for him. The King's beseeching fears were also added to an already difficult situation, which, he persuaded himself, could not be ignored without damaging the interests he was sent to protect; so his stay in the reeking cesspool of Neapolitanism was prolonged, but there is no reason for supposing that his "constant prayer" for the extinction of the French was any the less ardent. The fatal day of their catastrophe was only postponed. The praying went on all the same, with more or less belief in the Almighty's preference for Englishmen.