The Boys' Nelson

CHAPTER III

Pleasure in France and Work in the West Indies

(1783–1793)

Nelson took the greatest possible interest in everything he saw in France: “Sterne’s ‘Sentimental Journey’ is the best description I can give of our tour.” He travelled in a chaise without springs, slept on a straw bed—“O what a transition from happy England!”—but had less fault to find with the scenery about Montreuil, which he describes as “the finest corn country that my eyes ever beheld, diversified with fine woods, sometimes for two miles together through noble forests. The roads mostly were planted with trees, which made as fine an avenue as to any gentleman’s country seat.” At St Omer he lodged with “a pleasant French family,” and incidentally made the acquaintance of “two very agreeable young ladies, daughters, who honour us with their company pretty often.... Therefore I must learn French if ’tis only for the pleasure of talking to them, for they do not speak a word of English.” Soon all thoughts of study and of the “very agreeable” maidens were banished from his impressionable mind by his introduction to a Miss Andrews, the daughter of an English clergyman. The affair rapidly ripened into something more than friendship.

Nelson’s letters go far to prove the truth of Pope’s couplet. Miss Andrews was, according to him, “the most accomplished woman my eyes ever beheld.” Unfortunately marriage is necessarily based on that mundane and concrete thing, money. When the ardent young officer came to look into the financial aspect of the matter he found that his income did not exceed £130 a year. His lady-love’s dowry was “1,000l. I understand.” He therefore appealed to his uncle, William Suckling, to allow him £100 per annum until he could earn that sum for himself. Failing this source of supply, would his relative “exert” himself “to get me a guard-ship, or some employment in a public office where the attendance of the principal is not necessary…? In the India Service I understand (if it remains under the Directors) their marine force is to be under the command of a captain in the Royal Navy: that is a station I should like.” He prays that his uncle and his family “may never know the pangs which at this instant tear my heart.”

Cupid’s shaft neither proved deadly nor barbed. On his return to England Nelson dismissed his love affair, and was soon “running at the ring of pleasure” in London. He visited Lord Howe, First Lord of the Admiralty, “who asked me if I wished to be employed, which I told him I did”; dined with Lord Hood, who made him feel quite at home, and told him “that the oftener I came the happier it would make him.” In January 1784 he was at Bath, and wrote to his brother that he thought of paying a second visit to the Continent till autumn and then spending the winter with him at Burnham Thorpe. “I return to many charming women, but no charming woman will return with me,” is the plaint. “I want to be a proficient in the language, which is my only reason for returning. I hate their country and their manners,” which hatred, it may be said, increased with the passing of the years. This pessimistic strain is doubtless due to Nelson’s undesirable position as a half-pay officer, but in the middle of March his somewhat mercurial temperament underwent a change to “set fair” on his appointment to the Boreas, a frigate of 28 guns, under orders for the Leeward Islands. The passengers included Lady Hughes, wife of Rear-Admiral Sir Richard Hughes, Bart., the Commander-in-Chief, and her daughter, whom he very ungallantly described as “lumber.” His brother, the Rev. William Nelson, accompanied him as chaplain of the Boreas, but returned on the last day of September 1784 owing to ill-health.

Before leaving Spithead Nelson had an alarming adventure. He was riding what he describes as a “blackguard horse” in company with a lady, when both animals bolted. In order to save his legs from being crushed in a narrow road blocked by a waggon the young gallant was obliged to throw himself, and he had the ill-luck to fall upon hard stones, which injured his back and one of his limbs. His fair companion was only saved from death by the presence of mind of a passer-by who pluckily seized the bridle of the terrified animal to which she was frantically clinging.

The voyage to Antigua was devoid of incident. It was monotonous, and Nelson hated nothing so much as monotony. Lady Hughes bored him, although it is only just to add that he does not appear to have let her know it. The lady herself was certainly impressed with the kindly way Nelson treated “the young gentlemen who had the happiness of being on his Quarter-Deck,” to quote a letter written by her in 1806. “It may reasonably be supposed,” she goes on, “that among the number of thirty, there must be timid as well as bold: the timid he never rebuked, but always wished to show them he desired nothing of them that he would not instantly do himself: and I have known him say—‘Well, sir, I am going a race to the masthead, and I beg I may meet you there.’ No denial could be given to such a wish, and the poor fellow instantly began his march. His Lordship never took the least notice with what alacrity it was done, but when he met in the top, instantly began talking in the most cheerful manner, and saying how much a person was to be pitied that could fancy there was any danger, or even anything disagreeable, in the attempt.... In like manner he every day went to the schoolroom and saw them do their nautical business, and at twelve o’clock he was first upon the deck with his quadrant. No one there could be behindhand in his business when their Captain set them so good an example. One other circumstance I must mention which will close the subject, which was the day we landed at Barbadoes. We were to dine at the Governor’s. Our dear Captain said, ‘You must permit me, Lady Hughes, to carry one of my aides-de-camp with me,’ and when he presented him to the Governor, he said, ‘Your Excellency must excuse me for bringing one of my midshipmen, as I make it a rule to introduce them to all the good company I can, they have few to look up to besides myself during the time they are at sea.’ This kindness and attention made the young people adore him; and even his wishes, could they have been known, would have been instantly complied with.”

When Nelson made the acquaintance of Sir Richard Hughes he disliked him as much as he did her ladyship. Probably the officer’s methods rather than the man aroused this feeling of antagonism. “The Admiral and all about him are great ninnies,” he writes, and he soon showed in no vague way that he refused to support the Commander-in-chief’s happy-go-lucky policy. Truth to tell, Nelson had no love of authority. He preferred to be a kind of attached free-lance, although he was a strict disciplinarian in all relations between his junior officers and himself. “I begin to be very strict in my Ship,” is an expression he used while in the Boreas. In particular he fell foul of Hughes in the matter of putting the Navigation Act into force. This law had been passed by the Rump Parliament in 1651, when the Dutch held the proud position of the world’s maritime carriers. It was enacted that only English ships, commanded by an Englishman and manned by a crew three-fourths of whom were also of the same nationality, should be allowed to carry the products of Asia, Africa, and America to home ports. In a similar manner, European manufactures had to be brought in English vessels or those of the countries which produced the goods. In the latter case the duties were heavier. It was Protection pure and simple.

The Government of Charles II. and the Scottish Parliament passed similar Acts in later years, thereby fostering the trading companies which helped to lay the foundations of our colonial empire. Such measures were a constant “thorn in the flesh” to foreign statesmen. Several of the statutes were repealed in 1823, but the Navigation Act was not entirely abandoned by Great Britain until 1848, after an existence of nearly two hundred years.

Owing to their separation from the Motherland, the former British colonists of America were, technically, “foreigners,” and should have been subject to restrictions in their commercial intercourse with the West Indies. “I, for one,” Nelson confides to Locker, “am determined not to suffer the Yankees to come where my Ship is; for I am sure, if once the Americans are admitted to any kind of intercourse with these Islands, the views of the Loyalists in settling Nova Scotia are entirely done away. They will first become the Carriers, and next have possession of our Islands, are we ever again embroiled in a French war. The residents of these Islands are Americans by connexion and by interest, and are inimical to Great Britain. They are as great rebels as ever were in America, had they the power to show it.... I am determined to suppress the admission of Foreigners all in my power.”

“The Americans,” Nelson tells us in his Autobiography, “when colonists, possessed almost all the trade from America to our West India Islands; and on the return of peace, they forgot, on this occasion, that they became foreigners, and of course had no right to trade in the British Colonies.

“Our governors and custom-house officers pretended that by the Navigation Act they had a right to trade; and all the West Indians wished what was so much for their interest. Having given governors, custom-house officers, and Americans, notice of what I would do, I seized many of their vessels, which brought all parties upon me; and I was persecuted from one island to another, so that I could not leave my ship.” In this matter it may be said that Nelson found it necessary to keep himself “a close prisoner” to avoid being served with writs which had been issued against him by the owners of certain vessels which he had taken, and who assessed their damages at several thousands of pounds. “But conscious rectitude,” he adds, “bore me through it; and I was supported, when the business came to be understood, from home; and I proved (and an Act of Parliament has since established it) that a captain of a man-of-war is in duty bound to support all the maritime laws, by his Admiralty commission alone, without becoming a custom-house officer.”

The ardent captain also fell foul of Hughes in another matter. The commissioner of the dockyard at Antigua was Captain Moutray, a half-pay officer whom Hughes, going beyond his powers, made commodore. Nelson refused to recognise him as such. The case was investigated by the Admiralty at the instigation of both parties, with the result that Nelson was reprimanded for taking the law into his own hands. Professor Sir J. Knox Laughton, while admitting that “In both cases Nelson was right in his contention,” is forced to add that “The first duty of an officer is to obey orders, to submit his doubts to the Commander-in-chief, and in a becoming manner to remonstrate against any order he conceives to be improper; but for an officer to settle a moot-point himself, and to act in contravention of an order given under presumably adequate knowledge of the circumstances, is subversive of the very first principles of discipline. And these were not, it will be noticed, questions arising out of any sudden and unforeseen emergency, in providing for which Nelson was forced to depart from his instructions. Such emergencies do arise in the course of service, and the decision of the officer may be a fair test of his personal worth; but neither at St Kitts nor at Antigua was there anything calling for instant decision, or any question which might not have waited, pending a reference to the Commander-in-chief or to the Admiralty. And this was the meaning of the Admiralty minute on Nelson’s conduct at Antigua, a most gentle admonition for what might have been punished as a grave offence.”

It must not be inferred that there was any personal bitterness on Nelson’s part regarding the Moutray affair. He conceived it to be a question of principle, of doing right and shunning wrong: “The character of an Officer is his greatest treasure: to lower that, is to wound him irreparably.” He was certainly on excellent terms with the Commissioner’s wife, for whom he cherished the most friendly feelings. Indeed, in one of his letters he calls her his “dear, sweet friend.... Her equal I never saw in any country, or in any situation.” Let it be frankly admitted, however, that Nelson sometimes wore his heart on his sleeve, and readily betrayed a state of feeling approaching deep affection for any member of the gentler sex who showed by her ready sympathy that she possessed a kindly disposition. In the communication in which the above passage occurs he notes that several of his comrades had similar amorous tendencies. One officer has proposed and been refused, another is forestalled in proposing to the lady of his choice by a more venturesome lover, a third is “attached to a lady at Nevis,” the said lady being a relation of the future Mrs Nelson. He concludes with a reference to a niece of Governor Parry, who “goes to Nevis in the Boreas; they trust any young lady with me, being an old-fashioned fellow.”

On the 12th May 1785 Nelson confides to his brother William that he has made the acquaintance of “a young Widow,” and towards the end of the following month he tells the same correspondent, “between ourselves,” that he is likely to become a “Benedict.... Do not tell.” The lady of his choice was Mrs Nisbet, then twenty-seven years of age and the mother of a boy. We are fortunate in having copies of many of his letters to her, for there is a wealth of affection—scarcely love—and much sage philosophy in them. “My greatest wish is to be united to you;” he writes on the 11th September 1785, “and the foundation of all conjugal happiness, real love and esteem, is, I trust, what you believe I possess in the strongest degree towards you.... We know that riches do not always insure happiness; and the world is convinced that I am superior to pecuniary considerations in my public and private life; as in both instances I might have been rich.” “You are too good and indulgent;” he avers on another occasion, “I both know and feel it: but my whole life shall ever be devoted to make you completely happy, whatever whims may sometimes take me. We are none of us perfect, and myself probably much less so than you deserve.” “Fortune, that is, money, is the only thing I regret the want of, and that only for the sake of my affectionate Fanny. But the Almighty, who brings us together, will, I doubt not, take ample care of us, and prosper all our undertakings. No dangers shall deter me from pursuing every honourable means of providing handsomely for you and yours....”

The messages lack the passionate fire of Napoleon’s notes to Josephine, and on occasion are apt to be rather too business-like for love letters. The romance did not end like the fairy stories, they did not live “happily ever after,” but there is no reason to doubt that Nelson cherished a fond affection for the young widow. “Her sense,” he informs his brother, “polite manners, and to you I may say, beauty, you will much admire: and although at present we may not be a rich couple, yet I have not the least doubt but we shall be a happy pair:—the fault must be mine if we are not.” Subsequent events proved the truth of the latter remark.

In due course Sir Richard Hughes was succeeded in the command of the Leeward Islands by Sir Richard Bickerton. Nelson complains towards the end of 1786 that “A total stop is put to our carrying on the Navigation Laws,” thereby showing that the old problem had by no means been solved so far as he was concerned.

On the 12th March 1787 Nelson and Mrs Nisbet were married at Nevis. Prince William Henry, then captain of the Pegasus and under Nelson’s command, gave away the bride. Three months later the newly-wedded captain was at Spithead, the almost unseaworthy condition of the Boreas making it impossible for her to stand another hurricane season in the West Indies.

Nelson was placed on half-pay, a state which he by no means liked. In May 1788 he had reason to believe that he would be employed again. “I have invariably laid down,” he tells a friend, “and followed close, a plan of what ought to be uppermost in the breast of an Officer: that it is much better to serve an ungrateful Country, than to give up his own fame. Posterity will do him justice: a uniform conduct of honour and integrity seldom fails of bringing a man to the goal of Fame at last.”

Nelson visited Plymouth, Bath, and London, and finally settled down at Burnham Thorpe. His letters reveal the keenness with which he desired to obtain employment. He applied to both Viscount Howe, First Lord of the Admiralty, and to Lord Hood, but all his overtures came to nought. In September 1789 he tells his old friend Locker that “I am now commencing Farmer, not a very large one, you will conceive, but enough for amusement. Shoot I cannot, therefore I have not taken out a license; but notwithstanding the neglect I have met with, I am happy, and now I see the propriety of not having built my hopes on such sandy foundations as the friendships of the Great.”

Not until January 1793 were his dearest wishes granted. “After clouds comes sunshine,” he writes to his wife from London. “The Admiralty so smile upon me, that really I am as much surprised as when they frowned. Lord Chatham yesterday made many apologies for not having given me a Ship before this time, and said, that if I chose to take a Sixty-four to begin with, I should be appointed to one as soon as she was ready; and whenever it was in his power, I should be removed into a Seventy-four. Everything indicates War....”

CHAPTER IV

The Beginning of the Great War

(1793–1794)

“Duty is the great business of a sea officer”

So far back as 1753 Lord Chesterfield prophesied a revolution in France. “All the symptoms,” he said, “which I have ever met with in history, previous to great changes and revolutions in government, now exist and daily increase in France.” Warning rumbles heralded the storm, disregarded and thought of no account by some, full of grave portent to others. It burst in 1789.

At first William Pitt, First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, steadily refused to believe that England was menaced by the Power which Fox had termed “the natural enemy of Great Britain.” In January 1792 he assured Parliament that “unquestionably there never was a time in the history of this country when, from the situation of Europe, we might more reasonably expect fifteen years of peace than we may at the present moment.” Either he was over anxious to persuade himself that things were as he would like them to be, or he was sadly mistaken. Pitt had by no means the pugnacious disposition of his father, the famous first Earl of Chatham. He thought that the fire would burn itself out, that it would be of short duration, whereas it steadily gained strength and eventually involved practically every country in Europe. Not until he was convinced that war was inevitable did the youngest Premier who ever handled the reins of a British government accept the French Revolution as of more than local consequence. Hitherto domestic and financial questions had occupied his attention and absorbed his energies. If France ignored the nation which he represented, if she refrained from poaching on British preserves or those of her allies, he was quite content to return the compliment. Then came the decree that the navigation of the river Scheldt should be thrown open. It had previously been guaranteed to the Dutch by Great Britain as well as by other Powers, including France. The execution of Louis XVI. followed, which led to Chauvelin, the French Ambassador, being given his passports. If Pitt had been slumbering he had wooed somnolence with one eye open since the annexation of Savoy. He was now fully awake, calm and self-reliant, for he recognised the inevitable. It came in a declaration of war by the French Convention against Holland and Great Britain on the 1st February 1793. Macaulay, writing from an essentially Whig point of view, states that Pitt’s military administration “was that of a driveller,” but to the impartial historian nothing is further from the truth. He abandoned his schemes of social reform to plunge whole-heartedly into the titanic struggle which was to cost him his life. That he made mistakes is obvious—what statesman has not?—but he fell in his country’s cause as nobly as Nelson at Trafalgar and Moore at Coruña.