A LETTER FROM LADY HAMILTON TO THE ADMIRAL.
"_Naples, September 8th, 1798._
"_My dear, dear Sir,--How shall I begin? What shall I say to
you? 'Tis impossible I can write, for since last Monday I am
delirious with joy, and assure you I have a fever caused by
agitation and pleasure! Good God! what a victory! Never, never
has there been anything half so glorious, so complete! I fainted
when I heard the news, and fell on my side, and am hurt. But
what of that? I should feel it a glory to die in such a cause.
No, I would not like to die till I see and embrace _the victor of
the NILE_. How shall I describe to you the transports of Maria
Caroline? 'Tis not possible. She fainted, and cried, kissed her
husband, her children, walked frantic with pleasure about the
room, cried, kissed and embraced every person near her,
exclaiming--'Oh, brave Nelson! Oh, God bless and protect our
brave deliverer! Oh! Nelson! Nelson! what do we owe to you! Oh,
victor, saviour of Italy! Oh, that my swollen heart could now
tell him personally what we owe to him!'_
"_You may judge, my dear sir, of the rest; but my head will not
permit me to tell you half of the rejoicing. The Neapolitans are
mad, and if you was here now you would be killed with kindness.
Sonnets on sonnets, illuminations, rejoicing. Not a French dog
dare show his face. How I glory in the honour of my country _and
my countryman_! I walk and tread in the air with pride, feeling
that I was born on the same land with the victor Nelson and his
gallant band. But no more. I cannot, dare not, trust myself, for
I am not well._
"_Little dear Captain Hoste will tell you the rest. He lives
with us in the day, for he will not sleep out of his ship, and
we love him dearly._
"_He is a fine good lad. Sir William is delighted with him, and
says he will be a second Nelson. If he is only half a Nelson he
will be superior to all others._
"_I send you two letters from my adorable Queen. One was written
to me the day we received this glorious news; the other
yesterday. Keep them, as they are her own handwriting. I have
kept copies only; but I feel that you ought to have them. If you
had seen our meeting after the battle--but I will keep it all
for your arrival; I could not do justice to her feelings or my
own, with writing it. We are preparing your apartment against
you come. I hope it will not be long, for Sir William and I are
so impatient to see and embrace you._
"_I wish you could have seen our house the three nights of the
illuminations: it was covered with your glorious name; there
were three thousand lamps, and there should have been three
millions if we had had time. All the English vied with each
other in celebrating this most gallant and ever-remarkable
victory. Sir William is ten years younger since the happy news,
and he now only wishes to see his friend to be completely happy.
How he glories in you when your name is mentioned! He cannot
contain his joy. For God's sake come to Naples soon!_
"_We receive so many sonnets and letters of congratulations. I
send you some of them, to show you how your success is felt
here. How I felt for poor Troubridge! He must have been so angry
on the sandbank--so brave an officer! In short, I pity all those
who were not in the battle. I would have been rather an English
powder-monkey or a swab in that great victory than an emperor
out of it. But you will be tired of all this. Write or come
soon, to rejoice your ever sincere and obliged friend,_"
[Handwriting: Emma Hamilton]
The man we brought up from the albergo near the Castel Nuovo to the
Ambassador's palace in an Embassy coach, softened with a mountain of
cushions, did not, to the ordinary onlooker, give much idea of the man
who, as darkness was falling, hesitated not a moment to sail without a
pilot or a chart between the French line of battle and a shoaling
shore. But we, who were privileged to see that extraordinary man
during every hour of his daily life, were well accustomed to the
spectacle of him prostrated with sickness--from which, however, the
chance of a battle would rouse him, like the sound of a trumpet, into
the martial, alert little figure that seemed to the men who were to
follow his orders to death, like the angel who came down to smite the
hosts of Sennacherib.
In spite of his prostration from fever and wounds, he had insisted on
donning his full Admiral's uniform--he was going to visit the
Representative of his Sovereign, and to the day of his death he never
spoke of King George III. save as Our Good and Great King.
Will and I were of his party--Will was in his own coach: his touch
soothed the Admiral more than any in the ship, though it was not to be
in requisition so much thereafter. I was to do kind of orderly's work,
which would in ordinary cases be performed by some one before the
mast; but the Admiral, with the kindness which never failed, judged
that Will, being away from the ship, would like to have a mate, and
that I should serve best.
The palace was hardly like the generality of palaces of that date, for
the great state staircase of red marble which conducted to the
principal rooms--they, as is the wont in Italy, being on the first
floor and not level with the ground as in England--was inside the
palace instead of winding round the courtyard outside the inner face
of the quadrangle. Perhaps I should hardly call the palace a
quadrangle, for on the bottom, or sea-side, the buildings were only
the height of a garden wall, and used, I think, for horses. The
stables were certainly under the palace on this and the adjoining side
towards the town.
The Ambassador's palace, I should have said, was on the outskirts of
the town, at the bottom end of the Strada S. Caterina and just against
the King's Villa, which was not a house as it would sound to our
English ears, but a garden with palm trees, and avenues of the ilex,
and with many statues of white marble, running along the sea-shore
between the city and Mergellina.
We were on a little hill, which I could see pleased the Admiral
greatly, for a faint smile came over his face. This was one of his
worst days.
No sooner had the carriage pulled up at the great door, than there
flew out the most beautiful woman I ever saw, gracefully dressed in a
cool muslin robe of the Turkish fashion, and with a jewelled chaplet
bearing the inscription "Nelson and Victory" in the curly hair, so
full of auburn lights that at times it looked of the gold colour Mr.
Romney was so fond of painting. I needed not to remark the perfect
oval of the dimpled face, nor its fairness and rosiness, so
marvellously blent that people refused to believe it genuine till her
fondness for sea-bathing parties set it beyond doubt, nor the most
exquisite smile ever preserved on canvas, to know that it was My Lady
Hamilton; for no sooner had she seen the Admiral than her laughing
eyes grew moist and tender, and the corners of her mouth began to
droop pitifully, and in a moment she had her arm round the Admiral's
back and under his right shoulder, with such a gentle, sympathetic
touch that he moved from the carriage into the door almost without
pain. Behind My Lady was a tall, somewhat bent, elderly gentleman,
wearing his Order of the Bath and sundry Neapolitan decorations, like
the Admiral, in full Court dress. This was, of course, Sir William
Hamilton, K.C.B., his Britannic Majesty's Ambassador and
Plenipotentiary at the Court of the Two Sicilies. It has often seemed
to me, since, mighty significant that the reception of the Admiral
into the palace of the Hamiltons should have been conducted with so
much ceremony. You can hardly imagine the procession of coaches and
servants sent to bring us up from the albergo, and the army of
servants drawn up by the gate and courtyard and grand staircase of the
palace; for seldom has the entry of a conqueror into a fallen city
been attended with results that have led to more writing. I must say
that, as she supported the Admiral from his coach to the suite
prepared for him on that day she might have been a goddess: she was so
far beyond any woman that I had seen in beauty and graciousness and
tenderness, and soft, floating movement.
As he moved down from his coach, I saw the spirit of action coming
over the Admiral. He had caught sight of his hostess, and was
straightening himself up--there never was a body so dominated by its
spirit. But before he could finish My Lady had flown to him, and
quelled him with a woman's tender solicitude for sickness. She saw in
an instant through his little artifice of leaving his hair unbrushed
off his forehead. It was there the plaster yet lay on the wound which
had struck him down in the battle. But though he yielded to her
tenderness, and moved up the broad, low stairs with the imperceptible
advance of the sick unto death--he took two or more steps on each
stair--his spirit was perceptibly rising, and to us who knew him this
was eloquent. She would have him not to talk; but he said thrice,
"Thank God! thank God! thank God!" And the spirit of woman's curiosity
overcoming her, she said, "Tell me for what, Admiral, and talk no
more." He said, "As I lay in my albergo, in that cursed low ground
round the port, with its air like the breath of human beings, I lifted
up mine eyes to the hills, and I know that from this little hill
cometh my help."
I pondered on these words, for they had a ring about them that was not
natural to the Admiral's simple and direct way of speaking. It was not
extraordinary for him to wax sentimental, or to embellish his speech
with allusions to classics, such as I have recorded about the Fountain
of Arethusa; but "cometh" and "mine" were not in his style. But
recalling that the Admiral was a parson's son and deeply religious
after his own fashion, I made inquiry of the chaplain, Mr. Comyn, who
told me that it came from a favourite Psalm of the Admiral's--the
cxxi., I think--which he was in the habit of calling "the Traveller's
Psalm."
Sir William had made all preparations, with a sedan and specially
chosen bearers, for having him carried from his coach to his chamber;
but Lady Hamilton, with finer tact, perceived that if he could mount
on her arm, though it might take an hour, it would be good to give him
the feeling of recovery. And so it proved, for I do not think that he
received injury from this fatigue.
The palace was so vast that it took us many minutes passing down the
west wing to the chamber chosen for his sleeping-room, which lay at
the very end of the suite set apart for him. When we were arrived, he
insisted on moving up to his bed, which lay only a yard or two in from
the far or south-west corner. He steadied himself against one of the
left-hand posts at the foot of the bed, exclaiming, "I shall get well
here--I shall get well here."
And, indeed, if aspect affects the health, he might get well, for the
prospect from the bed was one which beggars my poor powers of
description; though I suppose that the view from the hill of
Pausilippo is even finer, for from it one can see the rifted hill, the
great fire-mountain Vesuvius, whose eruptions form one of our links
of sympathy with the ancient world. It was slumbering that day
peacefully amid the lately-dug-out ruins of Forum Pompeji, and the
flat-topped hillocks which yet cover two other ancient cities, and
half a dozen thriving modern towns swarming with people, as well as
the magnificent castle of St. Elmo, which completely dominates the
city. These, and the Castle of Nuovo, were shut off by the towering
rock which was the Acropolis of the ancient Parthenope, round which
the new city--Neapolis--grew up.
But the windows of the Admiral's chamber commanded view enough for any
mortal man to desire. In the distance were the long line of mountains
culminating in the snow-topped St. Angelo, twice as high as Vesuvius,
which divides the Bay of Naples from the Gulf of Salerno, and, in the
jaws of the Bay, Capri; while nearer in were the Castel dell' Uovo
rising up sheer from the drawbridge running out from Santa Lucia; the
hill of Pausilippo, with its white villas peeping out from dark trees;
and between them the royal garden with its feathery palms and ilex
avenues.
Above all there was the Bay of Naples, surely the bluest piece of
water under heaven, with its calm clear waters almost reflecting, far
out as they were, the stately ships which had just anchored, after
winning the greatest sea victory the world ever saw. The tall spars
and black and white hulls were thrown into relief by the swarm of
Mediterranean craft with their high-peaked noses, tall lateen sails of
glowing reds and yellows, and red-capped crews. From his very bed the
Admiral had his fleet, and every atmospheric change in the Bay, under
his own eye. I could see how he appreciated the thought which prompted
his being put where he need have no worry about what was happening to
his beloved fleet. And when he had feasted his eyes for a minute or
two on the glassy blue water under the shining sky, he cried, "Thank
you, dear friend--a thousand times, thank you!" And he repeated, "I
shall get well here."
I must tell you that the whole ship's company had been most seriously
concerned about the health of the Admiral. The wound he had in the
head in the battle, though it was only from a heavy splinter, produced
a sort of concussion of the brain; and this, with the business of so
great an affair, even after our glorious victory was gained, combined
with his natural proneness to sickness, produced a most dangerous
fever, which was like to have carried him off in any one of the
fifteen hours immediately before we cast anchor in the Bay of Naples,
though in the two or three weeks we were sailing up the Mediterranean
by way of Candia he was more than once seemingly full recovered.
After we had brought him to the Ambassador's palace I felt confident
that he would mend. A spell on shore always did much for his general
health, and we could see that under Lady Hamilton's direction he was
like to have the best of attention. As it turned out it was marvellous
what she did for him. The very next day he was fit to crack a jest
about the diet of asses' milk, which was judged to be the only
nourishment light enough for a digestion so disordered by fever. "What
would the French say?" he cried: "I can picture the Paris lampooner
drawing me with asses' ears in a lion's skin, imagining myself to be
the nobler animal. Yes, to the French I shall always be the ass
nourished on asses' milk who thought himself a lion!" And then he went
off into one of his peals of laughter--rather a shaky peal it must be
confessed--but then a straw will serve to show which way the wind
blows.
What set him up above all (and set us up too, you may be sure--the
Admiral's secretary, Will and myself, and generally one or two of the
captains) was the pains My Lady took to keep his mind from troubling
about his condition. The ship surgeon, had he been a landsman, might
have been expected to be flat against it, after the manner of most
doctors, and to have prescribed rest, complete rest, seeing no one,
darkened rooms, and so on; but Michael Jefferson was a man of a
different stamp. It was his business to make men fit for duty again
with as little rest as possible. And then he knew the Admiral. What
would that eager, never-resting, planning mind have done in a darkened
room, where he could see nothing, cut off from all friends who could
give him any news of his fleet? He would have imagined, to say the
least of it, a French fleet entering the Bay, and he not being on his
ship to have the honour of beating them. In short, he would have
harassed himself into his grave.
My Lady went to the root of the matter at once: "It is not rest he
wants," she maintained; "it is not physic he needs, but dieting
carefully and treating like a spoiled child. I must do the spoiling,"
she said, with that smile which lit up her whole face and made her
eyes so soft; and I could vow that when she used those words she had
not a thought of their ever being any more than friends.
I have read somewhere a fairy tale in which people were waited on by
invisible servants, so that the dishes took and left their places on
the table as it were of their own accord, and in perfect silence. It
was, in a sort, after this manner that the Admiral's wants and
pleasures were supplied.
The room being at the end of a wing had windows upon three sides--west
and south and east; and each window, of course, had heavy close
lattices of a dark green colour, as well as projecting awnings of a
striped canvas, which could be raised or lowered at pleasure. By aid
of these the Admiral could have as much tempered sun as he desired
almost from sunrise to sunset; and it seemed as if he never could have
his fill of sun. He often said in after years with regret, that
_living_ meant living on the Mediterranean.
The windows opening on three sides, and the nearness of the sea also,
gave always a pleasant current of air; and in this great airy chamber,
always kept cool, and always full of gracious sunshine, with noiseless
hands and feet a succession of diversions were provided in the same
unobtrusive way by the hostess herself. For though it was the
Admiral's bed-chamber, after he had had his light breakfast served in
the morning, it was really more of a reception-room, where, as he felt
well enough, he transacted the business which was so near his heart,
where a great man and son of Anak like Captain Troubridge might be
seen waiting and watching with the affection of a woman.
My Lady was famous for her deep, soft voice. She would be singing and
singing a room or two away for the Admiral to hear her, as it were by
accident; and he would lie and listen, and she would sing until the
dream was broken by some mischance. At another time she floated into
the room unobserved, carrying in her hands a long Indian scarf or
shawl, and went through the "Attitudes," a species of tableaux vivants
for which she was so celebrated.
The Admiral was resting, and did not see her for some time after she
had begun; and we, not feeling sure that he did not sleep, though I
think she had made sure, stood trying to express by dumb show our
astonishment and applause. The Admiral gave no sign beyond opening his
eyes dreamily; but he told her afterwards that he had never seen
illusions so perfect, grace so absolute, beauty so divine. But I think
he was most moved when she stole in to his side to bring him flowers
or grapes, or a healing ptisane, and stayed smoothing his pillow,
laying cool bandages on his wounded head, taking his hands in those
magnetic hands, which were so smooth and yet so strong, and in a rich,
low voice--not asking how he _felt_, but telling him of all the
pleasant things prepared for him to do in a day or two, when the
surgeon had pronounced that he should be ready--telling him what king
and people alike were saying about their liberator, telling him this
good jest, and that, with a woman's reverence for a hero.
It pleased him to have her sit by him, for her "magnetism" was
marvellous; and she would sit by the hour as patiently as though she
had been his mother--amusing him if he would be amused, listening to
him if he would talk, or writing his letters, if he desired it, to his
wife; and I, who witnessed it all, think that at that time there was
nothing in her mind but pure woman's hero-worship, and I could not
help crying to myself, "What a man, and what a woman!" This man had
re-writ the history of Europe with his famous sea-fight, in which he
had taken risks such as no man ever took before in the world, and was
withal as sympathetic as a woman; and this woman led even the chaplain
to exclaim that she had, what the ancients prized above all things,
that mysterious quality of VENUSTAS, which he endeavoured to explain
to us as sheer loveliness--the possession of all the graces which went
to form their conception of Venus, the goddess of love and beauty.
And so within a few days the Admiral was about and able to attend, in
some fashion, the _fêtes_ given day and night in his honour (and much
to his inconvenience), the principal of which were the grand ball
given by Count Esterhazy, and the ball of the British Ambassador on
the 29th, which was the Admiral's birthday, and of which more anon.