It seems to me, who spent so important a part of my life in those
waters, that it would be difficult to find a greater contrast under
the same skies than that presented by King Ferdinand's two kingdoms
and two capitals. Naples, as the Admiral said, is a city of fiddlers
and light-o'-loves, utterly irresponsible; willing to begin a war with
a nation like France, without counting the cost; marching to battle
with the intention of turning her back the moment the enemy stopped
retreating and faced her; willing to squander money that was needed
for the very existence of the kingdom on pasteboard decorations and
mythological _fêtes_; willing to accept any strong master, as Delilah
accepted Samson, and from the very first thinking how she might betray
him.
But Naples is a lovely city, reposing serenely on one of the world's
most beautiful bays, surrounded by the most perfect ruins of the
everyday life of the ancient world, but far enough off from the fiery
mountain which first wrought their ruin and then preserved them,
(hermetically sealed in lava, for the delight of people born two
thousand years later,) to regard it as a mere incident in the
landscape, or a curio for the amusement of the citizens and the
attraction of strangers.
Marvellous is the atmosphere in which Naples lives her lotus life:
the blueness of the sky and sea are proverbial; there are hills for
breezy villas, and mountains for sanatoriums all round; soft warm sea
to bathe in, medicinal springs to drink; and a soil that would grow
anything, to provide wine and oil and corn and fruit. While from the
other side of the lofty range of mountains, which guards her health
from the malaria, stretches the vast meadow between the Apennines and
the sea, where countless flocks and herds wander round the eternal
Temples of Paestum.
Yes, Naples is a Delilah--a beautiful creature without morals, without
chasteness, without honour, but capable of forgetting herself in soft
love--a creature that loves banqueting and excitement and lights and
music and flowers--a creature, in fact, typified by the merry music
which her light-hearted beggars play in her streets. And as Naples is,
so is her territory, except the grim Calabria, which saved her in her
hour of need.
But very different is Sicily, the beautiful slave, darkest of the
daughters of Europe, who has worn the fetters of one master after
another, sometimes after desperate resistance, sometimes with calm
submission to the inevitable, but always with deep black hatred in her
heart.
You can hardly be an hour in Sicily without feeling that you are among
a nation suffering from ancient and incurable wrongs. There is
something in the very physiognomy of the Sicilians which suggests a
spirit brooding over the national curse.
The Sicilians are not courageous, but they are desperate. The regiment
of Highlanders which carried the day on the Heights of Abraham, and so
won Quebec and won Canada, could defeat the whole population of Sicily
on a level plain. But the knowledge that they have this power, and
that their vengeance would come like an act of God on the following
day, would not deter a Sicilian from slaughtering stragglers. An army
of Sicilians would not stand for a moment against the vehement
bayonets and claymores; but the Sicilian will always strike when he
has the power, undeterred by consequences.
And no less contrasted than kingdom with kingdom and people with
people, is capital with capital. There is no light-hearted music in
Palermo streets, save that which comes from Naples. And the Sicilian
is too grave and dignified to chaffer or to make himself cheap or
dear. And with the Sicilian Delilah the story is not one of banqueting
and music, but one of wild passion and desperate to-morrows.
It is not often that I find myself thinking such fine thoughts as
these; but I own that I was amazingly impressed by the difference that
the short sail between Naples and Palermo made in the atmosphere of
the Court and the temperament of the Admiral. In fact, his whole
nature seemed to be changed from the time that he set foot on what the
chaplain says was called by the ancients "the Laughing Land."
He wrote himself to Lady Parker, when they had been but a day or two
over the month at Palermo:--
"I am worse than ever; my spirits have received such a shock
that I think they cannot recover it. You who remember me always
laughing and gay would hardly believe the change. But who can
see what I have and be well in health?--kingdoms lost and a
Royal Family in distress. But they are pleased to place
confidence in me; and whilst I live, and my services can be
useful to them, I shall never leave this country, although I
know that nothing but the air of England, and peace and
quietness, can perfectly restore me."
We certainly landed under most distressing circumstances. The Queen,
who had the heart of a lion, and loved life as a lovely woman should,
was crushed by the death of her little child, slain with the
sea-sickness when within sight of land, which we could not make by
reason of the wind. And the Admiral was overcome by the casting down
of all hopes of concerted success against the hated French by the
cowardice of the Neapolitan counsels and army, and the incompetence,
if it were nothing worse, of General Mack. The attitude, too, of My
Lady but added to the situation. This extraordinary woman, I verily
believe, found something fascinating in the universal air of gloom and
tragedy. To think that the Admiral was the centre of so much peril and
anxiety, and yet could be won from his woes by the magic of her
companionship, gratified her vanity, which was one of the elements
that counted much in her character.
Not that she was either daunted, or willing to see great issues lost
while she consoled herself and him in a theatrical Paradise. She had a
profound faith in the man she loved--her hero; and she felt sure that
in the darkest hour his genius would flash forth and strike the enemy
with lightning. Nor had she lost her gay, indomitable heart. If she
had thought that the right medicine for the moment was to force
cheerfulness, she would have used the whole strength of her beauty and
accomplishments and brightness to try and inspire the Court. But she
felt, I am convinced, that tragedy was the keynote for the moment. So
tragedy it was.
To their Majesties was brought every day the news of some fresh
fragment of their kingdom having fallen away from them, yielding like
rotten wood to the touch of the French. To the Admiral most days was
brought some fresh confirmation of his worst fears. The two points,
for instance, in which he was most interested, after the fate of the
Kingdom of Naples, were the capture of Malta and the destruction of
the transports at Alexandria, which had taken the French to Egypt, and
might bring them back again when their fleet, preparing at Brest,
should enter the Mediterranean, form a junction with the Spaniards,
and engage ours.
At this distance of time, I remember well one morning, when My Lady
came on board with that radiant smile, tempered to tender solicitude,
at a moment when the Admiral was almost fit to jump overboard under
the accumulation of unfavourable dispatches. Not one of the Allies was
doing what had been expected of them. One even of his commanders was
failing him.
I watched her cross the deck, full of grace and womanly graciousness.
I did not mind her calling me Tubby that day: there was an air of
affectionateness in her frank greeting. I only conducted her to the
Admiral's state-room door, and there left her; but what passed I had
from his secretary, with whom he was too busily engaged to dismiss
him, as he was wont to dismiss any one when My Lady came to him. For
which, indeed, there was good enough reason, for she seldom came to
him alone in this fashion except on a matter of import.
When she entered, the Admiral flew to her agitatedly: "Oh, my dear
lady, my dear lady!"
"Why, goodness me, what is the matter, Nelson?"
He was so excited, that she was for the moment quite oblivious of the
secretary.
"Matter!" said the Admiral--"matter! The matter is England--their
Majesties--the Emperor--Russia--the Bey--Malta--and that infernal
jumping monkey, Sir Sidney Smith."
"The French are all right, then?" said My Lady, in good-humoured
sarcasm.
"The French!" said the Admiral: "they are robbers and murderers--a
band of thieves; and wars should cease, and all the world should join
in endeavouring to extirpate from off the face of the earth this race
of murderers, oppressors, and unbelievers. Divine Providence never
will permit these infidels to God to go unpunished."
"They have had thirty thousand pounds' worth of palaces and villas and
goods of mine," observed My Lady philosophically, and also perhaps to
divert the Admiral's thoughts into a new channel. "But what of the
rest of the world, from which you seem to have been hearing to-day?"
"Bad--bad--bad!" he said, with his intense eye fixed on some trifling
object in his state-room, of whose very outline he would be
unconscious. "Worst of all, perhaps, the Emperor and these
kingdoms,--though I cannot get England to do what she might do.
Ministers at home will not see the importance of things here. They
will not see the importance of sending money; and it is as impossible
to squeeze money out of Sicily as it is to grow corn upon a rock.
Without money their Majesties cannot move, and with money they would
do nothing."
"Oh, Nelson--the Queen!" said My Lady.
"Her Majesty," said the Admiral, "is a great king; she is beautiful,
she is adorable, she is royal-hearted. If it were only Her Majesty, we
should never have been where we are now; but the King will act with
Acton, or Acton with the King, I don't know which, and the d--d one of
them will try and hunt with the hounds and run with the hare, while
the French are in the very act of hanging him. What did they do at
Leghorn?--treated me as the master of a merchantman whose business it
was to transport the _brave_ Neapolitan troops, and whose business was
then to kick up my heels till the _brave_ Neapolitan general had made
up his mind to run away again! The bonds of neutrality were to be
drawn tight round the English, who could and would save Naples, and to
be stretched in every direction the French, who meant to swallow up
Naples as soon as they were ready, should choose; the King or Acton
thinking that, by burying its head in the sand, the ostrich would
escape being kicked."
"But, Nelson," said My Lady, "in common fairness to the King, you must
remember that neutrality with the French had to be observed; and the
Emperor was most particular upon the point, that there must be nothing
in the nature of operations against them, except at Malta, where they
had dispossessed His Majesty of part of his dominions."
"The Emperor," said the Admiral, with withering contempt: "was there
ever such a fool in a Paradise? How is it that none of Her Majesty's
wisdom and courage has descended to her brother's son? While he is
playing with his precious scruples Naples will go, and the Great Duchy
will go, and all the Emperor's fine new Italian dominions will go; and
the day will come, mark my words, Emma, when Buonaparte--should he
ever get back from Egypt--will enter Vienna in triumph and trample on
him in his own palace!"
"He is waiting for the Concert."
"The Concert, forsooth!--there is no Concert, except the Concert of
the French themselves to take all Europe. While the others are waiting
for each other, the policy of these robbers is to take the small
States, which cannot resist without the aid of the larger, and every
one of them will supply its quota of armies and resources to be used
against the larger, one by one, until they are all swallowed by the
Beast with the Ten Horns. Cannot the Emperor see that the very life of
his empire depends on his marching the best army he can put in the
field to Italy, and clearing out the French? And as for the King and
his blessed neutrality--why, his neutrality was only an alliance
against England which prevented us destroying the whole of the
privateers in North Italy at one sweep; for they all lay in the Mole
at Leghorn, besides the corn-ships which were waiting to carry the
French supplies, without which they could not maintain themselves a
month in Italy. And yet we could not touch one of them, because the
King was not at war with the French--the King who at that moment was
marching at the head of his army against the French, in Rome, and who
had already captured from them the Island fortress of Gozo!"
"Surely you see what a difficult position he is placed in----"
"And what about me, Madam? Am I not placed in a difficult position?
Well, pass by the King--there is Malta. Over and over again have I
been assured that Malta was just falling, and I do believe that if we
could land a few thousand regular troops the place would not hold out
long. The islanders are dead against the French; but the islanders
have no money or food, and hardly any arms, but what we have given
them. I have entreated Acton to send if it is only ten thousand pounds
worth of food. He answers that the Treasury is empty, but the Queen
herself has given up seven thousand ounces, and this will do
something. A hundred thousand pounds spent in food now would save the
kingdom. And as for all those stories about the French being on the
eve of surrendering, they are sheer imagination. The French know that,
unless something is done, of the two, Sicily is a great deal more
likely to fall than Malta, and it is their policy to wait and see what
becomes of Sicily. They know that Naples has fallen, long ago, and
that there is every chance of Messina following unless we can get some
British troops. And Mr. Duckworth will see that we don't do that. One
would imagine that Minorca was all Europe; whereas Minorca is not
fortified, and whoever has the stronger fleet can always have it. The
Maltese adore Ball; they have made him a kind of Chief and President
of their Parliament."
"Then Malta, at any rate, is right?"
"No; what can he do? He can only blockade the harbour to prevent
provisions getting in, and that not very successfully. Besides, the
smallest French squadron could make him draw off--he has so few
English ships."
"You will see to that, dear Nelson!"
"I, Madam? I should not have sufficient ships to await an action if
the Brest fleet gets in the Mediterranean. Some of my ships are at
Alexandria, some at Malta, others at Naples, Leghorn and Palermo.
Alexandria ought to be off my hands; the Russian and Turkish Admiral
should have been there some months ago. I ought not to need a ship
east of Kandia. These Russians mean no good; I don't trust them. They
are far more anxious to seize ports in the Mediterranean for their own
future use than to fight the French. They have got Corfu, and they
have their eye on Malta, their excuse being that their Emperor is
Grand Master of St. John, elected by those rascally Knights, who
unlocked the gates of Valetta for the French--a place the French could
never have unlocked from the outside, even if it had been empty. The
Ottoman Admiral is sailing about with the Russian, helping him to
seize points, which will afterwards be used against the Grand Signor.
The good Turk must look out, or he will find it cheaper to come to
terms with his enemy the French, rather than be sucked dry by his ally
the Russian. The Russian will never be content until he has
Constantinople, and as for the French in this present war they may go
hang. Russia is too far off to have anything to fear for itself; and
its Emperor is only moving so as to fish in the troubled waters.
Otherwise they would have gone to Alexandria as I have written, and
entreated, over and over. They could have what bombs and gun-vessels
they want; and I fear by this it is too late to destroy the shipping
in Alexandria, which the French have been steadily fortifying, while
the day after the Nile, with a handful of bombs and small craft, I
could have destroyed the whole in a couple of hours."
"Captain Sir Sidney Smith may do something. He is a good officer,
isn't he?"
"He's a coxcomb and an impertinent rascal, though he could be trusted
to fight if he found himself in an action. But he's cursed with an
idea that he is a diplomatist, in which he has unfortunately been
encouraged by our foolish Government, who have joined him in a
commission with his brother, the Minister at Constantinople, because
he knows a little of the Turk and his lingo."
"But surely that is an advantage?"
"No advantage, Madam, when the jumping Jack has not the sense or
manners to keep his commission as a diplomatist, and his commission as
a captain under my orders apart, but mixes them up in every dispatch,
so much that I ought not to read them, but tear them up for the most
insubordinate language ever addressed by a Captain to an Admiral. You
know that if there is one thing upon which I have set my mind in the
whole Mediterranean, it is this."
"I don't know what you refer to--this is the very first mention."
"That not one ship or soldier in that expedition should ever be
allowed to return to France. We have them boxed up in Egypt, and we
must keep them there. Well, this jackanapes writes to me that he
thinks it would be a good thing to secure the evacuation of Egypt by
granting them passports back to France, if they promise to go at
once--which takes away the whole work of my victory of the Nile. I
have wrote him that I will not accept one of his passports, and
strictly forbidden him to enter into any convention with the French. I
have wrote to Lord St. Vincent and Lord Spencer about him too. I shall
go home if I am not to be trusted."
"I am sure," says My Lady, "that it is not because you are not
trusted, but because Sir Sidney knows the language, and may therefore
be expected to hear more of what is going on than if he had to depend
on others for his hearsay."
"Languages are all right, but in a service like ours discipline is
first, and we are surrounded by treachery and undermining on every
side."
"The Court knows whom it can trust."
"Oh, all the traitors in Europe, Asia, and Africa, are not in Naples;
though one might well be excused for thinking so, seeing the numbers
of these gentry."
"What do you mean, then?"
"The most double-dyed villain of them all is the Bey of Tunis. For all
these months I have kept the large fleet of our only faithful ally,
the Portuguese, from prosecuting the war which is between Her Most
Faithful Majesty and the Bey; and he has repaid me by seizing ships
carrying my passports, and by sending ships with supplies to our
enemies, the French, shut up in Malta. He has, I hear too, been
entering into negotiations with the homicide, Buonaparte, for helping
him back to France."
"What shall you do with him?"
"I have wrote to Magra that I _will_ have my passports respected, and
that, as I will do no wrong, I will suffer none, and that I will sink
every ship I find conveying supplies to the enemy. But he is a
double-dyed villain; for when I sent the _Vanguard_ there, he seized
every Frenchman and French vessel in the place, saying that it was his
part to do that. The which he released so soon as the _Vanguard_
departed."
"I should make short work with the Bey. One can only trust these
Orientals when one does not need them."
"Indeed, that would not do. It is my duty to protect the Mussulmen
from the infidel French. Besides, there are traitors much nearer home
than that."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean either the Minister, or the Governors of Syracuse and
Messina. Malta might be further on by this, if the corn, so often
ordered to keep the Maltese from starvation, had ever been sent. It
has taken months to get a cargo of corn from Sicily to Malta, which is
almost within sight, and----"
"Have you any more 'ands'? You are as gloomy as a raven in a mist."
This with her sweetest smile.
"And worst of all, I hear rumours of the good St. Vincent, our father,
under whose fostering care we have been led to fame, going home for
ill-health at the moment when the French are coming into the
Mediterranean again."
"A pretty morning's work! And what shall you do about it all?"
"I can only pray to God that the faults of others may press as heavily
on the enemy as they press on me."
"Come out with me, Nelson, to-night," she said, laying her hand gently
on his arm. "All this can be grappled with, but not by one in this
anguish of mind. You must brace yourself up to face things in your old
light-hearted way. You shall dine with me to-night, and bring Will and
the other; and we will drive on the Marina, and have the new iced
cream, and see the night service in the Palace chapel."
"I believe it will do me good. After I have wrote my dispatches, there
is nothing of all this that I can do, but wait until my orders are
obeyed. And I believe you that I should go to work with a clearer mind
and a better spirit. I believe I have kept too much on my flagship
during this busy time. To tell you how dreary and uncomfortable the
_Vanguard_ appears, is only to tell you what it is to go from the
pleasantest society to a solitary cell, or from the dearest friends to
no friends: I have been so perfectly the _great_ man--not a creature
near me. From my heart I wish myself the little man again! You and
good Sir William have spoiled me for any place but with you."
My Lady was much gratified, but made nothing of it.
"Any society will serve after a ship, Nelson."
"Nay, but I love you all--Mrs. Cadogan too. You cannot conceive what I
feel when I call you all to my remembrance, as I stump up and down
this room in solitary grandeur, or with my secretary waiting to catch
my eye."
"Quit it, then, naughty man; and be sure and dine with us to-night,
and bring the boys."