NELSON
Lord Rosebery may have forgotten it, but in one of our perigrinations
round and round Berkeley Square (I lived next door to him) he made a
remark to me which made a deep and ineffaceable impression on me--that
he felt sure one of the great reasons of Nelson being so in the hearts
of his countrymen was the conviction that he had been slighted by
Authority and even so after his death. Unquestionably his brother
Admirals were envious. He was kept kicking his heels at Merton on half
pay in momentous times, and so poor as to necessitate his getting
advances from his Banker. He was cavalierly treated when he was told
to haul down his flag and come home after the Battle of the Nile. I
know all about the Queen of Naples and Lady Hamilton; but what was that
in comparison with his astounding genius for war and his hold on the
Fleet? And I want to draw attention to this delightful trait in his
glorious character. Supposing (what I don’t admit) that there was any
irregularity in his attachment to Lady Hamilton, he never disguised
his feeling for her, or his gratitude to her for all she did for his
grievously wounded and frail body after the Nile and her splendid
conduct in getting his Fleet revictualled and stored by the Neapolitans
through her influence with the King and Queen, when all the Authorities
were against it. He used to ask his Captains to drink her health, and
said (in my opinion quite truly), that if there were more Emmas there
would be more Nelsons.
Then look at the Battle of the Nile! It was an incomparable battle--but
it only made Nelson into a Common or Garden Lord; when the Battle of
Cape St. Vincent, which was practically won by Nelson, made Sir John
Jervis into an Earl. History is so written that no end of literary
gentlemen will endeavour to confute all I am saying by extracts (or, as
they will call them, facts) from Contemporary Documents and Newspapers.
Well now, to-day, read the _Morning Post_ and _Daily News_ on the same
incident! (For myself I prefer the _Daily News_.) Again, Nelson died
poor. That appeals. What Prize Money might he not have accumulated, had
he chased dollars as he chased the enemy! Then with his dying breath,
mortally wounded in the hour of the greatest of sea victories, he asks
his country to provide for his friend as he could do nothing for her
himself; and, whatever may have been her faults, she had nursed and
tended him, not only when sorely wounded after the Nile, but afterwards
when his frail body was almost continuously racked with pain. She died
in penury and found a pauper’s grave in a foreign land. A passing
Englishman paid her funeral expenses. It makes one rise up and say
“Damn!”
That vivid immortal spirit, whose life was his country’s, who never
flogged a man; whose heart was tender and “worn on his sleeve for daws
to peck at,” has to suffer even now for miscreants who published his
letters to this friend of his that only her eye was meant to see. Also,
Prudes nowadays forget how very different was the standard of morals
at that time. Does not history tell us that Dukes were the honoured
results of illicit relationships? And we don’t think any the worse of
Abraham because he was the husband of more than one wife. But let that
pass. I heard yesterday that a distinguished Bishop said he loved my
sentiments but not my words. But fancy! Nelson left on half-pay in War!
It’s unbelievable, but yet it so happened. It was envy; and he was no
sycophant, so he couldn’t be a courtier. It was so with him as with
our great Exemplar: “The Common People heard him gladly.” And what a
“Send-off” it was on Southsea beach at Portsmouth when he embarked for
Trafalgar! What a scene it was, with these Common People surging round
him--none else were there, and neither the King nor the Admiralty sent
a dummy, as is customary, to represent them. But isn’t it always the
way? General Booth and Doctor Barnardo weren’t buried in Westminster
Abbey; but they had a more glorious funeral--millions of the “Common
People” followed them to their graves, unmarshalled and unsolicited.
Give me the Common People, and a fig for your State ceremonial!
[Illustration: 1904. AGED 63. ADMIRAL.
Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth.]
Perhaps in this cursory view of Nelson one may be permitted to
seize on what appears to me the central incident of his life, which so
peculiarly illustrates his extraordinary genius for War. His audacity!
His imagination! His considered rashness! I think myself the Battle of
the Nile is that incident--for this reason: that it has been recorded
in writing what actually occurred to Lord Nelson and to the French
Admiral at the very same instant of time--each having at his side the
very same officer in each Fleet. It was sunset. Nelson was walking
the deck with the Navigating Officer of the Fleet--the “Master of the
Fleet” was his technical title. The look-out man at the mast-head
reports seeing on the horizon the mast-heads of a mass of ships at
anchor--it was the French Fleet in Aboukir Bay. Nelson instantly stops
in his walk and orders the signal to the Fleet to make all possible
sail and steer for the enemy. He is remonstrated with, both by his own
officers on board and by his favourite Captain of the Fleet at going in
to fight the French Fleet without any charts. If he waited till the sun
rose, they would be able to see from aloft the shoal water and so steer
with safety alongside the enemy. Nelson answers his favourite Captain
that if that Captain’s ship does get on shore, as he fears, then she’ll
be a buoy to show him where anyhow one shoal is. Troubridge _did_ get
on shore, and he _was_ a buoy. Nelson went in. The French Admiral
blew up at midnight in his flagship the “Orient” and Casabianca, his
Captain, and his son are the theme of a great poem: “The boy stood on
the burning deck.”
The French Admiral was walking up and down the deck with _his_ Master
of the Fleet, when _his_ look-out man at the mast-head reported on the
horizon the topmast sails of a number of ships. The French Admiral
stopped in his walk as abruptly as Nelson and at the very same instant
that Nelson stopped in his walk; but he said “It’s the English Fleet,
but they won’t come in to-night. They have no charts!” So he did
not recall his men from the shore--and in the result his fleet was
destroyed, and the one or two ships that did escape under Admiral
Dumanoir were captured. And Napoleon wrote, “But for Nelson at the Nile
I would have been Conqueror of the World”--or words to that effect.
And yet Nelson was only made a common or garden Lord for this great
battle, and spent two years on the Continent kicking his heels about to
pass the time before returning to England. Imagine! he wasn’t wanted!
I think Lord Rosebery was right--Nelson being slighted has led to his
greater appreciation.
Again--even a greater slight, a slight he feels more--when he looks
down from his monument in Trafalgar Square, does he see anywhere those
splendid Captains of his? But let alone those Captains of his--does
he see anywhere a single Admiral? _Not one._ And yet who made England
what she is? Those splendid Sea Heroes are in very deed “_England’s
forgotten worthies_”! Yes! Nelson looks down from his isolated column,
and looks in vain for Hawke, Dundonald, Howe, Hood, Rodney, Cornwallis,
Benbow, “_and a great multitude which no man can number_”--all Seamen
of Deathless Fame, fighting single frigate actions, cutting out the
enemy’s ships from under the guns of forts, sending in fire ships and
burning the enemy’s vessels thought to be safe in harbour under the
guns of their forts--Doers of Imperishable Deeds![13] Death found them
fighting. We have heaps of statues to everybody else. Indeed such a lot
of them that they reach down as far off as Knightsbridge. But who knows
about Quiberon--one of the greatest of sea fights? And if you mention
Hawke, your friend probably thinks only of his worthy descendant--the
cricketer.
An old woman eating a penny bun asked a friend of mine called Buggins,
when she was passing through Trafalgar Square, “_What are them lions
a-guarding of?_” Buggins told her that her penny bun would have cost
her threepence if it hadn’t been for the man them lions were a-guarding
of.
When I see the Duke of York’s Column still allowed to rear its futile
head, and scores of other fifth-rate nonentities glorified by statues,
I thank God I’m a sailor--we don’t want to be in that galley!
I began my sea life with the last of Nelson’s Captains, through
Nelson’s own niece; and I fitly, I think, among my last words may ask
the Nation to do justice to Nelson’s Trade! This country owes all she
has to the sea, it was the sea that won the late war, and if we’d stuck
to the sea we should not now be thinking of bankruptcy and some of
us imagining Carthage! We were led away by Militarist folly to be a
conscript Nation and it will take us all we know to recover from it. We
shall recover, _for England never succumbs!_