Nelson's Lady Hamilton by Meynell, Esther (cheapest way to read ebooks .txt) 📗

year earlier—and in February, 1799, he wrote : " I have promised my flag shall not go out of the mole at Palermo

LADY HAMILTON

GEORGE KOMNEY From an engraving by J. Conde in the " European Magazine : '

THE FLIGHT FROM NAPLES195

without the approbation of the Court, and that I never expect to get."

But it is clear, from his letters written during the early months at Palermo, that he suffered much conflict of spirit, which, as always, reacted on his bodily health. To Lady Parker he wrote, at the beginning of February—

" My health is such that without a great alteration, I will venture to say a very short space of time will send me to that bourne from whence none return; but God's will be done. After the Action I had nearly fell into a decline, but at Naples my invaluable friends Sir William and Lady Hamilton nursed and set me up again. I am worse than ever: my spirits have received such a shock that I think they cannot recover it, ... 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."

To Alexander Davison he wrote, at the end of the same month, in a still more melancholy strain—

" Believe me, my only wish is to sink with honour into the grave, and when that shall please God, I shall meet death with a smile.

196 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON

Not that I am insensible to the honours and riches my King and Country have heaped upon me, so much more than any Officer could deserve ; yet I am ready to quit this world of trouble, and envy none but those of the estate six feet by two." But if Lady Hamilton and the feeling she aroused in his honourable heart were the real cause of all this inward conflict, owing to the irony of circumstances, it was to Lady Hamilton he turned for comfort in his depression. She was very skilful in comforting. And so the tangle grew, till nothing could cut the knot save flight from a dangerous atmosphere and an innocently dangerous woman—for there is nothing in Lady Hamilton's character to justify the belief that she deliberately set herself to entrap Nelson. But against the remedy of flight there was his promise to Maria Carolina that he would not desert her, as well as the Fourth Article of the Anglo-Sicilian Treaty, signed on the ist of December, 1798, which promised that Great Britain should keep a naval force in the Mediterranean " decidedly superior to that of the enemy, in order to provide by this means for the safety of the dominions of his Sicilian Majesty." All through the unhappy business at Palermo his duty as a British admiral and his inclination as a man seemed to point the same way. That was the fatal attack in front and rear before which he eventually went down. But in later years, when her influence over him

THE FLIGHT FROM NAPLES197

•was supreme and undoubted, Emma Hamilton used to boast that she had never turned him from his duty to his country; and certain it is, as any impartial student of his letters and despatches at this period must admit, that, far from idling away his time in an Armida-garden, Nelson was very fully occupied with his professional duties and the affairs of his country and of the Two Sicilies. The danger lay in the fact that Emma was so much mixed up in these things. She interpreted and translated and copied, not only for her husband, but for Nelson. Sir William told Greville that " Lord Nelson, for want of language and experiences of this court and country, without Emma and me would be at the greatest loss every moment/' She claimed a part in big affairs ; she was the " Patroness of the Navy," the ambassadress of the Queen, and later (at this time she was inclined to put Sicily first) the ardent upholder of English glory. She could not be ignored or put on one side. When Lady Nelson inquired as to the admiral's return, he told her, " If I have the happiness of seeing their Sicilian Majesties safe on the throne again, it is probable I shall still be home in the summer. Good Sir William, Lady Hamilton and myself are the mainsprings of the machine which manages what is going on in this country. We are all bound to England, when we can quit our posts with propriety." It is probable that quiet and retiring

198 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON

Frances Nelson would be puzzled to account for Lady Hamilton as a <( mainspring" in political matters. She had as yet no idea of the exuberant vitality of the British Minister's wife. At Palermo, as at Naples, Lady Hamilton was in the centre of the stage. Was it business and the fate of dynasties, Emma must be consulted; was it pleasure, no child there gayer than she; was it sickness, there was no nurse so kind. Nelson found her on every side. She could never have so won him had she been merely a beautiful woman, or merely a clever and capable one. It was the combination of her many qualities that stole away the heart of the great and simple admiral.

But susceptible as he was by nature to feminine influence and feminine charm, Nelson was not lightly turned from the paths of honourable and upright dealing between man and man, and man