In communicating his ideas to his subordinates Nelson did not confine himself to official intercourse; on the contrary, his natural disposition impelled him rather to familiar conversation with them on service subjects. "Even for debating the most important naval business," we learn through his confidential secretary at this period, "he preferred a turn on the quarter-deck with his captains, whom he led by his own frankness to express themselves freely, to all the stiffness and formality of a council of war."[63] An interesting instance of these occasional counsels has been transmitted to us by one of his captains, then little more than a youth, but the last to survive of those who commanded ships under him. "Throughout the month of October, 1804, Toulon was frequently reconnoitred, and the Phoebe and Amazon were ordered to cruize together. Previous to their going away Lord Nelson gave to Captains Capel and Parker several injunctions, in case they should get an opportunity of attacking two of the French frigates, which now got under weigh more frequently. The principal one was, that they should not each single out and attack an opponent, but 'that both should endeavour together to take one frigate; if successful, chase the other: but if you do not take the second, still you have won a victory, and your country will gain a frigate.' Then, half laughing, and half snappishly, said kindly to them as he wished them good-bye, 'I daresay you consider yourselves a couple of fine fellows, and when you get away from me you will do nothing of the sort, but think yourselves wiser than I am!'"[64]
The game of cat and mouse, off Toulon, occasioned one incident which greatly upset Nelson's composure, and led to a somewhat amusing display of ire, excited by a statement of the French admiral, published throughout Europe, that his renowned antagonist had run away from him. On the 13th of June, two French frigates and a brig were seen under the Hyères Islands, where they had been sent by Latouche Tréville, upon the report that some enemy's cruisers were in the neighborhood. Nelson despatched two frigates after them, which, owing to light winds, did not get near until the next day. The French vessels being then seen from the "Victory" to be close in with the batteries, the "Excellent," 74, was sent to support the frigates, and some time afterwards the other four ships also bore up for the main entrance to the islands. Upon this, Latouche Tréville got under way, and at about 5 P.M. came out of the harbor with his eight sail-of-the-line. Nelson's division reduced their canvas, hauling to the wind in line of battle, on the starboard tack, which, with the then wind, was with their heads off shore, and the "Excellent" was recalled, although she could not rejoin till midnight. In this order they hove-to (stopped), with two reefs in the topsails and the main yards square, at 7.30 P.M., which at that time of the year was broad daylight, and in this general position remained till next morning.
As the distance between the hostile bodies was apparently from twelve to fifteen miles, the French admiral's observations may have failed to recognize that the enemy, by backing his topsails, had offered a fair challenge; else, in his report of this very commonplace occurrence, he could scarcely have used, concerning the movement of heading south, the expression, prit chasse, which, whether rendered "retired," or "retreated," or, as Nelson did, "ran away," was a misrepresentation of the facts, and heightened by the assertion that he pursued till nightfall, and next morning could not see the enemy. Writing to Elliot four days after the affair happened, Nelson mentioned casually his view of the matter. "Monsieur La Touche came out with eight sail of the line and six frigates, cut a caper off Sepet, and went in again. I brought-to for his attack, although I did not believe anything was meant serious, but merely a gasconade." "On the morning of the 15th," he tells Acton on the same day, "I believe I may call it, we chased him into Toulon." His purpose evidently was, as has been shown, to fight, if the enemy meant business, to leeward of the port, and far enough off to give Bickerton a chance to come up. Great was his wrath, two months later, when Latouche's statement reached him, and he found that not only no mention was made of the relative numbers, but that the offensive expression quoted had been used. "I do assure you," he wrote to the Admiralty, enclosing a copy of the day's log, "I know not what to say, except by a flat contradiction; for if my character is not established by this time for not being apt to run away, it is not worth my time to attempt to put the world right." He might well have rested there,—an imputation that might have injured an untried man could provoke only a smile when levelled at his impregnable renown; but his ruffled mind would not let him keep quiet, and in private correspondence he vented his rage in terms similar to those used of the Danish commodore after Copenhagen. "You will have seen Monsieur La Touche's letter of how he chased me and how I ran. I keep it; and, by G—d, if I take him, he shall eat it." He is a "poltroon," a "liar," and a "miscreant." It may be added that no admiral, whether a Nelson or not, could have abandoned the "Excellent" under the conditions.
Immediately after this abortive affair, Nelson, convinced by it that something more than a taunt was needed to bring his enemy under his guns, stationed frigates at the Hyères, and to cruise thence to the eastward as far as Cape Taillat, to intercept the commerce between Italy and Toulon and Marseilles. For this purpose he had recommended, and the Government had ordered, a blockade of all Genoese ports including Spezia; Genoa, now the Ligurian Republic, being considered as much France as Toulon. Nothing, he said, could distress France more. This blockade had been but feebly enforced, owing to the lack of small cruisers; but he hoped to attain the same end by the frigates off the Hyères. "I really am of opinion," he told their commander, "that it will force La Touche out." In the latter, however, he had to do with an opponent of skill as well as of resolution. Firmly imbued with the French tradition, and with Bonaparte's instructions, which subordinated his local action entirely to the great scheme in which the Toulon fleet had its appointed part, Latouche Tréville was neither to be provoked nor betrayed into an action, by which, however tempting the promise, his fleet might be made unfit for their intended service. Nelson did him no more than justice, when he said, "I am confident, when he is ordered for any service, that he will risk falling in with us, and the event of a battle, to try and accomplish his orders;" but, short of the appointed time, nothing else could entice him. In vain did the British admiral bait his trap by exposing frigates, without visible support, to draw him to leeward, while the hostile fleet hovered out of sight to windward. The shrewd Frenchman doubtless felt the temptation, but he distrusted the gifts too plausibly tendered.
Besides the interest of the public service, Nelson had the strongest personal motives for bringing matters to an issue. The prolonged suspense and the anxiety were exhausting him, the steady tension even of the normal conditions fretted him beyond endurance; but when a crisis became accentuated by an appearance that the enemy had eluded him, his feelings of distress, acting upon an enfeebled organization, and a nervous temperament so sensitive that he started at the mere dropping of a rope beside him, drove him almost to distraction. On such an occasion he wrote: "I am absolutely beginning this letter in a fever of the mind. It is thick as butter-milk, and blowing a Levanter; and the Narcissus has just spoke me to say, 'she boarded a vessel, and they understood that the men had seen, a few days before, twelve sail of ships of war off Minorca. It was in the dusk, and he did not know which way they were steering.' This is the whole story, and a lame one. You will imagine my feelings, although I cannot bring my mind to believe. To miss them, God forbid.... If I should miss these fellows, my heart will break: I am actually only now recovering the shock of missing them in 1798. God knows I only serve to fight those scoundrels; and if I cannot do that, I should be better on shore." When the weather cleared, and a reconnoissance showed the news was false, his intense relief found expression in the words: "I believe this is the only time in my life, that I was glad to hear the French were in port." "The French ships," he says at another time, "have either altered their anchorage, or some of them have got to sea in the late gales: the idea has given me half a fever. If that admiral were to cheat me out of my hopes of meeting him, it would kill me much easier than one of his balls. Since we sat down to dinner Captain Moubray has made the signal, but I am very far from being easy."
On the 12th of May, 1804, there was a change of administration in England. Earl St. Vincent left the Admiralty, as First Lord, and was succeeded by Lord Melville. A few days before this Nelson, by a general promotion, had become Vice-Admiral of the White, the rank in which he died eighteen months later.
The return of summer had improved his health from the low condition into which it had fallen during the winter, but he did not flatter himself as to the future. The combination of colorless monotony with constant racking anxiety slackened the springs of moral energy, which, and which alone, responding joyously to a call to action, afforded the stimulus capable of triumphing over his bodily weakness, and causing it for the moment to disappear. "This is an odd war," he said, "not a battle!" Tying himself to the ship, in profound sympathy with the crews, he never went ashore from the time he left Malta in June, 1803, until he reached Gibraltar in July, 1805; nor was he ever outside of the "Victory" from July 30, 1803, the day he went on board her from the "Amphion." "Always shut up in the Victory's cabin," as he himself wrote, "cannot be very good for the constitution. I think you will find me grown thin, but never mind." Other officers, especially of the frigates, got their occasional runs ashore; but his slight figure was continually in view, walking the front of the poop, to the unconscious contentment of the men, thus reminded ever that their admiral shared their deprivations. This profound seclusion to the narrow circle of the flagship, although often broken by the presence of officers from the other vessels, who, whether cruising in company with the fleet, or arriving with tidings from different ports, were daily partakers of the admiral's hospitable table, could not but depress him; and there was with him the constant sense of loss, by absence from those he held most dear. "I have not a thought except on you and the French fleet," he tells Lady Hamilton; "all my thoughts, plans, and toils tend to those two objects. Don't laugh at my putting you and the French fleet together, but you cannot be separated."
Yet even towards her his mind is fixed as of old, that she must take a place second to duty. She had, it appears, insisted upon her wish to come out to the station to be near him. Malta and Italy were both, he said, out of the question. His place was off Toulon, as long as the French fleet was there; therefore he could not go into harbor; nay, "I might absolutely miss you, by leaving the Mediterranean without warning. The other day we had a report the French were out, and seen steering to the westward. We were as far as Minorca when the alarm proved false." As for coming on board the "Victory" to live, which she seems to have suggested, "Imagine what a cruize off Toulon is; even in summer time we have a hard gale every week, and two days' heavy swell. It would kill you; and myself to see you. Much less possible to have Charlotte, Horatia, &c., on board ship! And I, that have given orders to carry no women to sea in the Victory, to be the first to break them! I know, my own dear Emma, if she will let her reason have fair play, will say I am right; but she is like Horatia, very angry if she cannot have her own way." "Horatia is like her mother; will have her own way, or kick up a devil of a dust,"—an observation both Greville and Hamilton had had to make. "Your Nelson," he concludes, "is called upon, in the most honourable manner, to defend his country. Absence to us is equally painful: but, if I had either stayed at home, or neglected my duty abroad, would not my Emma have blushed for me? She could never have heard my praises, and how the country looks up." "The call of our country," he says again, "makes it indispensable for both our honours—the country looks up to the services of the poorest individual, much more to me, and are you not a sharer of my glory?"
Of his daily life on board, and intercourse with others, we have intimations, fragmentary yet sufficient. "Our days," he himself says, "pass so much alike that, having described one, you have them all. We now [October] breakfast by candle light; and all retire, at eight o'clock, to bed." "We cruise, cruise, and one day so like another that they are hardly distinguishable, but hopes, blessed hopes, keeps us up, that some happy day the French may come out, then I shall consider my duty to my country fulfilled." Of one of these monotonous days we have received a description from an officer,[65] a member of the admiral's mess, who had then too lately entered upon them to feel the full weight of their deadly sameness.
"At 6 o'clock my servant brings a light and informs me of the hour, wind, weather, and course of the ship, when I immediately dress and generally repair to the deck, the dawn of day at this season and latitude being apparent at about half or three-quarters of an hour past six. Breakfast is announced in the Admiral's cabin, where Lord Nelson, Rear Admiral Murray, (the Captain of the Fleet,) Captain Hardy, commander of the Victory, the chaplain, secretary, one or two officers of the ship, and your humble servant assemble and breakfast on tea, hot rolls, toast, cold tongue, &c., which when finished we repair upon deck to enjoy the majestic sight of the rising sun (scarcely ever obscured by clouds in this fine climate) surmounting the smooth and placid waves of the Mediterranean, which supports the lofty and tremendous bulwarks of Britain, following in regular train their admiral in the Victory. Between the hours of 7 and 2 there is plenty of time for business, study, writing, and exercise, which different occupations I endeavour to vary in such a manner as to afford me sufficient employment. At 2 o'clock a band of music plays till within a quarter of 3, when the drum beats the tune called, 'The Roast Beef of Old England' to announce the Admiral's dinner, which is served up exactly at 3 o'clock, and which generally consists of three courses and a dessert of the choicest fruit [66] and the well earned laurels which he has acquired. Coffee and liqueurs close the dinner about half-past 4 or 5 o'clock, after which the company generally walk the deck, where the band of music plays for nearly an hour.[67] A 6 o'clock tea is announced, when the company again assemble in the Admiral's cabin, where tea is served up before 7 o'clock, and, as we are inclined, the party continue to converse with his lordship, who at this time generally unbends himself, though he is at all times as free from stiffness and pomp as a regard to proper dignity will admit, and is very communicative. At 8 o'clock a rummer of punch with cake or biscuit is served up, soon after which we wish the Admiral a good night (who is generally in bed before 9 o'clock). Such is the journal of a day at sea in fine or at least moderate weather, in which this floating castle goes through the water with the greatest imaginable steadiness."