The "Victory" was delayed in quarantine twenty-four hours, when orders from London directed her release. At 9 P.M. of the 19th of August, Nelson's flag was hauled down, and he left the ship for Merton, thus ending an absence of two years and three months. His home being but an hour's drive from the heart of London, the anxieties of the time, and his own eagerness to communicate his views and experience, carried him necessarily and at once to the public offices—to the Admiralty first, but also to the Secretaries for Foreign Affairs and for War, both of whom had occasion for the knowledge and suggestions of so competent and practised an observer. The present head of the Admiralty, Lord Barham, had succeeded to the office, unexpectedly, upon the sudden retirement of Melville the previous May. He was a naval officer, eighty years of age, who since middle life had exchanged the active sea-going of the profession, for civil duties connected with it. He had thus been out of touch with it on the military side; and although Nelson was of course well known to him by reputation and achievement, he had not that intimate personal experience of his character and habit of thought, upon which was based the absolute confidence felt by St. Vincent, and by all others who had seen the great warrior in active service. "Lord Barham is an almost entire stranger to me," wrote Nelson; but after their interview he left with him the journals in which were embodied the information obtained during his recent command, with his comments upon the affairs of the Mediterranean in particular, and, as incidental thereto, of Europe in general. Barham, who gave proof of great military capacity during his short term of office, was so much impressed by the sagacity and power of Nelson's remarks, that he assured the Cabinet he ought by all means to go back to the Mediterranean; and it may be assumed that the latter's wish so to do would have been gratified, at the time of his own choosing, had not other events interposed to carry him away earlier, and to end his career.
It was upon one of these visits to Ministers that Nelson and Wellington met for the only time in their lives. The latter had just returned from a long service in India, reaching England in September, 1805. His account of the interview, transmitted to us by Croker, is as follows:—
WALMER, October 1st, 1834. We were talking of Lord Nelson, and some instances were mentioned of the egotism and vanity that derogated from his character. "Why," said the Duke, "I am not surprised at such instances, for Lord Nelson was, in different circumstances, two quite different men, as I myself can vouch, though I only saw him once in my life, and for, perhaps, an hour. It was soon after I returned from India. I went to the Colonial Office[110] in Downing Street, and there I was shown into the little waiting-room on the right hand, where I found, also waiting to see the Secretary of State, a gentleman, whom, from his likeness to his pictures and the loss of an arm, I immediately recognised as Lord Nelson. He could not know who I was, but he entered at once into conversation with me, if I can call it conversation, for it was almost all on his side and all about himself, and in, really, a style so vain and so silly as to surprise and almost disgust me. I suppose something that I happened to say may have made him guess that I was somebody, and he went out of the room for a moment, I have no doubt to ask the office-keeper who I was, for when he came back he was altogether a different man, both in manner and matter. All that I had thought a charlatan style had vanished, and he talked of the state of this country and of the aspect and probabilities of affairs on the Continent with a good sense, and a knowledge of subjects both at home and abroad, that surprised me equally and more agreeably than the first part of our interview had done; in fact, he talked like an officer and a statesman. The Secretary of State kept us long waiting, and certainly, for the last half or three quarters of an hour, I don't know that I ever had a conversation that interested me more. Now, if the Secretary of State had been punctual, and admitted Lord Nelson in the first quarter of an hour, I should have had the same impression of a light and trivial character that other people have had; but luckily I saw enough to be satisfied that he was really a very superior man; but certainly a more sudden and complete metamorphosis I never saw."[111]
This is not the only record that remains to us of those interesting interviews with Cabinet Ministers, although the most have passed away unnoted. It was in one of them that he uttered a military opinion, for whose preservation we are indebted to his own mention of it in a private letter; an opinion so characteristic of his habits of thought, his reasoned motives of action, that, although it has before been quoted, it is fitting to repeat it in his own words and in full.
When he reached England, the naval situation, as far as then known, was that Napoleon had twenty-one French ships-of-the-line in Brest, and twenty-eight or nine, French and Spanish, in Ferrol; while Cornwallis had thirty-five British off Brest. This was the condition on the 15th of August, when Nelson parted from the fleet off Ushant. Very soon after his arrival in town, news was received that Villeneuve had gone to sea from Ferrol, and that Cornwallis, when informed of the fact, had divided his fleet, with great lack of judgment, keeping himself seventeen ships to confront the Brest squadron, while eighteen were sent to look for Villeneuve under the command of Admiral Calder. In the public discontent with the latter, it was not reassuring to know that, at a moment when every one's nerves were on the rack, he was again intrusted with the always difficult task of coping with a much superior force. While this state of excitement prevailed, Nelson called upon the Secretary of State, Lord Castlereagh, on the 23d of August. "Yesterday," he wrote to Captain Keats, "the Secretary of State, which is a man who has only sat one solitary day in his office, and of course knows but little of what is passed, and indeed the Minister,[112] were all full of the enemy's fleet, and as I am now set up for a Conjuror, and God knows they will very soon find out I am far from being one, I was asked my opinion, against my inclination, for if I make one wrong guess the charm will be broken; but this I ventured without any fear, that if Calder got close alongside their twenty-seven or twenty-eight sail, that by the time the enemy had beat our fleet soundly, they would do us no harm this year."
This acute perception of the reason why it was at times desirable and proper to hurl a smaller though more efficient force against superior numbers, content that the latter, as a factor, were for the campaign annihilated,—this realization of the possible fruitfulness of a defeat, or rather, of a battle wisely lost, as contrasted with what Jomini calls the sterile glory of fighting battles merely to win them,—is one of the most marked and decisive features of Nelson's genius as a general officer. It recurs over and over again, and at all periods, in his correspondence, this clear and full appreciation of the relation of the parts to the whole.[113] It underlay his sustained purpose during the long pursuit of the preceding months, that, if he found the allied squadron, "they would not part without a battle." Whatever else the result, that particular division would do no harm that year, and with it necessarily fell the great combination, whatever that might be, of which it was an essential factor. "The event would have been in the hands of Providence," he wrote to Barham; "but we may without, I hope, vanity, believe that the enemy would have been fit for no active service after such a battle." There is wanting to the completeness of this admirable impulse only the steadying resolve that he would bide his time, so as, to use Napoleon's phrase, to have the most of the chances on his side when he attacked. This also we know he meant to do. "I will wait, till they give me an opportunity too tempting to be resisted, or till they draw near the shores of Europe." In such qualification is to be seen the equipoise of the highest order of ability. This union of desperate energy with calculating wariness was in him not so much a matter of reasoning, though reason fully endorses it, as it was the gift of nature,—genius, in short. Reasoning of a very high order illuminates Nelson's mental processes and justifies his conclusions, but it is not in the power of reason, when face to face with emergency, to bridge the chasm that separates perception, however clear, from the inward conviction which alone sustains the loftiest action. "Responsibility," said St. Vincent, "is the test of a man's courage." Emergency, it may be said, is the test of his faith in his beliefs.
While those at the head of the State thus hung upon his counsels, and drew encouragement from his indomitable confidence, the people in the streets looked up to him with that wistful and reverent dependence which does not wholly understand, but centres all its trust upon a tried name. They knew what he had done in the now distant past, and they had heard lately that he had been to the West Indies, and had returned, having saved the chief jewel among the colonies of the empire. They knew, also, that their rulers were fearful about invasion, and that in some undefined way Nelson had stood, and would yet stand, between them and harm. The rapidity of his movements left little interval between the news of his being back at Gibraltar and the announcement of his arrival at Portsmouth, which was not generally expected. On the 19th of August, a day after the "Victory" anchored at Spithead, Lord Radstock wrote: "'T is extraordinary no official accounts have been received from Lord Nelson since the 27th of July. He then hinted that he might perhaps go to Ireland; nevertheless, we have had no tidings of him on that coast. I confess I begin to be fearful that he has worried his mind up to that pitch, that he cannot bear the idea of showing himself again to the world, until he shall have struck some blow, and that it is this hope that is now making him run about, half-frantic, in quest of adventures. That such unparalleled perseverance and true valor should thus evaporate in air is truly melancholy."
If any doubt of the approval of his countrymen mingled with the distress Nelson unquestionably felt at having missed the enemy, he was touchingly undeceived. As soon as the "Victory" and his flag were made out, the people flocked to Portsmouth, collecting on the ramparts of the town and other points of view, in inaudible testimony of welcome. As the barge pulled to the shore, and upon landing, he was greeted with loud and long-continued cheering. In London the same demonstrations continued whenever he was recognized in public. "Lord Nelson arrived a few days ago," wrote Radstock. "He was received in town almost as a conqueror, and was followed round by the people with huzzas. So much for a great and good name most nobly and deservedly acquired." "I met Nelson in a mob in Piccadilly," wrote Minto at the same time, "and got hold of his arm, so that I was mobbed too. It is really quite affecting to see the wonder and admiration, and love and respect of the whole world; and the genuine expression of all these sentiments at once, from gentle and simple, the moment he is seen. It is beyond anything represented in a play or in a poem of fame." In these few days was concentrated the outward reward of a life spent in the service of his country. During them, Nelson was conspicuously the first man in England,—first alike in the love of the people and in importance to the State.
On the private side, also, his life for this brief respite was eminently happy, marred only by the prospect of a speedy departure, the signal for which sounded even sooner than was expected. By his own account, he was only four times in London, and all the moments that could be spared from external calls he spent at Merton, where there gathered a large family party, including all his surviving brothers and sisters, with several of their children. "I cannot move at present," he writes on the 31st of August, in declining an invitation, "as all my family are with me, and my stay is very uncertain; and, besides, I have refused for the present all invitations." "I went to Merton on Saturday" (August 24th), wrote Minto, "and found Nelson just sitting down to dinner, surrounded by a family party, of his brother the Dean, Mrs. Nelson, their children, and the children of a sister. Lady Hamilton at the head of the table, and Mother Cadogan[114] at the bottom. I had a hearty welcome. He looks remarkably well and full of spirits. His conversation is a cordial in these low times. Lady Hamilton has improved and added to the house and the place extremely well, without his knowing she was about it. He found it already done. She is a clever being, after all: the passion is as hot as ever."
Over all hung, unseen, the sword of Damocles. Nelson himself seems to have been possessed already by vague premonitions of the coming end, which deepened and darkened around him as he went forward to his fate. The story told of his saying to the upholsterer, who had in charge the coffin made from the mast of the "Orient," that a certificate of its identity should be engraved on the lid, because he thought it highly probable that he might want it on his return, is, indeed, but a commonplace, light-hearted remark, which derives what significance it has purely from the event; but it is easy to recognize in his writings the recurrent, though intermittent, strain of unusual foreboding. Life then held much for him; and it is when richest that the possibility of approaching loss possesses the consciousness with the sense of probability. Upon a soul of his heroic temper, however, such presentiments, though they might solemnize and consecrate the passing moments, had no power to appall, nor to convert cheerfulness into gloom. The light that led him never burned more brightly, nor did he ever follow with more unfaltering step.