The Ambassador’s palace, I should have said, was on the outskirts of the town, at the bottom end of the Strada S. Caterina and just against the King’s Villa, which was not a house as it would sound to our English ears, but a garden with palm trees, and avenues of the ilex, and with many statues of white marble, running along the sea-shore between the city and Mergellina.
We were on a little hill, which I could see pleased the Admiral greatly, for a faint smile came over his face. This was one of his worst days.
No sooner had the carriage pulled up at the great door, than there flew out the most beautiful woman I ever saw, gracefully dressed in a cool muslin robe of the Turkish fashion, and with a jewelled chaplet bearing the inscription “Nelson and Victory” in the curly hair, so full of auburn lights that at times it looked of the gold colour Mr. Romney was so fond of painting. I needed not to remark the perfect oval of the dimpled face, nor its fairness and rosiness, so marvellously blent that people refused to believe it genuine till her fondness for sea-bathing parties set it beyond doubt, nor the most exquisite smile ever preserved on canvas, to know that it was My Lady Hamilton; for no sooner had she seen the Admiral than her laughing eyes grew moist and tender, and the corners of her mouth began to droop pitifully, and in a moment she had her arm round the Admiral’s back and under his right shoulder, with such a gentle, sympathetic touch that he moved from the carriage into the door almost without pain. Behind My Lady was a tall, somewhat bent, elderly gentleman, wearing his Order of the Bath and sundry Neapolitan decorations, like the Admiral, in full Court dress. This was, of course, Sir William Hamilton, K.C.B., his Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador and Plenipotentiary at the Court of the Two Sicilies. It has often seemed to me, since, mighty significant that the reception of the Admiral into the palace of the Hamiltons should have been conducted with so much ceremony. You can hardly imagine the procession of coaches and servants sent to bring us up from the albergo, and the army of servants drawn up by the gate and courtyard and grand staircase of the palace; for seldom has the entry of a conqueror into a fallen city been attended with results that have led to more writing. I must say that, as she supported the Admiral from his coach to the suite prepared for him on that day she might have been a goddess: she was so far beyond any woman that I had seen in beauty and graciousness and tenderness, and soft, floating movement.
As he moved down from his coach, I saw the spirit of action coming over the Admiral. He had caught sight of his hostess, and was straightening himself up—there never was a body so dominated by its spirit. But before he could finish My Lady had flown to him, and quelled him with a woman’s tender solicitude for sickness. She saw in an instant through his little artifice of leaving his hair unbrushed off his forehead. It was there the plaster yet lay on the wound which had struck him down in the battle. But though he yielded to her tenderness, and moved up the broad, low stairs with the imperceptible advance of the sick unto death—he took two or more steps on each stair—his spirit was perceptibly rising, and to us who knew him this was eloquent. She would have him not to talk; but he said thrice, “Thank God! thank God! thank God!” And the spirit of woman’s curiosity overcoming her, she said, “Tell me for what, Admiral, and talk no more.” He said, “As I lay in my albergo, in that cursed low ground round the port, with its air like the breath of human beings, I lifted up mine eyes to the hills, and I know that from this little hill cometh my help.”
I pondered on these words, for they had a ring about them that was not natural to the Admiral’s simple and direct way of speaking. It was not extraordinary for him to wax sentimental, or to embellish his speech with allusions to classics, such as I have recorded about the Fountain of Arethusa; but “cometh” and “mine” were not in his style. But recalling that the Admiral was a parson’s son and deeply religious after his own fashion, I made inquiry of the chaplain, Mr. Comyn, who told me that it came from a favourite Psalm of the Admiral’s—the cxxi., I think—which he was in the habit of calling “the Traveller’s Psalm.”
Sir William had made all preparations, with a sedan and specially chosen bearers, for having him carried from his coach to his chamber; but Lady Hamilton, with finer tact, perceived that if he could mount on her arm, though it might take an hour, it would be good to give him the feeling of recovery. And so it proved, for I do not think that he received injury from this fatigue.
The palace was so vast that it took us many minutes passing down the west wing to the chamber chosen for his sleeping-room, which lay at the very end of the suite set apart for him. When we were arrived, he insisted on moving up to his bed, which lay only a yard or two in from the far or south-west corner. He steadied himself against one of the left-hand posts at the foot of the bed, exclaiming, “I shall get well here—I shall get well here.”
And, indeed, if aspect affects the health, he might get well, for the prospect from the bed was one which beggars my poor powers of description; though I suppose that the view from the hill of Pausilippo is even finer, for from it one can see the rifted hill, the great fire-mountain Vesuvius, whose eruptions form one of our links of sympathy with the ancient world. It was slumbering that day peacefully amid the lately-dug-out ruins of Forum Pompeji, and the flat-topped hillocks which yet cover two other ancient cities, and half a dozen thriving modern towns swarming with people, as well as the magnificent castle of St. Elmo, which completely dominates the city. These, and the Castle of Nuovo, were shut off by the towering rock which was the Acropolis of the ancient Parthenope, round which the new city—Neapolis—grew up.
But the windows of the Admiral’s chamber commanded view enough for any mortal man to desire. In the distance were the long line of mountains culminating in the snow-topped St. Angelo, twice as high as Vesuvius, which divides the Bay of Naples from the Gulf of Salerno, and, in the jaws of the Bay, Capri; while nearer in were the Castel dell’ Uovo rising up sheer from the drawbridge running out from Santa Lucia; the hill of Pausilippo, with its white villas peeping out from dark trees; and between them the royal garden with its feathery palms and ilex avenues.
Above all there was the Bay of Naples, surely the bluest piece of water under heaven, with its calm clear waters almost reflecting, far out as they were, the stately ships which had just anchored, after winning the greatest sea victory the world ever saw. The tall spars and black and white hulls were thrown into relief by the swarm of Mediterranean craft with their high-peaked noses, tall lateen sails of glowing reds and yellows, and red-capped crews. From his very bed the Admiral had his fleet, and every atmospheric change in the Bay, under his own eye. I could see how he appreciated the thought which prompted his being put where he need have no worry about what was happening to his beloved fleet. And when he had feasted his eyes for a minute or two on the glassy blue water under the shining sky, he cried, “Thank you, dear friend—a thousand times, thank you!” And he repeated, “I shall get well here.”