I must tell you that the whole ship’s company had been most seriously concerned about the health of the Admiral. The wound he had in the head in the battle, though it was only from a heavy splinter, produced a sort of concussion of the brain; and this, with the business of so great an affair, even after our glorious victory was gained, combined with his natural proneness to sickness, produced a most dangerous fever, which was like to have carried him off in any one of the fifteen hours immediately before we cast anchor in the Bay of Naples, though in the two or three weeks we were sailing up the Mediterranean by way of Candia he was more than once seemingly full recovered.
After we had brought him to the Ambassador’s palace I felt confident that he would mend. A spell on shore always did much for his general health, and we could see that under Lady Hamilton’s direction he was like to have the best of attention. As it turned out it was marvellous what she did for him. The very next day he was fit to crack a jest about the diet of asses’ milk, which was judged to be the only nourishment light enough for a digestion so disordered by fever. “What would the French say?” he cried: “I can picture the Paris lampooner drawing me with asses’ ears in a lion’s skin, imagining myself to be the nobler animal. Yes, to the French I shall always be the ass nourished on asses’ milk who thought himself a lion!” And then he went off into one of his peals of laughter—rather a shaky peal it must be confessed—but then a straw will serve to show which way the wind blows.
What set him up above all (and set us up too, you may be sure—the Admiral’s secretary, Will and myself, and generally one or two of the captains) was the pains My Lady took to keep his mind from troubling about his condition. The ship surgeon, had he been a landsman, might have been expected to be flat against it, after the manner of most doctors, and to have prescribed rest, complete rest, seeing no one, darkened rooms, and so on; but Michael Jefferson was a man of a different stamp. It was his business to make men fit for duty again with as little rest as possible. And then he knew the Admiral. What would that eager, never-resting, planning mind have done in a darkened room, where he could see nothing, cut off from all friends who could give him any news of his fleet? He would have imagined, to say the least of it, a French fleet entering the Bay, and he not being on his ship to have the honour of beating them. In short, he would have harassed himself into his grave.
My Lady went to the root of the matter at once: “It is not rest he wants,” she maintained; “it is not physic he needs, but dieting carefully and treating like a spoiled child. I must do the spoiling,” she said, with that smile which lit up her whole face and made her eyes so soft; and I could vow that when she used those words she had not a thought of their ever being any more than friends.
I have read somewhere a fairy tale in which people were waited on by invisible servants, so that the dishes took and left their places on the table as it were of their own accord, and in perfect silence. It was, in a sort, after this manner that the Admiral’s wants and pleasures were supplied.
The room being at the end of a wing had windows upon three sides—west and south and east; and each window, of course, had heavy close lattices of a dark green colour, as well as projecting awnings of a striped canvas, which could be raised or lowered at pleasure. By aid of these the Admiral could have as much tempered sun as he desired almost from sunrise to sunset; and it seemed as if he never could have his fill of sun. He often said in after years with regret, that living meant living on the Mediterranean.
The windows opening on three sides, and the nearness of the sea also, gave always a pleasant current of air; and in this great airy chamber, always kept cool, and always full of gracious sunshine, with noiseless hands and feet a succession of diversions were provided in the same unobtrusive way by the hostess herself. For though it was the Admiral’s bed-chamber, after he had had his light breakfast served in the morning, it was really more of a reception-room, where, as he felt well enough, he transacted the business which was so near his heart, where a great man and son of Anak like Captain Troubridge might be seen waiting and watching with the affection of a woman.
My Lady was famous for her deep, soft voice. She would be singing and singing a room or two away for the Admiral to hear her, as it were by accident; and he would lie and listen, and she would sing until the dream was broken by some mischance. At another time she floated into the room unobserved, carrying in her hands a long Indian scarf or shawl, and went through the “Attitudes,” a species of tableaux vivants for which she was so celebrated.
The Admiral was resting, and did not see her for some time after she had begun; and we, not feeling sure that he did not sleep, though I think she had made sure, stood trying to express by dumb show our astonishment and applause. The Admiral gave no sign beyond opening his eyes dreamily; but he told her afterwards that he had never seen illusions so perfect, grace so absolute, beauty so divine. But I think he was most moved when she stole in to his side to bring him flowers or grapes, or a healing ptisane, and stayed smoothing his pillow, laying cool bandages on his wounded head, taking his hands in those magnetic hands, which were so smooth and yet so strong, and in a rich, low voice—not asking how he felt, but telling him of all the pleasant things prepared for him to do in a day or two, when the surgeon had pronounced that he should be ready—telling him what king and people alike were saying about their liberator, telling him this good jest, and that, with a woman’s reverence for a hero.
It pleased him to have her sit by him, for her “magnetism” was marvellous; and she would sit by the hour as patiently as though she had been his mother—amusing him if he would be amused, listening to him if he would talk, or writing his letters, if he desired it, to his wife; and I, who witnessed it all, think that at that time there was nothing in her mind but pure woman’s hero-worship, and I could not help crying to myself, “What a man, and what a woman!” This man had re-writ the history of Europe with his famous sea-fight, in which he had taken risks such as no man ever took before in the world, and was withal as sympathetic as a woman; and this woman led even the chaplain to exclaim that she had, what the ancients prized above all things, that mysterious quality of VENUSTAS, which he endeavoured to explain to us as sheer loveliness—the possession of all the graces which went to form their conception of Venus, the goddess of love and beauty.